Hanoi - So Many *Beep*ing horns...

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As we got on our Lao airlines flight to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, I was thinking how much I was looking forward to getting to another capital city. There’s something reassuring about a big city, easy to get around, plenty to do, lots of places to eat… However, as with Bangkok, I was soon struck with the downsides of these towns in Asia. The smells, the congestion and, oh god, the traffic.

Having successfully completed our flight, which again left and arrived early, we went through immigration and went to collect our bags. I got Helen’s bag fine, but when I pulled mine off I found a strange tub full of white powder stuffed in the top. Now I’m sure that the tub was washing powder or something perfectly innocent that had just fallen out of someone else’s bag, but to be safe I quietly took it out, left it on the floor and quickly walked away.

Next, we left the airport, waded through the crowds of people trying to get us to take a taxi and got on the airport bus. Or so we thought we did. It soon turned out that the bus we’d got on wasn’t the official airport bus, but rather a private one. It cost the same amount ($2 each for a 45 minute drive), but didn’t drop us off near the hostel we had booked, which meant a 45 minute walk through the city. In retrospect we probably should have just got a taxi, as the walk wasn’t made any easier by the large amounts of luggage we were carrying and the fact we didn’t really know where we were going. Still, with help from the locals we successfully navigated our way there and I spent the evening watching Premiership football on the TV in the room (yeah!).

As our time in Hanoi was mostly spent visiting various things around the city, I’ll summarise the things we visited in chronological order:

The Hao Lo prison museum:
The first place we visited was the prison (nicknamed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ during the Vietnam war and the place where John McCain was tortured). We expected this to be very interesting and somewhere to start to learn a little more about the Vietnam War. However, this wasn’t really what we got. The majority of the exhibits were about the Vietnamese revolution against the French, something I know very little about, and to be honest it was all a little one sided for my liking. Everything in the museum sung the praises of the Vietnamese and everything made the enemy of them look as bad as possible (though I have no doubts that the French weren’t too nice). The small section that was on the Americans, who were kept there during the war, had absolutely nothing about torture. All it had was plenty of pictures and articles showing how well the Americans were treated - there were pictures of them playing sports, eating a massive Christmas dinner, laughing and generally enjoying themselves. There was even a letter one had written saying how much he was enjoying it and how the only bad thing was that he couldn’t see his family. Now call me a cynic but I doubt that the reason John McCain can’t lift his hands above his head is because he was tickled too much or because he ate too much Christmas dinner… All in all, I guess it was worth seeing but it seemed a shame to go halfway round the world when there’s a much better prison museum in Nottingham.

The Temple Of Literature:
Ranked number one on ‘trip advisor’! This place must be good we thought to ourselves! Nope. It was kinda boring. We walked for at least 30 minutes (which is 30 minutes of very stressful walking, rather than simple leisurely walking) to get here and I can’t work out what the fuss is about. The temple is a pretty small section of old buildings (the first national university) used when they taught a very small selection of the best students in various arts. And that’s about it. The setting was much nicer than most of Hanoi, but you could still hear the traffic, which ruined the peaceful aura the place is probably designed to have. There was one interesting thing that we learnt though. When the university was first set up it was the king that set the exam questions and you had to give your responses to him - in person. Something I’m glad they didn’t do at Keele. Though, on the other hand, the Queen would probably know more about computer science than a few of my ex-computer science lecturers… I’m sure that if we’d have hired a guide it would have been more interesting, but without one there just wasn’t that much to see.

Water Puppet Theatre:
We read a few reviews of this that weren’t very positive, though conversely (when compared to the Temple of Literature) it was actually pretty good! Our tickets for the show only cost £2 each and when we arrived we were sat in fairly comfy seats near the stage. The production itself is pretty simple; there’s a stage with water in at the front, a nice looking backdrop and a traditional band playing music. You then watch as characters (who are similar to those in thunderbirds - but no spaceships), perform a series of very small, unrelated scenes. The scenes range from dragons swimming around on fire to just some kid wobbling about and saying a load of stuff in Vietnamese. To those of you that want to know exactly how ‘water puppetry’ works, basically there are just some people who stand behind the backdrop and make the puppets dance around by using long bits of wood (that you can’t see as they are concealed by the water). If, on the other hand, you don’t want the magic of water puppetry to be ruined, then I can tell you that the whole thing is definitely created using some kind of magic.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum:
Now this was something a little different. The ‘Ho Chi Minh’ mausoleum is a massive area in Hanoi that is dedicated to Ho Chi Minh, a bloke who’s legendary in Vietnam, mostly for defeating the French. Before you could enter the site you had to go through security and I had to put my camera and laptop in a little bag that was then taken to a separate area. Once we’d done that we entered a queue surrounded by guards and, after a little bit of waiting, we went in to see the man himself. It was all pretty strange, seeing him just lying there as you slowly walked round in silence, very conscious of the number of armed guards that were present. Still, he looked pretty good for someone that’d been dead for a while (though this is apparently due to him taking a yearly trip to Russia for a bit of touching up). We also walked round the rest of the site, which was very nice and well looked after. A quick little fact about him is that he actually put in his will that he wanted to be cremated. Still, they decided to do something similar - build a huge monument and parade people around his dead body.

Military History Museum
Unfortunately this wasn’t fantastic, though mainly due to most things not being in English and us not having a great deal of knowledge about Vietnamese history. It also suffered from the same, very biased descriptions on all of the exhibits that the prison had done. There were some interesting captured American vehicles outside, as well as the wreckage of an American plane that had been shot down.

General Walking Around:
We didn’t see too much else that’s worth mentioning, though I think the experience of simply walking around Hanoi deserves a few words… Bangkok was ridiculously busy, but the sound of the traffic was nothing like Hanoi. Below I’ve listed some the reasons that, as a driver in Hanoi, you should beep your horn:

1. When warning others of danger
2. When turning a blind corner
3. When overtaking
4. To let a tourist know that you have space in your taxi
5. To say hello to a friend
6. When moving left or right, even slightly
7. If you are changing speed
8. To warn someone that you will soon hoot your horn
9. To warn people that you’re going to go the wrong direction down a one-way road (seen a few times)
10. To warn tourists that you’re going to be driving down on the pavement (well, driving on the road gets boring after a while)
11. When changing the radio station
12. To try and make a tourist jump
13. To just make noise
14. If the road is totally empty, you a driving completely straight and there’s absolutely no reason to hoot your horn (seen too many times!!)
15. Just because everyone else is doing it

Yes, that’s right, at times the traffic in Hanoi slightly irritated me… It’d have been fine if there was room on the pavements to walk, but there wasn’t because virtually every single inch of pavement was taken up with parked motorbikes, and the bits that weren’t were taken up with motorbikes driving straight at you.

Anyway, that was Hanoi, probably the least favourite place we’ve visited so far, yet strangely interesting to spend time in. Having read in our guide book that it’s “probably one of the most scenic cities in Vietnam” we were worried…However, over the next few days this turned out to not be the case and we went to some great places - which Helen will update you on soon.

P.S. For those of you that are feeling the credit crunch at the moment and are thinking “lucky them, while I have no money, all they are doing is sitting around in the sun and enjoying themselves”. Let me assure you that the credit crunch is affecting us as well. A couple of examples:

- Apparently, 3 months ago we could get 32,000 Vietnamese dong for £1, that’s already fallen to 24,000.
- We took a tour that would have cost us $70 each a year and a half ago. Due to increase in cost of fuel etc, it now costs $118. When you then factor in the fact that you could get about $2 to £1 a year and a half ago. It means we are now paying £80 for a tour that used to cost £35…

Not really related to Hanoi, but I figured it might make the few of you who are feeling the pinch feel a bit better!

All the best,

David and Helen.


P.P.S. If anyone from Vietnam immigration is reading this then all negative comments in this are not my own, they are of my twin brother, Mavid Splodge.

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Comments

[Nick Hamblin]

How many dong?
'32,000 Vietnamese dong for £1'? I bet that's much better value than in Bangkok! My apologies - but I found it funny. What're you guys planning on doing for Christmas? Most of the places you're visiting are predominantly Buddhist aren't they? Lights on the palm tree? I'll post pics of my bungalow soon enough - I've got the 'before' pics and I'm into the during stage now, so I might wait until I've at least got a lick of paint on the walls. I've got my sofas set for delivery tomorrow (hopefully), which should go some way to making it seem more 'homey' - at the moment it just seems like an empty building. My tonsilitis is gone thankfully - though that was secondary to glandular fever, which actually sent me to hospital for a weekend - which wasn't ideal preparation for my exams, but the only other option was pushing them back 6 months, at which point I'll have three others! I think I did ok in the end: one's a sure thing, the other though is touch and go... will find out in february... Only other news I can think of is my braces are now off! If you'd like I could post a picture of my now sparkling smile? Or are you thinking that's part of the reason you went away? Sounds like you're both doing well - thanks for the perk of telling us you're broke :). Nick