Paying my respect to Uncle Ho and getting stuck into Bia Hoi

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Day 406: Monday 10th August - Water puppets and Bia Hoi

I check into the only backpackers hostel in Hanoi on my return from Halong Bay. It’s been three long months since I was last shared a dorm room in a hostel - Malaysia, middle of May, three countries ago being the last occasion. Immediately, I am having regrets booking a dorm room. I have nothing against the people I’m sharing my room with, it’s just I’m used to having my own space. In Vietnam having your own room isn’t uneconomic - it would cost me only $4 a night more. I’ve decided I’ll stay here tonight as I’ve already paid upfront and then check in somewhere else tomorrow. As I think it through though I decide I’m not being fair - I’m going to be back in dorm’s in China due to cost so this is part of the process of getting used to being in dorms again. And after all I was saying I wanted to meet people just a few days before.

In the evening I wander around the lake to get a ticket for the water puppet show for tomorrow. To my surprise though, there are still tickets available for the last showing of the day at 8pm, only half an hour away so I get a ticket for a cheap seat. I’m not expecting much as I’ve heard mixed reports and I’m thinking this will be a repeat of the shadow puppet show I watched in Yogyakarta in Indonesia where I was wriggling in my seat for 50 minutes out of the one hour performance. The show however it worth seeing, it does get a little repetitive towards the end but the Vietnamese music is good and the puppetry is very clever. The show feels very Chinese.

After the show I walk around the old quarter looking to drink some Bia Hoi on the side of the street. Eventually I come across a place and sit down on the pre-school sized seats with a glass of freshly brewed Bia Hoi people watching from my vantage point sat on the pavement. I’m the only westerner sat there but I get talking to a Vietnamese English teacher and as the night progresses I’m joined by more and more foreigners. With beer prices this low (10 pence a glass), the beer is flowing. A couple of Japanese guys join me and my new Vietnamese buddy. At the end of the night I’ve had 6 beers and some bar snacks and paid 70 pence. I think I’ll be back here tomorrow night!!

Day 407: Tuesday 11th August - Uncle Ho

I get up early as I’m off to pay my respects to Ho Chi Minh (known affectionately to the Vietnamese as Uncle Ho). Despite his requests to be cremated and his ashes spread throughout Vietnam to signify the unity of the country; after his death in 1969 a huge mausoleum was erected on the location of his independence speech in the centre of Hanoi. His mausoleum is only open between 7:30am and 10:30am, 5 days a week and I’ve been warned to get there early to avoid the queues. Arriving at 8am, I manage to do just this as I am shown around his mausoleum in a regimented fashion. You have to walk two by two, start walking when instructed, stop walking when instructed and you are hurried along if you linger. You get no more than a minute to see Ho Chi Minh’s wax-like preserved body. As a non-Vietnamese it is just another body to me but to the Vietnamese he is the father of the nation and a demi-God.

From the Mausoleum I walk across to the Ho Chi Minh museum which is full of exhibits on his life and the battle he led for Vietnam to get its independence from France. I don’t think I’ve been in any country around the world where one individual has been so significant in its country’s history. Uncle Ho is the father of Vietnam, the founder of the modern-day country, a unifying force, very much a man of the people and his ideas live on 40 years after his death through a manuscript he wrote detailing his ideas for Vietnam, how he wanted the country to evolve, which he wrote in the immediate years before his death. The museum exhibits aren’t that easy to follow, a bit abstract and you have to piece together his life, but nevertheless it is an interesting visit.

I pop by the Temple of Literature on the way back to the hostel which is just another temple. But having thought I’d be out for a large portion of the day, I’m back in the hostel by noon. Later in the afternoon I wander around the streets of the old quarter. I can’t find anything I want and although the tree-lined streets are a reminder of the French influence in this part of the city, it is still very much Southeast Asia. Motorbikes are strewn across the pavements which mean you have to walk on the busy roads with vehicles flying just past you, and all in all it isn’t the nicest experience walking around the old quarter.

In the evening I meet up with Carly who arrived in Hanoi yesterday. We talk about our respective experiences of Vietnam over dinner since we parted ways in the Mekong Delta. She has had a much more positive experience of the Vietnamese which is good to hear. Matt - her travelling partner - has gone home, he’d had enough and Carly explains that she’s returning to Australia next week also. I got a message from Mike and Trudi telling me after another bad experience in India, coming on the back of the bag snatching incident in Siem Reap, that they too have decided to go home. With all these friends of mine returning home earlier than planned you naturally start to question what you are doing yourself. Particularly since I haven’t really enjoyed the last week or so in Vietnam, in the main because of the Vietnamese and not being too well. I conclude that this is more the case of needing to get to another country than the wider problem of travel fatigue, and I’m excited about China, the next part of my trip so I’m definitely continuing.

Carly and I finish the evening going between Bia Hoi establishments. As one bar runs dry we move to the next. It’s a great place to people watch and get an insight into Vietnamese culture but above all it’s a cheap night out. Another session on the beer for less than a pound!

Day 408: Wednesday 12th August - Will my Chinese Visa be ready?

My morning is spent in eager anticipation hoping my Chinese visa will be ready. As I’ve explained before, I’m more than ready to move on from Vietnam and I’m really hoping that my visa will arrive this afternoon so I can get the overnight train later this evening. Hanoi hasn’t done it for me, I’m much more a fan of the more dynamic, more energetic Saigon. I’m not quite prepared for the moment of reckoning though. The visa won’t be ready today, or tomorrow and because of a two day Chinese holiday it will not now be ready until Saturday. This is a blow and I need to think about the options I have.

My options really boil down to two alternatives. Firstly, I can hang about in Hanoi for another three days. I’ve seen everything I want to see however and it would be just hanging around relaxing. Alternatively, I could go to Sapa and spend a couple of days up there in a relaxing mountainous environment away from the hustle and bustle of the city. The second is preferable but it would involve having to come back to Hanoi just to go back to the Chinese border again as Sapa is only an hour from the border. I speak to the travel agent who is really helpful and he gives me a better alternative. This is to go to Sapa for three days, get my visa mailed up to me and although I would have to pay $10 for this it is cheaper and infinitely better than the thought of having to return to Hanoi.

I mention what I did with regards to my visa to a few people back in the hostel when they ask if I picked it up today. They think I’ve been very trusting but to me there are many occasions when you are travelling when you have to make leaps of faith and trust people. To me, getting my passport mailed to me at Lao Cai on the border is no different to picking it up from the travel agent. It’s a different location which is involved, and I guess another complication to the process but I’ve already put my faith in the agent when I surrended my passport to the agency days ago. Being from my background career wise I’m used to making very rational decisions but during my time travelling and in Southeast Asia in particular I have learnt that rational decisions are only so useful and from time to time you have to use your intuition and make a judgement on a situation. I think this will bode well for me when I eventually return to normality in the UK.

I wander the streets of the old quarter in the afternoon trying to find a Mandarin phrasebook, a Japanese guide and find a memory card for my camera. I find copies of the first two but decide not to purchase them and make a similar call on the memory cards which are expensive. I’m starting to get a bit concerned about my lack of purchase of the first of these items as I need to pick up some Mandarin quick as I don’t know a single word at this stage and I have three days left before China. I hope I can pick one up in Sapa or I will be facing the ultimate travelling challenge underprepared. I do manage to get some Chinese currency though. A couple of Japanese guys have just come from there and have a stack of it left over so I do a currency exchange with them. It feels a bit wierd doing a currency swap involving millions - I give them 3.6 million Dong for 1400 Yuan which works well for us both as we both get a fair rate without any money exchangers getting a cut.

I manage to get myself in a total flap on my way to get the train. I could swear that the travel agent told me the overnight train left for Lao Cai at 9:50pm and that I had to be there 40 minutes beforehand but when I get the ticket out of my wallet it says 8:15pm and it is now only half an hour before that. I quickly grab my bag, jump on a motorbike and rush to the station. When I arrive there I realise that I’ve picked the wrong ticket out of my wallet and I am now two hours early for my train! My cabin in the train is a soft sleeper. There are only four beds and although the bed is hard, thankfully there are no kids on this train journey and I have my most comfortable train ride yet in Vietnam arriving in Lao Cai early the following morning.

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