Capital City or Bust

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I arrived in the heart of Hanoi's vibrant Old Quarter bright and early, fresh (or maybe not so fresh) off the night bus from Hue. My time in Hanoi has been a little scattered, what with arriving in and departing from the city several times, but for the sake of continuity I'm going to bend space and time just a little bit and put everything down here.

The pace here in Hanoi is hectic just like in Saigon, but the feel is slightly different. While Saigon is filled with 8 lane round abouts that are an adventure in and of themselves, the streets here are much narrower, although just as congested. The old quarter is lined with shops and cafes, and some of the areas seem to be organized into little districts. You can walk down a block here and pass 20 shops in a row selling herbal medicine, then cross the street and walk by another 20 shops selling nothing but packing tape. By this point I've spent a fair bit of time here , on and off, and have started to establish a few favourites in terms of restaurants and cafes. Top on the list is a little place called Cha Ca La Vuong, which claims to be the oldest restaurant in Vietnam. Entering downstairs the place looks fairly sedate and nearly empty most of the time, but if you climb the stairs up a level (to where the air conditioning is) the place is packed with a great mix of locals and tourists. There is only one item on the menu, which is fried fish (Cha Ca) served to your table in a sizzling pan atop a miniature clay cooker filled with red hot coals. The fish is mixed with green onions, dill and what is probably an extremely unhealthy portion of oil. Mix this in your bowl with a few noodles, peanuts, fresh basil, cilantro and some fish sauce with chilis and it is to die for.

The major restaurant/tourist distict is centred around Hoan Kiem Lake, which is located in the heart of the old quater. The lake is surrounded by a great walking path where you can stroll around and enjoy the view or where you can sit down and enjoy a tasty ice cream made from young rice, ginger, green tea or any of the usual suspects. This is also a place where Vietnamese students like to hang out and approach westerners in order to practice their english (... this will come back in a minute).

One of the other key attractions by the lake is the water puppet theatre, which is a traditional Vietnamese artform. Having originated with workers entertaining children in the rice paddies, it has been adapted to a stage filled waist high with water. The puppeteers hide behind a screen while the controls for the puppets are concealed beneath the surface of the water. Although I'm not quite sure of what the details are (the puppets only speak Vietnamese), the story unfolds to the music of a live ensemble and seems to tell of everyday rural life in Vietnam as well as delving into some traditional folk tales. Whatever was going on the skill involved was really quite impressive and the puppets were beautifully hand carved.

Getting out of the old quarter I've found some time to visit a few museums. These included the Museum of Ethnology, which documented all of the ethnic minority groups found regionally throughout the country, and the Hoa Lo Prison Museum, dubbed the "Hanoi Hilton" by American POW's. The most interesting of all however, was probably the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where you can briefly visit Ho Chi Minh's body, which was enbalmed (against his wishes) in a style similar to Lenin and Mao. Ho Chi Minh (that's Uncle Ho to you) is very popular here, and most people I've talked to agree that without him modern Vietnam would not exist today. How much of this opinion is a result of indoctrinationI have yet to figure out, but the mausoleum remains the number one attraction in the country and as a result is very very busy. When you first arrive, it is hard to miss the line-up... but it is even harder to find the end of it! he whole process takes about an hour, but at least the line moves quickly. Most of the time in line is spent going through an elaborate security system that sees you checking your bag at one location, your camera at another and then passing through a metal detector or two and putting your cell phone in a special bag. Uncle Ho himself looks pale and eerily peaceful, but otherwise more or less the way his does on the country's currency (which he was

Getting back to Hoan Kiem Lake and the what I alluded to in my Halong Bay entry, I will preface this story by saying it make my snake eating experience from the Mekong Delta seem like a day at playschool...

Having met a nice German girl on the night bus from Hue we decided to grab a drink and dinner in the restaurant district later that night. Before choosing a resturant, we took a seat by the lake to enjoy the view and grab a little rest. Shortly afterwards we were approached by a young and energetic Vietnamese student (named Hum... not sure of the spelling) who must have been a few years younger than myself. He asked nicely if he could join us and we obliged, always being open to meeting new people and happy to help with a few english lesson. Soon after, I came up that he had spent some time in Austria and we discovered that he had actually spoke fluent German. He was as happy as a kid in a candy store to have found someone to speak German with and I spent the next little while sitting back not really understanding much of what was being said. Eventually he insisted that he take us to a nearby coffee shop so we could try a local specialty, a hot drink made from egg yolk and green beans. It turned out to actually be pretty good and the place was just a tiny hole in the wall that we could never had found on our own. After our drink he wanted to find a place to get his pants mended (he had recently been the victim of a practical joke and sat on some krazy glue), but after searching with no success we suggested heading out to dinner so we could repay him for the drinks he had just bought us. He recommended a market area that was a little out of town where we could try some local specialties, so we hoped in a taxi.

With the night getting darker and the rain picking up we grew a little more apprehensive as we headed further and further out of town. Eventually we arrived on a non-descript street and where we got out of the taxi and then headed a short way down an alley way to a shop with an ominous sign depicting a large cartoon cobra. At this point, we were not exactly sure what we were doing here.... I had discussed my snake eating experience from the Mekong Delta with Hum in the taxi, but the German girl and I were still more or less under the impression that this was just a little side stop and that we would soon end up at a market full of colourful food stalls and restaurants. Entering inside this building however, things quickly became clearer. The front room was filled with jars holding King Cobras preserved in formaldehyde, but my eye was also drawn to a poster of Toronto on the wall. Communicating through Hum as an interpreter (the owner of the establishment spoke virtually no english), we figured out that the owner's brother lived in Canada and low and behold, on producing his address book he showed me a Guelph address! The night so far was full of coincidences.

Moving out back of the building we were shown a large cage which was home to maybe 6 or 8 live cobras, which the owner entered without hesitation (I might add at this point the man was also missing a finger as a result of his snake keeping lifestyle). He poked and proded the snakes with his handling stick just to rile them up and put on a bit of a show, and then skillfully wrangled one into a thick canvas bag. At this point I was standing well back from the cage but watching in fascination as it dawned on me exactly what this evening had in store for us. We headed upstairs to a small dining room (we were the only people in the place, by the way) with two tables and a photo of Vladimir Putin proudly displayed on the wall. With expert fingers (albeit, only 9 of them) the owner of the shop killed the snake by whipping its head into the cold tile floor, and then slit its belly, emptying its blood into a jar.

We sat at the table as our glasses were filled. Being the whitest and most male person in attendance I was "honoured" by being presented with the glass that contained not only a good slug of cobra blood, but also the gall bladder and still beating heart. Never one to turn down a challenge, I raised my glass in a cheers and then slid it all down in one smooth gulp (if you must ask, it tasted like blood).

The evening continued with a seeminly endless number of dishes being served. Cobra spring rolls, roasted cobra, cobra soup, fried cobra skin (not unlike potato chips), crushed cobra ribs mixed with meat and served on a rice cracker, and let's not forget the wine made from cobra penises. Dinner converstion was great, and we discovered that the photo of Putin on the wall was there because the man himself had dined in that very room when he visited Hanoi. All in all, it was a great night, even if it did begin with a little apprehention.... but then the bill arrived. A whopping $250 USD (that's 4.2 million dong)!

After a great deal of argument, carried out on our behalf mostly by Hum who was obviously the only Vietnamese speaker among us, we pooled our money and still came up short. Long story short (and I know by this point is has been a very long story), we stopped by the local ATM and took out the additional money we needed. Of course, the thought of leaving what we had and running out on the bill crossed all of our minds, but I'm not sure that a man who keeps poisonous snake is the kind of guy you want to mess around with. Moral of the story is, always much something is before you buy it. We kind of got swept up in the moment and neglected this cardinal rule, which ended up costing us in the end. I still wonder if we got scammed from the beginning.... my brain tells me yes, but my heart says that we just got ourselves into something without appreciating the real cost first. The Russian President did dine at this place, after all (or was that a forged signature?) and the whole practice of eating cobra is not exactly on the up and up so it was boud to be pricey, we just didn't appreciate how pricey. If we were had, then I must say that Hum deserves an Oscar for his work of stringing us along all night. In the end it's only money, albeit a small fortune here in Vietnam, but at least I got a story out of it that I will never forget.

Life goes on.

It's with mixed emotions that I move on to the next portion of my trip. The two classmates I will be travelling with, Jessica and Laetitia, arrived last night, and while it's great to see them I miss my independence already. I'm excited about our Global Vets work which will start tomorrow when we meet with our contact at the National Institute for Animal Husbandry here in Hanoi, but I have rambled on long enough here so I will leave that for another day.

Thanks for sticking this one out to the end.

Mike

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Photos

A Family Affair
Always can fit one more

View From Above
From the balcony of the Kangaroo Hotel, where there is absolutely no Aussie kitsch, but the staff is very friendly and helpful

Water Puppet Theatre
Sort of like Muppet Water Capades with a Vietnamese twist

Hoan Kiem Lake II
One of many Vietnamese students looking to practice their English

The Old Quarter
The bamboo ladder district

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
Security that instills confidence

Drink of Champions
Nothing quite like the fresh blood of a snake that could kill you with a single bite. I feel more virile already

Comments

[Laurel]

grrrrrrrross...
well mike, that description of your dinner was far better and more disgusting than the text you sent me... i can't believe you actually drank that. good work tough guy.