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The less said about the 14 hour bus journey to Hanoi the better, all you need to know is that I got there. Needless to say that the majority of my first day in the capital was spent catching up on sleep. This was followed by trying to make sense of the ratrun of streets which make up the Old Quarter of the city and finding food.
The city centre is pleasantly based around a big lake which gives it a pretty open feel, which is in contrast to the tiny streets which spread out from there. Hanoi's streets are split up into distinct themes so you have a street where nothing is sold except for shoes, one for jewellery, one for watches, one for toys etc. This is pretty useful if you know exactly what you want as you can visit 10 shops in quick succession, compare the goods and prices then play the owners off against each other to get a good price.
However, if you are yet to come across the street which sells what you are after it's pretty impossible to get what you want. Consequently the first day or so was slightly frustrating in
terms of trying to find a good place for food or even a shop selling cold water, but a few good hours of exploration resolved this problem.
Other points of interest discovered upon exploration included a decent pub in which to watch the England v Ecuador game which even served slightly overpriced John Smiths and Strongbow alongside the local beers. We also experienced the locals' favourite ice-cream shop which is slightly unusual as I have never before witnessed people physically fighting to get ice-cream before. Every evening the street in question is lined by teenagers perched on motos double-fisting ice-creams which retails at around 10p and which I can only assume has some sort of addictive drug added to make them so desperate to get it before everyone else. Yes it was decent ice-cream, and yes it was cheap, but I am still bemused as to the reasons for the panic and desperation on the faces of those fighting to get served.
One evening we went to watch a Water Puppetry performance - this consists of wooden puppets controlled from behind a screen by one or more puppeteers, and which are made to appear to be floating on
the water in front of the screen. It is a traditional art form which has developed from bored farmers making puppets and performing on rice paddies. The first puppet to appear didn't fill me with much confidence about the rest of the performance but it was followed by two dragons with sparks flying out of their mouths which looked great. Other parts included various other mythical creatures swimming around whilst farmers and fishermen farm and fish (surprisingly). The storyline (if there is one) didn't make much sense but it was really fun to watch, and it was accompanied by traditional music.
We also visited a couple of the city's museums, before escaping the afternoon heat in a small and pretty shabby cinema where we watched a pretty shoddy film ("She's the Man" - possibly more appropriate to Thailand) whilst straining to hear the original english dialogue underneath the Vietnamese dubbing.
Hanoi tends to be used as a base for visiting the whole of the Northern part of the country, and so has hundreds of tour operators offering various trips. We decided that before the obligatory Halong Bay tour we would take a one-day trip to the Perfume Pergoda.
To get to the Perfume Pagoda takes a 2 hour bus from Hanoi, followed by a scenic 1 hour boat trip, followed by a 1 hour (and hideously sweaty) trek up a mountain...followed by the same in reverse to get home. This is a pretty long and tiring day for the sake of half an hour at the pagoda but it was worth it.
After the exhausting trek up the mountain you reach a set of steps heading downwards towards a cave which is billowing with thick mist. The sight is extremely important to Buddhists who try to visit at least once in their lifetime, and it looks suitably mysterious and spiritual. Down through the mist is what at first looks like a fairly dreary cave, but in the cave is a number of shrines which are light up to great effect through the mist (making for some great photos).
The second tour we took from Hanoi was to Halong Bay and is deserving of a blog post all to itself.
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