Easy rider

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Hanoi, Vietnam - 1-5 December

I am stood in front of a fishmonger. She is wearing white overalls, has her hair wrapped up away from her face and she is smiling broadly as she points me out the different types of fish laid on ice in the cooler in front of her. This would not be that strange in of itself but we are in the departure lounge of the domestic airport terminal in Ho Chi Minh City. As we then walked through to the terminal and found Pringles under the section 'Vietnamese Traditional Snacks,' I began to think that logic was not so much the order of the day.

Logic issues aside, the Viatnamese are some of the noisiest people I have ever encountered. They don't talk, they just shout, even when they are standing right next to each other. Even, indeed, when they are on board a plane. It's strange when you think of the stereotype of Asian people being tranquil and subservient. This lot were anything but and when we landed just under two hours later in Hanoi, north Vietnam, it felt like we were part of a herd of noisy elephants in a stampede to get off the plane.

It was absolutely pouring with warm rain when we left the airport and it continued to hammer down as we drove into Hanoi. On the hunt for pho, we braved the downpour and walked through the streets of the Old Quarter. In one of the side roads, we found a tiny street cafe with families huddled eating under the awnings, the rain missing them by inches. C looked absolutely hilarious, all 6 foot 1 of him perched on a tiny colourful stool. As we ate our bowls of steaming hot noodle soup it felt cosy away from the rain. Afterwards, we walked all around the Hanoi, which was much quieter than Ho Chi Minh but so pretty, with the lake that divides the Old and New parts of the town.

When we woke up the next day, Hanoi seemed like a different place altogether. By night it was tranquil and pretty, calm and relaxing - in the day it was so vibrant and so extremely packed with people. It seemed to encapsulate everything I had ever read, heard or seen about Vietnam. Infinite amount of bike riders power through the streets with anything from one to six people balanced on the seats. The riders without passengers are a sight to see, carrying everything from huge clusters of balloons to six packs of beer and boxes of fruit. The population of Vietnam is around 86 million, and there are 16 million motorbikes. I reckon about 15 million of them are in Hanoi. We even saw a military soldier cycling home in full uniform with one of his fellow armymen on his back. A piggyback atop a bike? You can't make this stuff up.

Everywhere we turned, there were locals wearing conical Asian hats and street sellers with giant baskets offering us bags of fresh fruit or the local specialty, a sort of mini doughnut. The French influence was powerful, particularly in the new bit, with wide, tree-lined streets and endless old colonial buldings. The new part and the old couldn't have been much more different - the new streets were spacious and very clean and reminded me of a European city whereas the old part is so traditionally Asian with its hustle, bustle, colour and drama. It seemed as if every person we saw would have a story to tell and again, like Ho Chi Minh, there were groups of elderly men playing backgammon on the corners of the streets, as if they hadn't a care in the world. It was impossible not to relax.

The street food in Hanoi is delicious and there is no shortage of it. Yet one place really caught our eye, right round from the corner of our hotel. It consisted of a big table with absolutely everything laid out on skewers. They handed you a bowl, you pointed out whichever food you fancied and they placed it on a huge grill behind the table, manned by five or six young teens. They then placed a mini charcoal grill at our table and brought the skewers over as they were done so all your food carried on sizzling in front of you. It was so fresh and so gorgeous. We ate beef with cherries and green beans, sweet bread, chicken grilled to perfection with hot chilli sauce, giant prawns, pork with mushrooms, salmon... the options were endless. We didn't choose the more exotic options of frog or tongue... let's leave that for a bit later on in the trip, perhaps.

After dinner, we walked over into another part of the town behind the Old Quarter that we hadn't yet explored. It was around midnight by this time and we had walked for around half an hour passing just a few people. We were just saying how quiet it was when we turned the corner and stumbled across a huge night market that, it turned out, stretched on for streets ahead and was a hive of activity with sellers shouting their wares, kids running around and dogs and cats weaving their way around families who were riding on motorbikes right through the middle of the market. C dodged a little kid who was peeing right next to a stall while I tried to extricate myself from the clutches of one of the guys who was attempting to steer us into the "food court" for some late night snacks.

The next day we went to the Ho Chi Minh complex where we visited his house (gorgeous gardens, nice cars, surprisingly few rooms) and tried to visit the masoleum, only to find that it was closed in the afternoons. We had a weird, brief taster of the national adoration (enforced or otherwise) for this man when we saw the army officers fiercely guarding the masoleum and stepping towards anyone who came even the slightest bit 'too close' as reverential songs blared out of speakers in the gardens surrounding it. It felt like a huge, ongoing memorial service and was very creepy.

So that was that. A lot of bikes, a fair bit of rain and some very incongruous fishmongers later, we were off to sleep on our final night in Hanoi and ready to travel the next day to Bangkok, Thailand, where we were about to see some very strange sights...

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