Advertisement
Published: April 20th 2010
Edit Blog Post
The Old French Quarter
Outside the Sofitel Metropole Hotel....it's very French We slept surprisingly well on the overnight train to Hanoi, arriving around 5am in the morning. A much better investment than the awful overnight buses.
We stumbled out of the train groggily and went over to the taxis. The guest house we'd booked offered to pay our taxi fare to the hotel on the proviso that we took a 'Malinh' taxi. However all we encountered from the massed ranks of immobile, uniformed Malinh metered taxi drivers was dumb indifference. Blank looks when we told them the name of the hotel and only mutterings “don't know” when we pointed to the spot on the map. Meanwhile we were harassed by plain clothes drivers/ brokers.... 80,000 dong... 70... eventually 60,000. To cut a long, not very exciting story short, we eventually got the hotel receptionist on the phone and got a Malinh taxi driver. But when it arrived at the hotel the receptionist paid 60,000 dong instead of the much lower figure on the meter. So there you go... economic disincentives in action. The salaried taxi drivers weren't interested in taking us because the metered fare wasn't enough for them to care whether they moved or not. Whereas the locals know they
At Hoan Kiem Lake at Night
At night it doesn't look so green and is very scenic need an extra bit under the table to make things happen!
Our guest house was located in the old quarter, centred around a lake which is allegedly host to giant turtles. Personally though I'd be surprised if anything lived in the lake, which is covered completely in green algae-slime. The weather was heavily overcast and occasionally rainy the entire time we were in Hanoi, but overall not too hot. We wandered around exploring the old quarter area of the city, though spent half the time looking for things from the map that no longer seemed to exist.
Alex and I watched a documentary/ movie (the Fog of War) about Robert McNamara, the US secretary of defense for the first part of the Vietnam war. It was fascinating, giving his reflections on the war (and other topics) and the mistakes and thought processes involved. It was especially interesting that McNamara said the US never understood the Vietnamese or what they wanted, only viewing them as an extension of Soviet and Chinese communism and the Cold War. He was outraged when in the 90s he met with an old Vietnamese general who told him the US were imperialists who wanted
Easter Sunday
After mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral to enslave the Vietnamese like the French did. The war and subsequent formation of a self-governing Vietnam is still ever-present in the national psyche here, with reminders everywhere. From tourism of war-related sites to the near-deification of Ho Chi Minh, to the propaganda posters and the war cripples. There is a love/ hate relationship with American tourists especially.
The following day was Easter Sunday. Miraculously the exceedingly clever Easter bunny visited overnight bearing Lindt chocolate eggs, a rabbit and a chocolate block for Lukas. The Easter Bunny allegedly paid through the nose for these imported treats! Sadly though our luck didn't extend to hot cross buns, which were not to be found anywhere. Our Austrian friends Birgit and Lukas met us in the morning at an old cathedral (St. Josephs) where we enjoyed a mass in French. Although this was completely incomprehensible, the cathedral was grand and beautiful. We were surprised it had been left standing after the French were kicked out, but it's great that it was. Plus there were plenty of great cafes nearby. More coffee and cake!
By this stage we knew that unfortunately we would not make it to Sapa in the hills (where
At the Museum of Ethnology
Birgit and Alex checking out a bamboo stilt house you can see ethnic minority villages etc.) as our visas were running out. But we did visit the Museum of Ethnology which was fantastic. Brilliantly set up with Vietnamese, French and English signs and with lots of info about the less recent history of Vietnam and its various minority groups. Alex, Birgit and I were interested, while Phoebe and Lukas kept busy with some more bamboo stick fighting. The best part of the museum was a large outdoor area where minority groups had been invited to come along and build their distinctive houses or meeting places. The constructions were really interesting - houses on stilts, huge thatch domes, longhouses, iron-casting, water-powered milling systems and bamboo bamboo bamboo absolutely everywhere.
Although we couldn't get to Sapa to see some real villages ourselves, we did have the idea though that we might go to Mai Chau - a typical country area nearby populated mostly by a minority Thai group. Plan for the next week then is to go to Halong bay for three days, then cram in an overnight stay in Mai Chau before heading up to brave the border crossing into China. It will be busy!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0466s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb