Hanoi take two - How nice

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Day 4 Afternoon in Hanoi:

We arrived early evening back in Hanoi Old Quarter after our long, but much less uneventful drive back from Halong Bay. We stayed at Golden Moon hotel and were pleasantly surprised with a room upgrade to the top floor and less street noise; along with flowers and yet again more swan towels.

Dinner was a recommendation – New World Restaurant. We arrived to find a busy ground floor section of the restaurant and were told to go upstairs and seat ourselves. We made our way up a winding and narrow staircase to a landing with a windowless room that appeared to be occupied by the restaurant’s owners eating there dinner, a short flight of steps up was the upper most landing with a few tables and an even smaller outdoor balcony with two tables overlooking the pedestrian filled street below. We chose one of the outdoor tables and waited, and waited, and waited… we thought they forgot us so I went downstairs and asked them to come up and take our order. The staff looked surprised when they saw where we were sitting, but their English was limited to the menus – we ordered and they disappeared back down the steps to the kitchen. A few moments later one of the reception staff came up and indicated that we would have to hurry and eat as this area was reserved for ‘locals’. The delicious food eventually arrived (and more beer) and as we were eating we noted a group of local ‘businessmen’(mob?) take the seats next to us and the indoor seats. They didn’t look too happy to be displaced from their ‘view’ seats…. Needless to say we wrapped up the multiple dishes we’d over ordered and took off as quickly as we could.

Day 5 Hanoi:

Today was all about self directed trek by foot through the city in the heat and humidity with the odd stop in café’s and coffee shops to rehydrate and cool down in the AC environment.

First stop was the Vietnam War Museum. We’d made a conscious decisions prior to our trip that we would keep the war history sites limited to a minimum as there are so many more positive things to see and do in our limited time… that said we wanted to ensure we did acknowledge the reality of history while we were in the country.

The war museum was interesting, for an unexpected reason. I’d anticipated lots of anti American rhetoric (similar to the museum in Laos – “American Running Dogs” etc), but instead found that it was the French that took the heat for their time while they controlled Vietnam…. Many of the exhibits were biased against the French, while Americans (especially POWs) were given only a brief mention and in many ways almost brushed aside any resentment towards Americans.

Next stop was Hanoi Prison (Hilton) – again the strong anti French sentiment ran throughout while American POW’s were referred to as guests and the museum made a point of mostly only showing positive photos of American’s time in the prison – i.e. playing sports, celebrating Christmas, receiving a parting gift of mementos from Vietnam when they were released etc…

Next up was the Women’s Museum; which was obviously well funded and well run. The museum was spread across a number of floors and was designed to showcase women from different cultures from Vietnam, showcase the life and hardship of women leaving villages to go to work in cities and showcase major life experiences for women in Vietnam (birth, education, marriage, childbearing, growing old etc..). Well worth a visit – if anything you can try out carrying on your should baskets balanced at either end of a pole (Julia was a natural – see the photos).

Julia managed to do some shopping in the markets between ice coffees and street sold beers – we purchased some silk scarves and wall art.

Our last evening in Hanoi we went to see a Water Puppet show… a must do that is less about culture and more about having a laugh afterwards about the topless puppets, gold g-string wearing puppets and assorted animal puppets prancing and dancing in a shallow pool of water.

In retrospect Hanoi was a great destination. The old quarter we could have spent another week getting lost in the narrow streets – popping our heads into hidden shops and sampling unknown street food. We felt safe at all times and found navigating the city easy. We left feeling really accomplished learning how to walk confidently like a local between pedestrians, bicycles, numerous mopeds, cars and buses without getting run over – just get used to honking horns (they almost use horns like sonar telling everyone that they are here and don’t bump into me).



Next stop Hue, Vietnam….

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