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Published: November 3rd 2012
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Hanoi, City of love
Very symbolic for our relationship to Hanoi 2 days in Hanoi is only just enough to scratch the surface of this vibrant city. As soon as you hit the street, you encounter a mixture of noise, new (exotic) scents and a big crowd of people (and scooters). By first impression, Hanoi is chaotic and a place you hope to escape alive as fast as possible. However, after a little while it won our hearts and we somewhat fell in a little love with this Capital city of Vietnam.
On day 1, we spent a lot of time walking around in the old part of the city. You quickly move up the learning curve and find out to survive in the traffic. Even if it looks impossible to cross the streets in between the scooters, taxis, bicycles and rickshaws, we somehow managed to. This could be the new challenge in a TV show like fear factor. The traffic is like one big (kind of) well functioning organism, and we have to admit that the scooter drivers are very competent in avoiding crashing into us.
The old part of the city is special in the way, that many streets have their own specialty. There is a
Beautiful
A very beautiful bride in Hanoi candy street, a blacksmith street, a mirror street, a silk street and so on. Almost everywhere we saw Vietnamese people sitting and eating in small street kitchens. We tried two of them. They only made one dish, but were quite good at it. Very tasty compared to our northern Vietnam culinary experiences. A lot of places people sell vegetables and fresh meat (no cooling). The scooters are parked on the sidewalks, so pedestrians have to use the street. Chaos? No, Hanoi. In between all the life and noise we found small oases in form of temples. Most of them are Buddhist and very color full.
In the evening we attended the famous water puppet show. Very impressive, how the puppeteers can control the puppets. Well, they do have 3 years of training. The stories are from the rural Vietnam and some adventures including love between dragons. There even were a live band and the whole experience was much better than expected.
On day 2 we got up around 05:30. We went down to the Hoan Kiem lake to watch the Vietnamese doing Tai Chi. There was a lot of activity. Especially the elderly women
Good morning Hanoi
Man doing stretches at sunrise, Hoan Kiem lake were very active with coordinated and elegant movements. We also encountered quite a few people jogging and men doing weight training. The morning is definitely the time to do your exercises, due to the lower temperature.
After breakfast we went to visit the infamous Hanoi “Hilton”. The old prison is probably best known for housing captured US pilots during the Vietnam War. Now it is transferred into a museum. Inge chose to skip this experience. My visit was yet another voyage on the emotional ladder. The prison was constructed by the French in 1896. According to reports from the prison, the prisoners lived under horrible conditions and some were tortured and others were executed by guillotine or shooting. Later in history, American pilots were held in the prison. According to the Vietnamese, the prisoners were treated well and celebrated Christmas and played basketball and pool. This is documented with photos on exhibition in the museum. According to American sources, the pilots were tortured and put under a lot of pressure to express anti American statements. This illustrates, that it is a good idea to get a story from different sources. At the end of the day, war is dirty,
Tai Chi
Women doing the graceful movement of Tai Chi in the morning at Hoan Kiem lake no matter which side you are on. However I strongly believe in fighting for our values. We must keep our western values (and food).
After the prison visit, we passed the opera house. It is a very beautiful building. We were lucky to witness the photography of several wedding couples. Especially the girls were very beautiful. This part of the city is a big contrast to the old quarter. Here we found Gucci, Hugo Boss and Louis Vuitton shops. As a matter of fact, Hanoi is a city full of contrasts. One minute you see a girl cycling with baskets of fruits to sell. The next minute you see a femme fatale stepping out of a Bentley to do some shopping in the Gucci store.
We ended up on the museum of history. Not really our thing, so just a short visit. After that, lunch in a street kitchen. We had the dish called Bun Cha, and spring rolls with crab meat. Rather good and at a price of EUR 8,- including drinks for the two of us. In the afternoon we went around in the old quarter experiencing the life of the city.
Hanoi "Hilton"
Terrible conditions for prisoners. The "bed" was downward sloping ! To sum up, our visit in Hanoi was a very interesting experience. Very different from anything else, that we have seen. Absolutely worth a visit if you are in this part of the world. Hopefully the photos will speak their own language.
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