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Published: February 20th 2006
Hanoi / Ho Chi Minh Mauseleum
Waiting to get into the mauseleum. When I started thinking about this trip, Vietnam was one of the first countries on my list. From what I had heard and read about Vietnam it sounded like such a great country. My expectations were up very high. Maybe up to high because after my first week I was a bit disappointed. Maybe it was because I wasn't feeling too good (I caught a really bad cold on the plane from Vientiane). Maybe it was because of the bad weather (no sun for more than a week, didn't get that since I left Belgium). But I think it also has a lot to do with the attitude of the people here and especially in Hanoi.
Vietnam is different from Thailand and Laos. That's for sure. Where have all the smiles gone? It sometimes feels like travellers are not really welcome people here but their money is.
The sentence I've heard a million times since I arrived is "You buy from me!" Note the absence of a question mark. There's so much more hassle. When I walk the street I have to say 'no' at someone (street seller, motorbike driver, drugs dealer, ...) almost every minute and most don't
Hanoi by night
Bridge to the temple in Hoan Kiem lake in central Hanoi want to take no for an answer. Pretty tiring.
Bargaining is not much fun. They start at a price that is 4-5 times the normal price and don't want to go down easy. If you manage to get a good price (still too high compared to Thailand/Laos, but acceptable), some vendors get pretty aggressive/angry. One guy just threw the item I bought at me.
I've been ripped off and overcharged pretty badly a couple of times since I arrived.
I also saw people losing their temper for the first time in Asia. On my 1st day in Hanoi, I saw 2 fist fights (one traffic related, see later and one gambling related). During my Halong Bay trip, my guide started yelling at me because I wasn't sitting at the place he wanted me to sit for lunch. I had just met some people and wanted to sit with them for lunch. He had planned differently and got raging mad when I friendly told him that I wanted to sit where I sat.
It's not all bad of course. I met some really nice Vietnamese people, giving me advice on things to see that were not in
Hanoi
Street vendor in the old quarter of Hanoi the guidebooks, sending me in the right direction when I had managed to fall off my map,... My guide and travel companions up north in Sapa were great also.
Oh! and the veggie food is great too. The 'mock meat' dishes are delicious. It's an ancient Buddhist tradition to make vegetarian food that looks and tastes like meat, to make non vegetarian visitors feel at home. The veggie (tofu and soy) chicken is so great. It comes close to real chicken I think... But than again it's been years since I last ate chicken.
Well all in all it's not that this country is like hell. As a matter of fact after my first week I got used to a lot of their tricks and attitudes. I also managed to avoid a couple of rip offs by being a bit more paranoid. But I can't help being disappointed. Maybe I've just had bad luck. Maybe North Thailand and Laos are not the best points of reference to judge Vietnam (I've been spoiled). Or maybe it's because I haven't been feeling too good for a week.
To be continued...
Hanoi
The flight from Vientiane was an 'experience'.
Hanoi
Cyclo driver. As I told you before, there was an overbooking problem so I got there early. Good thing! This was the first time I took a flight that left 40 minutes earlier than foreseen. I guess that's how they 'solved' the overbooking problem. I wonder if those people I saw waving from the terminal, as we were taxiing out, were waving goodbye or were trying to get on the plane.
Anyway the landing in Hanoi was pretty rough, which was to be a metaphor for my first days in Vietnam.
Did I say traffic in Bangkok was crazy? Well I know better now... Hanoi: that is traffic hell for me. There are literally thousands of motorbikes racing through the small streets like maniacs. The horn is the most important part of the bike I suppose. It is used to let other people know they are coming through. It's an incredible constant noise! (While I wrote this last sentence there have been at least 15 horns).
Crossing a street for the 1st time is a nightmare. There are no possibilities to cross the street without traffic. Even if you run the 100 m in under 10 seconds, you will not make
Hanoi
Old and new hanoi it to the other side of the street. The way to go is to just start walking (and praying if you are religious) at a constant speed, without looking and as by a miracle the Red Sea of motorbikes will split and you can cross. They all seem to find a way around you. Pretty scary I can assure you!
On my first day in Hanoi I saw 3 motor bike accidents. One of them followed by a fist fight. At the end of it the guy who caused the accident was bashing the other guys head into the pavement... Business as usual I guess because hardly anyone reacted...and one guy who had been watching the accident and fight with a 'oh shit!' expression on his face, quickly smiled when he saw me and said the words you hear every 10 seconds "hello motorbike"... I don't think so.
First thing I went to see in Hanoi was the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. A very strange experience. Everyday hundreds of (mostly Vietnamese) people are coming to pay their respects to their great glorified leader. 'Uncle Ho' as he is called by the people, dedicated his life to liberate Vietnam of
Hanoi
Suicide attempt on the streets of Hanoi? colonial influence (France) and foreign intervention (US). He never witnessed the reunification of Vietnam as he died in '69, 6 years before the end of the war.
He requested to have a simple cremation but it was decided differently. It was really strange to see the corpse of someone who has been dead for almost 40 years. Actually some sceptics have claimed that these days the mausoleum is being run by Madame Tussaud, but I shouldn't be saying that too loud here. It looked very real and the admiring reactions of the Vietnamese were very real also.
The rest of the first day in Hanoi I spent visiting the old quarter, some pagodas/temples and getting totally lost.
Halong Bay
After only one day I had enough of the noise and pollution of Hanoi, so I headed out to Halong Bay. This is one of the big tourist attractions of Vietnam. It's a bay with hundreds of islands and mountains rising out of the water.
I took a 2 day boat trip (only 3 weeks after my Mekong adventure) in the bay and it was beautiful. But not as magical as I had expected. The weather was not
Halong Bay
Floating village in Halong Bay so good (clouded and foggy) and I wasn't feeling so good either. It was a bit of a disappointment. I think I've been spoiled a bit, by what I've been seeing so far. Still I have the feeling the place is a bit over rated.
I was really nice to sleep on the boat (safe big boat) in the bay though. I got to meet some really cool Chinese and Oz people. The 'parking' of the boat in the overcrowded harbour was exciting also. Though there was no space at all, the captain tried to park in between 2 boats anyway by just hitting them at full speed. This went on for 4-5 tries until some parts of the parked boats broke off and the crew started to threaten our captain. Fun!
The trip back to Hanoi was also pretty crazy. I was sitting in the front with the driver. When I put on my seat belt, he laughed and said "ah for extra protection". I don't know where he saw the other protection... the windscreen maybe? These mini bus drivers drive like maniacs if they are not paid by the hour. The middle of the road is where
Halong Bay
A cold and rainy day in Halong Bay you should drive apparently. One moment we almost got off the road at the left side, because the driver decided to overtake a car that was overtaking a motorbike that was overtaking a bicycle...oh and the horns, there is always that terrible noise.
Sapa
Sapa in the north is supposed to be another good place to escape the noise and the stress from the city. As the night trains to the north get booked pretty fast, I had booked a ticket a couple of days in forehand... Bad idea! The evening I was supposed to leave I was feeling really bad. I decided to get on the train anyway and hoped to get some sleep... Wrong again. Something was wrong ('a misunderstanding' they call it here, ahum ) with my ticket so I didn't get a 'soft sleeper' but a 'hard sleeper' ( 6 bunks in one cabin but no fresh air). Well the 'hard sleeper' turned out to be a 'no sleeper' for me.
Great, so I arrived in the mountains ill and without having slept 1 hr and I was supposed to leave on a 10 km hike. I decided to cancel my trekking that day
and checked in a good hotel and spent almost all day in bed. In the afternoon I was sitting in the restaurant watching the clouds roll in and out of the valley which was both very relaxing and exciting ( felt a bit like unwrapping a present). I also went on a little walk in town. During my 500 m stroll through town I was offered drugs only 7 times. When I turned down the offers, the dealers told me that all other tourists did buy. Guess I'm not 'all the other tourists'.
The second day I felt more or less fit so I decided to do the trekking that day. It was beautiful even though we did not see the sun and were walking in the clouds almost constantly. It felt like I was at only at 50 percent of my forces and was exhausted after walking 10 km. After the great noodle soup for lunch I was ready again and we cut the walk short as there was a festival (coming of spring) in one of the villages and we wanted to check that out. It was a pretty colourful happening with locals from all different tribes.
Halong Bay
View from my bedroom on the boat. And they all tried to sell their handicraft to us... The Australian couple I was hiking with could not say 'no' (well they said no but nobody listened) and ended up buying over 15 things. I was hardly harassed. I followed my guidebook advice:" say 'no' only once". So I say 'no' firm and loud but with a big smile on my face and it works...
So I only hiked one day but it was definitely worth getting over there and I think I might get back there sometime in summer.
On the train back I got my soft sleeper after 2 days of fighting with the people of the booking office. And I slept.
Hanoi again
At the ungodly hour of 5 am the train arrived in Hanoi and soon we were all chased out of the train. The guesthouse were I had my big pack in storage only opened at 7 am, so I had 2 hours to kill. After a nice stroll from the station through the for once quiet streets of Hanoi I got back at the old quarter. It was 6 am and I went to sit by the big lake in the
Sapa
Watching the clouds float in and out of the valley centre of town and spent an hour watching the city wake up. At this time the locals do their morning exercise, so there was Tai Chi, Aerobics, jogging and some rather strange stretching all over. It's a pretty funny sight if you know that most people do their exercise in what I could only describe as... pyjamas (rose and baby blue were the favourite colours).
Before leaving Hanoi, I went to see a performance of the 'water puppet theatre'. Pretty lame you might think but I thought it was amazing. It's basically puppets that perform in a small swimming pool with the guys handling the puppets standing in the water hidden behind a curtain. It showed 'the life on the countryside' and several legends and myths (my favourite: the fighting and fire spitting dragons that jumped in and out of the water). The whole 1hr show was accompanied by an 8 piece band and singers...and a ticket costs just 1 euro.
I did not really regret having to leave Hanoi and was glad to be on a overcrowded (I think the driver called all his friends) bus that left 2 hours late to Hue.
Sapa
Black Hmong girls
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Katleen
non-member comment
Weemoed
Het lezen van je wedervaren geeft me telkens zin om de boel hier maar de boel te laten en eveneens te vertrekken. Echter, ik ben nogal lui van aard en ik denk niet dat ik een dergelijk lange tocht zou aankunnen. Maar blijf verder verslag uitbrengen, je schrijfsels zijn interessant en humoristisch!