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Published: October 22nd 2010
Flying from Japan to Hanoi meant we had to go via Bangkok and we had a 12 hour stop in Thailand and so luckily we booked an airport hotel to save us hanging around in the middle of the night but unluckily for us it was not at the airport we had just landed at but one which was over an hour away- it was the domestic airport. We booked a new hotel and learnt a lesson about checking how many airports a city has. The following day was Jacks birthday and she woke up to find out that her mobile phone didn’t work in south East Asia. That day we had breakfast in Thailand and dinner in Vietnam. We had decided to book a posh hotel as it was Jacks birthday and we also knew we would be tired from our whistle stop tour of Japan. In fact the posh 4 star hotel cost the same for one night in Vietnam as the hostel did in Japan.
Wow! It's hot, humid and really hectic here in Hanoi Vietnam. Hanoi is famous for being busy and chaotic but we had arrived in the middle of a national celebration of the
1000 years of the existence of the city which used to be called Thang Long from 1010 to 2010 and so it was not just busy but bursting at the seams. The main celebrations were lasting 10 days and culminating in a huge firework show on the 10/10/10 this also was the anniversary of when the Americans withdrew from Vietnam. Lake Hoan Kiem is the centre of the old quarter of the city and a focal point for the celebrations and everyday a different cultural event would take place around the lakeside. 500,000 Vietnamese people were expected every day during these celebrations and this only made Hanoi crazier than ever.
We have never seen so many mopeds and scooters in all our life as we have on the streets of Hanoi. When you cross the street here you feel like you are taking your life in your own hands but it looks far more frightening than it really is. The key to a successful road crossing is to keep moving and to never stop, hesitate or run otherwise you’ll be a goner. Walk slowly and steadily but always keep moving. There are no real rules to driving here in
Vietnam except to wear a helmet and other than that anything goes and I mean anything. Here is a list of things we have seen on the back of a moped:
A basket of live chickens, double glazed windows, 22 crates of beer, 4 grown men, one40 inch flat screen TV, one upside down live pig, kitchen sink, cement mixer, furniture, 6ft poles, chairs, bouquets of flowers and so on.
On the final day of celebrations hoards of people swarmed down the middle of the roads and taxi’s became impossible to catch. As our hotel was outside of the old quarter we couldn’t get a taxi for love nor money. We thought this was probably a good think in the end because even if we had got a taxi in we don’t think we would have got one back and the walk would have been too long. The crowds were also a little daunting and pick pockets were out in force too. Other people who headed into the old quarter said all of the restaurants were closed. The fireworks were cancelled that night as previous fireworks in the week had been dangerous due to high numbers of spectators and rumour
has it that people were injured so all in all we were glad we stayed in our hotel.
Hanoi’s main area is the old quarter which is a maze of old streets that originated in the 13th century. Each street specialises in a particular trade so far example each street begins with the “Hang” and then the word for their trade. There were silver, bamboo, silk, cotton, fish, fans and many more different streets. This is an easy area to stroll around as a tourist but easy to get lost. After a few days of relaxing outside of this crazy area we moved hotels to place ourselves in the centre of this hectic old quarter. We booked ourselves onto a 2 day 1 night tour in Halong Bay. Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is a bay in the Gulf of Tonkin with 3000 limestone islands dotted throughout the turquoise sea. The bay is full to the brim of traditional Vietnamese fishing boats known as junks. We were on a small tour with just 12 people, mostly Australians. We swam off a beach on a small island, canoed through a cave into an isolated lagoon and
jumped and swam form the boats’ edge then dried off on top of the deck. We ate fantastic sea food and enjoyed beautiful evening views and good company.
We also booked ourselves onto a half day cooking course with a company called Hidden Hanoi. We were the only two on the course that day and so cooked a banquet of delicious food. Before this though we went to the local market to buy the food and it was pretty grimy. Meat and fish were being sold by women with bloody fingers and clothes. The meat was chopped on dirty bloody wooden chopping boards but our cooking school guide told us that the Vietnamese will not eat anything unless it’s fresh and that they wouldn’t buy meat if it has been in the fridge. They like to see it cut from the animal. As this market was a local food market it sold all sorts including dog. We have never seen roasted dog before. (Stop reading now if you are an animal lover and wish to avoid further description.) There were two whole, rather large, dogs stacked on top of each other and roasted. The skin was glazed like a
Peking duck or the crackling on pork. Teeth, eyes and claws were all present. It is unlucky to eat dog at the beginning or end of the lunar month and it should only be eaten during the middle of the lunar month. I asked if they were breeding dogs to eat and she told me that they just took them from the countryside. Dog is very cheap and the only meat some people can afford to buy and so survival comes before anything else for people who are poor and starving. It feels wrong to judge them for eating this because luckily we have never been in the same position as them. We had chosen the street food menu which that we were cooking spring rolls, BBQ Pork and Vietnamese soup/dipping sauce. Afterwards we sat down and ate it all and we must say the shrimp, pork and vegetable fried spring rolls dipped in chilli sauce were fantastic. We have all the recipes and so will be trying them at home. The spring rolls are a speciality in Vietnam and we have eaten many since.
Having spent a day organising our route and plans for travel in Vietnam we
felt quite organised. We needed to buy train tickets in segments to travel south through the country stopping off at major towns and cities so we got a taxi to the train station to buy tickets from Hanoi to Hue (pronounced Hway). The hotel bellboy asked the taxi driver if he would wait for us whilst we bought the ticket but he wouldn’t. We didn’t think twice about this until when we got out of the taxi at the station the driver told us to be careful. The station was particularly grim and it appeared to have its’ fair share of unsavoury characters. We began to purchase the tickets and asked ,as the guide book suggested, if the train was the SE1 train which was more modern and had sort sleepers and air con, the lady said yes it was but that there were no soft sleepers but only hard sleepers available for the 7pm train but the 11pm train had soft sleepers free. We agreed to buy these an checked that this was also air con etc she said yes but that it was the SE3 which we knew to be as good as SE1. We became slightly alarmed
when the lady serving us began to laugh out loud as she gave us our tickets. We asked her what was so funny but she just laughed. That didn’t instil much confidence in us. Well the train only cost $12 and took 14 hrs so we just thought we could grin and bare it. As the days passed however we began to hear many different stories about train travel in Vietnam some of which we had heard and others were new. Vietnam is famous for its scams and the train is a particular hotspot for this. People wearing what look like some kind of uniform try to take your ticket and then give you a different lower class one. Once in your cabin you are advised not to leave it again or open the door for anybody and to near leave your bags alone. There was also a rumour that the train lines were flooded further down the route. When we heard one couple talking about their guide saying that they recommended people be put on the train and into a cabin by a guide and not to leave it until a guide takes them back off of the train
at the other end. All of this and our late night departure time was making us regret ever booking the train. Then we heard that internal flights cost about $25 and so that made the decision a no brainer. We booked 3 internal flights for a really cheap price and it saved us loads of time and unnecessary stress on the trains.
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Paul J
non-member comment
Still reading
I am still reading all these blogs and enjoying them even if I've not commented on them! The one about Hiroshima was really good in particular. All these far eastern countries sound very hectic, even if the behaviour is different in each place, and it's good to hear about this stuff.