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Published: October 16th 2009
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Vietnam was always going to be a bonus destination for us because it wasn’t on our original itinerary. The most travelled and sensible route is either north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi or vice versa. We decided to fly from Bangkok to Hanoi and then use a combination of trains, buses and internal flights to get to Ho Chi Minh City.
It was immediately obvious that Vietnam was going to be a very different experience, beginning with the taxi from the airport. The driver brought us to a tour agency, opened the doors and insisted we had arrived at our destination. We read that this was common in Asia and that the driver would get commission from the agency for dropping us off there but this was strange considering we had booked our driver through the hotel! Anyway we refused to get out of the car and a few minutes later we were at the right hotel, with the driver trying to shake our hands and apologising for his ‘mistake’ and all but asking outright for his tip. Needless to say, he didn’t get one. We heard the Vietnamese had a particularly voracious attitude toward money making and
we had just had a first taste of it.
Hanoi is a beautiful city with a very European feel. Which is no wonder considering the French occupation during the mid to late 1800’s. One of the most interesting things about the city is the shape of most of the buildings. In the ‘Old Quarter’ some shops and houses are only a few feet wide but can stretch back for what seems like forever. This is the result of ‘frontage tax’, making them very long and narrow, and resulting in the name ‘tube-houses’. I doubt they could fit a double bed in some of the bedrooms, and it also makes it very easy for a shopkeeper to corner you if you are browsing!
Hanoi is built around a gorgeous lake, which attracts locals and tourists alike. The locals all gather to practice their tai chi, to jog around the lake and some of the older crowd appeared to have their own bench which they seemed to frequent daily.
One of the highlights of our time in Hanoi was the traditional Water Puppetry show which was an hour long and less than 2euro each. The puppeteers are really talented
and the band playing traditional Vietnamese music to accompany the show and doing the voices for the puppets made it very entertaining and well worth a visit.
We planned to spend 3 days in Hanoi and then fly to the UNESCO World Heritage listed city of Hue, followed by a highly recommended train journey south to Da Nang and then a short bus to another UNESCO listed city, Hoi An. Our highly organised plans (we had booked all our accommodation and transport) came apart at the neatly stitched seams when a last minute email informing us of a flight cancellation and a middle of the night text from home informed us that Typhoon Ketsana was eager to make our acquaintance, the next morning in Hue.
We made our way to the Vietnam Airlines office and to our surprise they were more than willing to refund the two flights we had paid for so we decided to stay a few extra days in Hanoi to see how things panned out when Ketsana made landfall. It was clear that we would not be making a visit to either Hue or Hoi An when we saw the photos and video footage,
showing people wading through a couple of feet of water on some of the main streets. We were quite disappointed but on our tight schedule we couldn’t wait too long for the waters to recede so a very short and very cheap flight later we found ourselves in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. If we were only going to see two cities in Vietnam, it appeared that we had at least chosen the two most contrasting cities. Hanoi, although it is the Capital, has a very laid back and calm feel compared to the very fast paced and brash HCMC. The traffic in HCMC would give Bangkok and Dublin combined a run for their money and the 7km taxi journey from the airport to our hotel took about an hour!
We covered the main tourist spots in a couple of days. The visit to the Reunification Palace was a highlight. The building itself is unremarkable but walking through the basement, which served as a command centre during the war in the 1960’s and 70’s, and houses old radio equipment and strategic wall maps, was really interesting and quite surreal.
Not exactly what you would call a highlight,
but one other ‘tourist attraction’ in HCMC is the War Remnants Museum which is best described by quoting the Rough Guide to SE Asia - “A distressing compendium of the horrors of modern warfare”. The museum although quite interesting was so anti-American and attributed so many commonly occurring diseases and illnesses to the defoliant sprays, that facts were almost impossible to locate amongst the gruesome photos and propaganda. Just my opinion of course.
One other highlight of HCMC was the markets and shopping centres, with Gareth picking up a pair of Converse for such a good price, its practically too vulgar to say!
All in all, we would have loved to see more of the country but we’re happy to have had a chance to visit another part of south east Asia. And we’re not finished just yet. Next up, Cambodia 😊
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