Hello Hanoi

---

I think it's about time we realise that no matter how much you plan something, there will always be a spanner lying about just waiting to lobbed into the works. Now normally, Lee and I just rock up at immigration, say "Sawardee Kap, G'Day, Sin Chao" or however else you say hello, and they welcome us with open arms to their lovely countries, no rubber gloves necessary. We're not used to having to buy a 1 month visa to go somewhere so it was kinda at the last minute that we arranged our visitors visa's to Vietnam. I mean like 36 hours before we were due to enter the country, I wouldn't recommend it by the way. We flew out of Bangkok at 09.10 on the 26th and our visas came through at 22.00 the previous night. Lee and I were not too enamoured with the idea of spending the night in Hanoi airport, so to say we were releived is bit of an understatement.

Nevertheless, it had come through and we were cleared to enter Vietnam in the capital city Hanoi. Our travel-laziness seemingly cured we strode confidently passed the waiting taxi drivers and climbed aboard the local bus and got ready for the hour's drive into the centre of town. For those that are unaware, the currency in Vietnam is the Dong. Childish sniggering aside, you can swap one of your British pounds for more than 33,000 Dong meaning that you feel like you've actually landed in a game of Monopoly. Hanopoly I suppose. The hour's bus drive from the airport to the Old Quarter of Hanoi cost us 5000 dong each, that's less than one sixth of a pound to you and me so you can imagine how far your money goes over here.

Hanoi is a city on the move. Unfortunately it is also a city that leans on it's horn whenever it is moving. Which is a lot of the time. Vietnam must account for about one third of the worlds moped sales and barely anyone walks around here. There doesn't appear to be any aggression in the tooting of the horns on the bikes though, it is merely to let anyone know that you are there. It matters not a jot that you are in amongst a group of 400 other motorbikes waiting at the traffic lights and they all have the same idea. Hanoi honks !! If you are one of the few pedestrians on the streets of Hanoi, you are indeed either brave or suicidal. No-one pays a blind bit of notice to red or green lights or zebra crossings so the idea is that you just step out into the road and pray that Buddah is on your side today.

Our hotel was in a part of Hanoi called the Old Quarter which is where a lot of the nice eating places and bars are. The streets are unbelievably narrow (hence the mopeds and not cars) and it always feels a little bit darker than anywhere else, even at lunchtime and getting around is a slow business. If you're in a hurry here, you'd better be on two or more wheels. The pavements are lined with stalls and local cafe's and these spill out onto the pavements so picking your way through all this can be a painstaking operation. Once you are used to it though and you get used to the pace of Hanoi, you can settle down a bit and relax and move at your own pace.

One of the things that lee and I really wanted to do was to go on a boat trip to Ha Long Bay. We had a little look around and found a place that did a 3 day 2 night tour on a junk boat on Ha Long Bay but it meant that we would have to hang around Hanoi a little longer than planned due to availability. An extra 2 days in Hanoi meant that we could explore the town a bit more and get to know it as it had been a bit in-yer-face for our liking but we'd wanted to do Ha Long Bay for ages so we gave Hanoi a longer chance to impress us.

Once Lee and I had sorted our trip out and then revisited our travel plans and then figured out how to do our tax returns on-line for Australia, we were a bit stressed and were in need of some liquid refreshment so we hit the local hostelry, a place imaginatively called Le Pub, and didn't leave until it closed. We also met a cracking pair of German (yes, they exist) guys and we sat for a few hours with them swapping stories and tips and headed home after that to get some sleep.

Remarkably the next day, Lee and I felt none the worse for wear and headed out to have a look around again. A quick look through the Lonely Planet confirmed our suspicions that there is not actually that much to do in Hanoi. There is the Museum of Ethnology or Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum but neither of these really blew our skirts up so we took a short walk to the Temple of the Returned Sword. Thousands of years ago, a right hard case seemingly drove the Chinese out of Vietnam single-handedly and became a hero due to his magical sword that he had found by the lake in the Old Quarter (or Ye Olde Quart, as it was probably known then). As he returned from battle, he came across a golden turtle by the lake who took the sword off him and returned it to the lake from whence it came, hence the name of the temple. He must have had some beamer when he told his pals that after defeating the marauding Chinese hordes, he'd had a few too many Tiger beers and had his sword nicked off him by the most famously slow animal on the planet. He must have said it was a golden turtle to save face and give the story some pizazz. Anyway, 3000 dong for your entry and you can walk around this place in about 20 seconds and to be honest it's not much for inspiring a sense of wonder, but there is a nice wee chill out area by the lake that you can sit at and watch the locals try and spot turtles.

Now seeing as Lee and I had enjoyed our food so much since we had been in Hanoi, we thought it would be cool to go and learn how to cook our own. A quick look around and we found a restaurant that did a half day course for $19 each so we booked ourselves on it for the next day. So we turned up at Hanoi Number 1 and found ourselves on a course with 1 other person, an older gentleman called Ivor from Australia who turned out to be the resort manager for Fraser Island back in Oz, nice guy he was too. Our first piece of business was to head to the market with our guide/chef for the day, Snow, to pick up our ingredients. The markets here are something else, not like The Barras or Ingleston or anything like that, these are serious markets where you can buy any kind of foodstuff you can imagine and some that you can't imagine too. All around the place there are buckets of live fish, eels and crabs and they will kill, gut and wrap your fish right in front of you so you can't really grumble about the lack of freshness. Highlight of the trip around the market was watching a large fish being beheaded and then gutted, only for the head to start moving all on its own around the chopping board, much to Lee's distress.

Back at the restaurant, we learnt how to cook four courses. Our first was Tamarind Fish, the second was Pork and crab meat spring rolls and then Rice with shrimp Royal Style. We were also shown how to cook sweet potato and ginger desert but there's no chance in hell that it will be heading to a dinner table anywhere near us in this life. It was awful. It was great being able to cook and then eat all our own food and the course was brilliant value, but the only thing was that the fish needed to be cooked on a hotplate that they didn't have out in the restaurant so they had to fry the fish off for us after we had done all the marinating. The rest of the menu we got to cook ourselves which was wicked. The only slight downside was that our malaria tablets were giving Lee a dicky tummy so she wasn't able to eat all of her food but she did get to try everything. Being a gentleman, I, of course, helped her finish the rest of her food. After our little cooking adventure, the three of us headed back to Le Pub and had a couple of beers before parting with our cooking companion as we had an early rise the next day to go to Ha Long bay.

---