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Published: June 14th 2009
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After some adventure on the train, we arrived around 8 AM at Hanoi's central railway station.
Used to being “aggressed” by a cohort of taxi drivers and other middlemen, it was quite a surprise to have none of this. Yes a few people proposed their services, but just smiled when we said no and we were left in peace. This was a first surprise. The other surprise was the number of motorbikes all over the place. They were running on the street, parked on the street, parked on the side walk, in short: a sea of motorbikes. Then, there he was, our driver coming to pick us up ... with his motorbike! OK, we already saw that 2 passengers per bike is not a maximum here, but we had 3 suitcases and 2 rug sacks! He was extremely kind and quickly decided to catch a taxi for us, a cab that he paid for. It was quite an experience to have this taxi trying to follow that motorbike in the Hanoi traffic. The bikes came from everywhere in all kind of directions and, being in majority they dictate their rules to the poor cars trying their way through this frantic traffic.
There is a quote in our guide book saying that in Japan, motorbikes drive on the left, in China they drive on the right and in Vietnam it doesn't matter. Our finding is that in Vietnam the middle of the road is a relative concept!
Traffic being very slow, we didn't however see any accident during our stay in Vietnam.
The Joy Hotel is situated in the middle of the Old City in Hanoi, a maze of 36 streets named after the produce sold in them. Our hotel was in Bat Su (the street of the ceramic bowls).
After some rest we went for a tour, visited the Hoan Kiem Lake and the French Quarter.
Suddenly, while we were walking, somebody was shouting something and started running fast. We wondered why. About 2 seconds later one of these tropical rains started and by the time we got our umbrella an our raincoats out of our bags, we were totally wet.
We did like the locals, walked to the nearest shop with a roof hanging over the entrance and waited until the rain stopped. We resumed our walk and passing by a local hairdresser, decided to have a hair cut.
On our way back we visited a few more places, admired the Sofitel Metropole Hotel, a French colonial style building, dating from 1901, had a rest at lake and a look at the Sunbeam Bridge.
The second day Robson went for a countryside tour with an ethnic travel agency while I decided to have a rest and further explore the city.
I decided to focus on some buildings like the Catholic cathedral built by the French in 1886 and which has quite nice glass work; the Stone Lady Pagoda, built in 1056 and rebuilt in 1767; and a more detailed look at the various streets of the old quarter and their specialized trade.
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