good morning, Vietnam

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Hanoi

We are off to a great start on our Vietnam adventure. We arrived a bit after 1am with some very sleepy kids. We all slept on the plane (about a 4 hour flight) and were fortunate enough to have a driver waiting with a "Slaven" sign as we exited the airport. It's all about planning those key details. Especially when traveling with kids. We drove to the hotel, Mercure, Hanoi and arrived at about 2am. I picked the hotel after seeing a pop-up ad for the hotel while researching Hanoi. The lure of the hotel was the fact that it's in a good location, they have a family-friendly policy (kids are free) and the room has a pull out couch so we are not all sleeping in 1 bed or 2 tiny twin beds. These are key factors when making my family travel plans.

The location is great and the hotel staff are friendly and helpful. I was irked to discover the advertised Internet was not included (likely a mis-read on my part) but I am gleefully stealing a signal from a neighboring hotel (thanks Prince Hotel!) and so am over my initial resentment of the lack of free Internet. Of course I can only get this signal if I keep my computer positioned just so and nobody stands behind me. But otherwise, I have a good thing going here.

Today we spent the morning exploring the city. We walked toward a famous lake, called Sword Lake and enjoyed chatting with some entertaining and very enthusiastic book sellers. Just like China (that may become a theme while here) we noticed many street merchants offering us their wares, goods, food, fans, books, drinks, you name it. We ended up buying a very cheap Vietnamese phrase book. Mark bargained so low the guy was about to pay us to take the book. How could we not buy it at that point? It was really cheap.

We did not bargain for our cyclo rides and later learned we paid too much. However, paying $5 for an hour tour of the city by a man pedaling us around with his physical strength did not seem like overpaying. It's all relative. We had a great time (and hired 2 bikes to take the 4 of us around). Unlike China, where the pedi-cabs are bikes pulling you in a little cart, these are contraptions where the passengers sit in front and the driver is behind pushing and steering as he pedals a bike. Better views for us, and a more exciting ride. Because we've lived in China for the last year plus, however, we were not phased by being driven around in the loud, busy streets of Hanoi. We are pretty used to crazy and loud streets.

One thing we noticed immediately was that there are way more motorbikes here than in Shanghai. In Shanghai, many people have electric bikes and that means less pollution and less noise. The other huge difference was that people in Hanoi wear helmets! So good to see that practice is enforced here. Additionally, while still requiring caution and care when crossing a road in Hanoi, if you walk slowly, you will be avoided by cars and bikes.

We grabbed lunch at a western/Vietnamese place and saw many other foreigners with kids doing the same combo dining. Mark and I enjoyed some local dishes and the kids ate pasta. We pick our battles and have long ago given up on trying to get the kids to eat local food. Just isn't gonna happen at this stage.

We returned to the hotel and about 10 minutes later we were back in the lobby meeting our guides from Hanoi Kids. This is a volunteer organization of local young adults (university students) who take visitors on tour for free. We, the guests, pay for transportation and museum entrances for ourselves and the guides. We did 2 of these tours and they were both great.

We went to the Old Quarter and walked through some markets, including the wholesale market. We had no interest in shopping, but seeing the markets was still fun. We then took a taxi to the Temple of Literature, a former University with a Confucian temple on the grounds. The architecture was very Chinese and of course the temple was familiar as we've seen many temples in China. This was a great place for us to end up on October 5 since that is my mom's birthday. The kids and I spent a few minutes holding hands and remembering Nina together in front of the alter.

We ended up going upstairs and looking out on the balcony at the roof below. We noticed people had thrown paper money and coins onto the roof and our guides said they did this for luck and to make wishes. The kids each threw some money down and at the same time I accidentally dropped my entire package of tissue. Oops. It was a paper offering of sorts. The kids were horrified by my clumsiness and Mark was thoughtful enough to document the entire episode on film.

Oh speaking of money--the currency conversion here is ridiculous! About 18,000 VND (Dong) are worth about 1 USD. There is a dual pricing system here, and many things are listed in VND and USD but it still makes my head spin everytime I have to do the math. Things have been very inexpensive for the most part, or so I think. Hopefully, I have been converting things properly as I dole out the 100,000 notes and the 500,000 ones too! Being millionaires in Vietnam doesn't get you very far.

Day 2 in Hanoi

We have eaten quite well and we've explored Hanoi extensively. Emily and I did a second tour today with Hanoi Kids. We went to the Museum of Ethnology and learned a great deal about the 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam. We saw different housing structures, learned about some of the groups and their cultural pracitces and we compared and contrasted what we saw with our US culture and what we've learned about Chinese culture.

Mark and Nathan hung out in the morning and we met up in the afternoon for lunch. Pho and more pho were on the menu. I had the chicken and Mark had the beef. We later repeated this at dinner.

The kids ate at the hotel (remember, they are not fans of Asian cuisine) and came along with us to a place recommended by my trusty guide book and by our Hanoi Kids guides. It was incredible food and we spent about $10 USD total for our pho (traditional noodle soup) and a yummy rice noodle wrapped pork and shrimp roll.

Emily and I returned to the hotel for a break and the boys headed off to visit the Prison Museum or the Hanoi Hilton--or so it was named during the war. The place sounded interesting with a twist of creepy. They had a display of the POWs clothes, posessions. Eeek. Perhaps Mark can post more details on this, but for now I will just note that the museum is quite small and the rest of the property has long been converted to private residences. Again, interesting and creepy.

We did another cyclo ride this evening. Was great to see the city at night and we went to some new areas this time. We saw the opera house among other famous, old buildings as well as where the water puppet theater was. We weren't able to get tickets (long story) but we saw plenty of replica puppets at stores around town.

My asthma has been bad. This is odd, even to me, after living in polluted China for over a year. However bad China is, my asthma has been okay there. Here, it's just awful. I am using meds around the clock and I probaly should have worn a mask. The city days are over as of tomorrow, and we are heading to Halong Bay (check out google images for a sneak preview). We are staying on a Chinese Junk boat (that's what they are called) and it is supposedly unrelated to garbage collection. We are spending 2 nights on the boat and the kids are very excited (as are the adults).

I will likely write again after the boat trip is done and we are settled into our final hotel in Hoi An (which is near Da Nang). We fly there on Friday evening for the weekend and our last few days in Vietnam.

There are many more stories and observations I want to share, but I'm going to publish this as a start. I will post pictures later too. Internet connection is freakishly slow and thus picture upload will happen later.

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Photos

the tall house
built high so hunters could see it from the forest

soooo big
the statue represented the average height of a vietnamese person during some point in time (I didn't take notes)

Comments

[Linda]

Great blog!
Love hearing about the former Hanoi Hilton...plus how Hanoi compares with Shanghai. Look forward to more details about Vietnam. Enjoy your holiday!