Hanoi and Halong Bay

---

Hanoi

Leaving the clear blue skies and bright sun of Laos behind us, we found rain and an ominous grey gloom when we touched down in the People's Socialist Republic of Vietnam. After filling in a form to certify that we hadn't got bird or pig flu, for some reason I felt quite nervous as we approached passport control. We knew from our research that Vietnam is a far more 'edgy' and hazardous place than the backpackers paradise of Laos and Thailand, and I felt it immediately.

The stereotype of the Vietnamese is that they are less friendly towards westerners and we are more seen as a source of income than a welcomed presence - we weren't sure what the expect! The combination of the brown uniforms adorned with red and gold stars of the immigration officials and hostile/ cold stares made me nervous. Scenes from 'The Deerhunter' kept coming to mind, making my discomfort more acute (Ed comments)

Outside the airport, we tried to find the Air Vietnam sponsored shuttle bus which would take us to the city centre. We couldn't find one, and we eventually allowed ourselves to be shepherded into an independant one, wondering where it would take us and how much they would charge. The driver crammed us, 9 passengers, everyone's luggage and a hen into the minibus and we were off.

The airport is some distance away from Hanoi, and the 90 minute drive was an eventful one. If I may digress a bit, you may recall that driving in India was chaotic, but the combination of aggressive honking, quick reactions, relatively slow speeds and courteous manners means accidents are rare (the only one we saw involved an impala hit by a truck). Thailand is a bit worse - they honk less but drive faster and there are quite a few accidents (we saw the aftermath of two people on a moped hitting a car). Laos is like Thailand but slower (both the driving and everything else in the country).

Driving in Vietnam combines the worst of Indian and Thai tendancies - they drive fast, aggressively and don't honk much at all. Obviously keen to get home for his dinner, whilst making several calls and smoking continually, our driver tailgated a variety of vehicles (including small girls on mopeds) throughout the whole journey, during which we saw no less than three accidents at the side of the road.

Our driver was honest to his word, though, and dropped us off in an area of the Old Quarter, where we were given to understand our hotel was near. By now it was dark, and we had to pay a couple of young men on mopeds to drive us and our bags (some feat) to our hotel. After much insisting on our part that we did actually want to go to the hotel we had booked and not a new one round the corner that offers very good rates, we arrived at our destination. The 'receptionist' took our money and passports, smoking, laughing and talking incessantly (to us or himself, we weren't sure) and we headed upstairs to bed.

(For a bit of context, consider that a common scam - apart from massively overcharging someone - is for a driver to say that the hotel that the tourist has picked is closed etc and to take to another that will pay him commission, or to drive to a hotel of his choice, and jump out and tell the reception staff to tell the tourist that it is in fact the hotel he wanted).

Morning came, and we were welcomed to the new found morning Asian techno music that seems to go off at 7am most mornings combined with staff starting their cleaning rotations - we were not on Laos time anymore! Looking out of the window, for the first time we could get some idea of our surroundings. Slap bang in the middle of the Old Quarter, we were really in the thick of things. The streets were an urban jungle: mopeds were everywhere travelling in every direction, the pavements were filled with parked mopeds/ people eating on little plastic stools, someone plying their trade.

Whole streets were full of shops devoted to selling identical types of goods- there were individual roads 100 yds long selling nothing but shoes, clothes, kids toys, flowers, parts for mopeds, etc. Other streets were filled with ubiquitous internet cafes, travel agents, snake wine (literally bottles of wine with huge snakes in them) counterfeit DVD and North Face rucksacks (much like several other cities in Asia, actually. They must have the same wholesaler).

Side note- Vietnam as you might guess has little respect for intellectual property. Whilst Thailand leads the field in terms of goods they will counterfit (medicines, cigarettes etc in addition to the typical consumer goods, Vietnam counterfeits businesses! For example, once a hotel in a city gains a decent reputation (and especially if it is written up in the guide books), its not uncommon for the owner of a completely different hotel to rebrand his hotel with the name and design of the decent hotel, hoping to lure in unsuspecting tourists who don't know the difference. The same is done with fly by night tour operators, who trade off the name of wellrun operations that Westerners have come to trust.

In the middle of the Old Quarter is Hoan Kiem Lake, in which a giant turtle is rumoured to live, and is also home to an ancient chinese temple. There are other lakes and various parks throughout the city- Hanoi is a relatively green city.

Whilst elderly people do not live as long as they might in the West due to lower standards of health care, they typically live far more active lives than their Western counterparts - one reason for this is diet, another is Tai Chi (a Chinese derived exercise system based on movement and breathing) and such people gather in open spaces like Hoan Kiem Lake early in the mornings in order to practice this.

Another day we visited the 'Hanoi Hilton', the notorious prison built by the French used to incarcerate first Vietnamese political prisons and freedom fighters/ terrorists, then more recently normal Vietnamese criminals and US airmen shot down over the North during the war. One whole wing of the museum remains and has been restored, and the exhibits and tour was very interesting. Predicatably, the Americans come in for some pretty bad PR, but most of the latent animosity evident from the exhibits is directed at the French.

In another part of town is the Military Museum which has a yard containing various pieces of military hardware like a US Huey helicopter ("abandoned by American forces on *** as they retreated from **** in the face of superior NVLA forces" and a Surface to Air missile launcher ("which on the night of **** the brave soldiers of the NVLA used to shoot down 2 B- 52 bombers...."
The museum curator/ the people running the museum car park also embrace capitalism in their unique way, because on the way out there was a crowd of people watching a park his white Audi R-8 (girls- this is a very very nice car) in the yard.

We also took the time to hire an english speaking guide and his friend to drive us round for a few hours on their mopeds showing us the sights. We saw the state museum, a few pagodas and other places but one thing we wanted to see most, the mausoleum where they keep Uncle Ho, was closed. (Its often closed, and people lucky enough to get in must behave like children being sent to see the headmaster: no dawdling, single file, no photographs, no hands in pockets. I'm not joking.)

Somewhat ironically, the authorities have adapted to the buildings they inherited from the French very well-most government buildings are beautifully preserved colonial era french style buildings, in the traditional mustard colour. They've even restored the huge wrought iron gates outside the Presidential Palace that a NVA tank crashed through during the liberation of the city, and are obviously proud of them/ suspicious of tourists with cameras- if you get too close to the gates or sit down near it, a guard starts whistling at you till you move away.....

Side note- lots of young Vietnamese men grow the nail on their index fingers really really long for some reason. Its pretty gross and we haven't yet befriended a local well enough to ask why! Also, quite a few men who have moles on their face proudly grow the hairs out of them if they are lucky enough to have them- apparently its lucky!

On another night, we set off in a taxi to a recommended Chinese restaurant. After a few moments driving, Kat fortunately noticed that the electronic meter had gone crazy and the fare was now going up rapidly, like a stop watch (Rigged taxi meters is a common scam). We quickly yelled at the driver told him to pull over and then we agreed on a fixed price of $2, which was still too much money and we should have gotten out of the scam artist's cab, but we were so hungry!

To further complicate matters, the restaurant had moved and we had to pay the driver more still to take us to the new location a local gave us. The episode was complete when getting out of the taxi outside the restaurant, Ed stepped straight into the gutter and 6 inches of dirty water flowing down it (the Vietnamese wash their pavements down every evening like good Europeans).

After Kat had killed herself laughing, we crossed the road to the restarant, Ed sqwelching across the threshold with his wet feet, whereupon the restaurant's doormen pulled out the hose that had been filling up the mini lake under the restaurant and washed off his feet! This turned out to be a VERY nice restaurant - once again Lonely Plant strikes with inaccurate reviews..

To cap things off, a very prim maitre d' ended up reluctantly letting us in (whilst standing next to a prominent dress code sign which we were flagrantly breaching) as we were the only diners in the restaurant. Le Crunch de Credit, n'est pas?

Kat's side note - while Hanoi was interesting with its history and buzziness I grew to dislike this city as you could not get a moment of silence, even in the 'comfort' of your hotel room - being yelled at 'you buy from me' every 15 seconds loses it charm after 4 days! Not to mention trying to cross a road there - there are no pedestrian right of ways so you have to just start walking into insane traffic and cars, buses, mopeds swerve around you.

Halong Bay

Our bus arrived regular as clockwork and we set off for Halong Bay. From the car ride from the airport to Hanoi city centre, we knew that driving standards were bad (it turns out that there is no driving test in Vietnam!) and this trip to Halong bay gave us a few more hair- raising examples of this. We were in the back of the bus over the axel and by the end of the ride we were both a little green and vomitous from the swerving and jerking ride. In our group was a Spanish couple, a guy from Australia, a Japanese couple and a Singaporean couple.

Considering everyone had so much in common (not), we turned (even if we do say ourselves) to be the sort of social lynchpin in the operation and we all had a pretty good time. The boat was very beautiful - a big and relatively new dark teak vessel, with excellent facilities and attentive staff (though they had a worrying habit of blasting cheesy Asian dance music at strange times of the day - like just before dinner!).

When we first arrived on the boat the guide laid out the keys on a table in the dining area and said he wanted to be fair so we should all randomly pick our rooms - Kat immediately using her superior ‘get the best room skills’ jumped into action and recalled the layout she noted while walking onto the boat - and low and behold we got a corner room with a balcony over the stern of the boat, much to the rest of the group’s annoyance - little did they know they were dealing with a professional comfort seeker!

We spent the first afternoon floating around in kayaks trying to go to and from some caves. Paddling together was actually the first proper team exercise Kat and I had had to do, and we didn’t do very well- progress was slow and we were rarely travelling straight! There were a few comments like ‘Ed you should never coach team sports, esp when children are involved’ and ‘Kat you keep steering us left (followed by some under the breathe comments) - we were friends again by the time sunset drinks came along. We also saw a massive cave, that was beautiful but quite a tourist attraction with hundreds of tourists being funneled through at any given point. Kat generally doesn’t like dark enclosed spaces so after about 20 minutes of this she ditched the group and powered out of the cave towards sunlight!

The sunset and dinner later was sumptuous, and we got stuck into some red wine for a lovely meal, the highlight of which was Kat’s face when the Spanish gentleman was explaining to her that bull fighting was a good thing because without it the bulls that are killed would become extinct, trying to explain the lack of logic in that statement to a Spanish man was a fruitless task…

On our second day, the members of our initial group opted to spend the day on the nearby resort on Cat Ba island, and the night at a hotel there. We had opted already for a private tour of some of the islands and a whole day’s kayaking- a slightly ominous prospect considering our team kayaking skills during the previous day! Luckily, we were supplied with some far more modern and efficient equipment and our techniques were starting to gel and we had an amazing couple of hours paddling around through various caves into all manner of little lagoons hidden amongst the islands.

Back on the boat, after a bit of sunbathing (translation- us getting sunburned because we were too lazy to put cream on) we had another amazing meal of various BBQed meats all cooked on the stern of the boat. After lunch, when we asked what was happening next, we were told ‘First we sleep, then we go to new islands’. We thought they meant we could have a nap as we were tired from kayaking and a big meal
but actually what happened was that all the crew on the boat laid down for an hour’s snooze during which we had the run of the boat to ourselves. We then saw a few more islands and Ed took another dip off the stern of the boat- floating around in the green/ blue sea, with just our boat for company, surrounded by these magnificent islands, with a tanker in the distance (Halong Bay is a major port) it was very special for him.

Ed: Floating around in the sea, in a void of water surrounded by with these strange craggy rocks with a tanker on the horizon, whilst Kat sat patiently in the boat keeping watch, i thought about the life I had led to date everything I was grateful for, and said to myself a little word of thanks for all friends/ family/ aquaintances who had crossed paths with me and supported me in the past. (Ok, Oscar winning moment now over).

We made our way back to the boat and were curious about who the new boat load of people would be as there were supposed to be 20. We came to find the most disjointed, ackward group of people ever! As we were making our way to the deck for sunset drinks we noted a table had been set for 2 while there were 6 people at all other tables - Ed made the comment look at how sad that is, and the waiter said oh yes that table is for you 2! So after some drawn out conversation the waiter adjusted the tables so we now had 5 at our table - much more socilable. A moment of hilarity ensues when we walk out to dinner to find a Russian couple with their bratty 2 year old kid sitting across from us - and the first thing they said was 'we dont speak English' - Kat starts laughing, Ed starts cursing...

We adored our trip to Halong Bay - it was one of the most beautiful places that we have been! Sadly we had to go back to Hanoi - Kat was really dragging her heels - but we had to move onto Sapa somehow.

Next stop Sapa - The Queen of the Mountains by the border of China

---

Photos

St Joseph Cathedral
In the Old Quarter around the corner from our hotel

Pineapple vendors
This is actually a big scam - but we wanted the photo

Minh's Jazz Bar
Surprisingly an amazing jazz group - the owner performs almost every night

Hoa Lo prision
AKA the Hanoi Hilton - where American prisoners were kept during the war

Re-creation of prisoner's lives
The Vietnamese prisoners were kept in locks like this for the majority of their days

Chinese pagoda
You see Chinese influences all across the city

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum
Ho's embalmed body is kept there on display - his body goes to Russia once a year for 'maintenance'

A private cove
the photo does not do it justice

Comments

[anonymous]

I could have done without the photo of the heads, but the bay more than makes up for it. Beautiful.