Advertisement
Published: November 15th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Hanoi
Hoan Kiem Lake in the centre We got picked up from our hotel and walked to another hotel to catch our bus across the border to Hanoi - all part of the service as we'd splashed out a bit on a more expensive bus ticket as we didn't want any mess ups at the border. Didn't look like your usual bus stop, but sure enough a steady stream of westerners arrived, and before long the bus. Seamless journey, including a mental stint on a very lively train with very noisy Chinese, two buses, overnight in Guilin and a bit of a pause at the chaotic Vietnam entrance post, with a joker of a border guard pulling the old 'are-you-sure-that's-you-in-the-passport-photo' and a small fee for 'health check' - infra-red cameras check your temperature to see if you are swiney!
Arrived at the pandemonium which is Hanoi - hit straight away by a river of mopeds flowing down every street. Crossing the street was the first test but before long we were pro's. Slowly edging out in to the road you become one with the mopeds, slowly walking as in a trance and they soon flow around you as water parts and flows around a boulder in the
Hanoi
Crossing the roads is hazardous! river - all very zen!! I almost hear my dear brothers shouting 'FISH' at me!
We soon loved Hanoi - spent three days there just wandering the streets, which were alive with mostly friendly people and a lively bubble (against the back drop of mopeds), selling anything and everything, excercising in the central park around the lake. The old town was a beautiful if rundown hotch potch of old colonial style buildings amongst newer style concrete buildings, often in a series of pastel shades, with verandas overflowing with overgrown pot plants. Did little strict sight seeing (possibly aided by hangovers on the day we did intend to see a few of the 'sites') but just wandering through the Old Quarter streets was great. Each street or series of streets specialises in a certain product - for example the silk area; wood crafts; bright shops selling paper lanterns, fake money (for burning), and decorations for celebrations; metalware, tools and security (very handy as we needed a replacement padlock for Rach's bag - lo and behold we turned a corner to shops awash with....padlocks!); there is even apparently a sweet potato area which, alas, we did not find. Some of the
Hanoi
On the veranda above the night time traffic streets were taken up by street markets with narrow walways either side which you could barely walk through side by side, selling a huge aray of foods - spices and herb stalls, veg stalls, the most hygenic of meat stalls (!), and fish stalls with aerated tanks full of fish, eels and crabs, crabs trussed up with rope, worms (looked like ragworms), sacks of toads - all alive and well (for now - the toads having their heads hacked off did look a bit worse for ware).
We managed some of the sites within the Old Quarter, including Hoa Lo Prison, first set up by the French for those pesky locals, later to hold captured American pilots who named it the Hanoi Hilton - lots of photos showing how well treated they were with volleyball, gardening, Christmas dinner - sure it wasn't like that in all prisons. Also made it to a Saturday mass at the Catholic Cathedral - unfortunately we got the time wrong, but still caught half an hour - it was full with people even sitting on stools outside. Lots of hymns in Vietnamese which was very beautiful, made more so by the up-and-down intonation of
Hanoi markets
Spice and tea shop the Vietnamese language (although to understand it was somewhat beyond our language abilities).
We also had our first medical experience which was very exciting! Rach had had a very painful throat when swallowing for a few days which was ruining her excitment at finally arriving somewhere with nice bread (gotta love those French colonialists for some things!). So we went along to the International SOS clinic where the doctor failed to not worry us too much - starting off with the possibility of a need for invasive tests in Bankok or even Ireland....with a mention that there was also a throat specialist in the French clinic in Hanoi who could help....and then after a swift phone call to him the diagnosis that it was possibly a reaction to the malarial drugs - crises avoided, drugs prescribed and before long the throat had cleared up. Did give us confodence in our insurance company though who were pretty efficient and emaild us to see how everything was (Nomads - quite expensive but worth it I think).
But the wierdest thing after China was the sheer number of tourists - or whities as we had come to affectionately call them (and
Hanoi Markets
Fish, eels and a sack of lively toads us!) in china as there were so few....but here the streets were awash with us. And accordingly everything is much more tourist orientated with touts, hawkers, hotels, happy hours, western menus, etc. etc. everywhere. It seemed difficult to do things of your own back and we ended up booking things through tour operators even when not intended! This included our journey to Ha Long Bay which didn't go exactly according to plan to begin with....
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0512s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb