Good Evening Vietnam

We had originally planned to come back from Nimh Binh on the train but the time table had changed and the trains were either really early in the morning or really late in the evening. So we again decided to put our lives in the hands of a Vietnamese bus driver . . . what a mistake that was.

The bus journey should take over two and a half hours. Our bus driver, who would give Lewis Hamilton a run for his money, made it in under one and a half. Normally you would consider a time saving such as this to be a good thing, but not when the driving was this bad. It was like the trip to Sapa again but as the road was straight the speed was four times higher and the traffic ten times heavier. Liz, who was originally sat in the middle seat on the back row eventually had to move to a different one so that she couldn't see out of the front window. I'm not normally as bad in these situations but I couldn't watch either and had to bury my head in a book to block out the constant visions of impending death.

Once safely back in Hanoi on Sunday afternoon we checked back into North Hotel No2 in the old quarter. For over two weeks now we have been using Hanoi as a hub for visiting other places and it's starting to feel a little like a home from home. We've got to know the Old Quarter really well and love the atmosphere (once you get a hotel away from the honky horns!).



In the evening we went to see a traditional Vietnamese water puppet show. Water puppetry takes place in a waist deep tank of water. All of the mechanisms for the puppets are hidden under the surface and the operators are obscured behind a bamboo screen. A couple of people we had spoken to had said it was a bit rubbish but we really enjoyed it and found it curiously entertaining.



After the show we made our way to a bar called Highway4 which specialises in Vietnamese rice wine. Rice wine is not remotely like wine, more like Japanese saki crossed with (cheap) whiskey. Unsure which of the thirty or so ones to try we plumped instead for a sampler tray of four different varieties. It was certainly interesting to try them but I don't think we'll be stocking up the drinks cabinet back home!

Yesterday it was lovely and warm so we went for a walk and a sit in the sun around Hoan Kiem Lake on the edge of the Old Quarter.



We even managed to have a bit of Fanny . . . Vietnam's favorite ice-cream.


In the evening we again made our way back to our favorite Hanoi restaurant, La Salsa, for some tapas. It's always slightly disorientating when ever we go there - a French run, Spanish restaurant in Vietnam! I'm not sure if they deliberately do wine backwards in Vietnam but after our hot white wine the other night, last night Liz had a chilled red.

Today we are re-packing our bags and getting ready for our flight to Laos later this afternoon. We're really looking forward to Laos as everyone we've met who's been there has said how wonderful it is.

It's been really good to be able to come back to Vietnam and experience the North of the country after our visit to the South three years ago. Hanoi and the trips out to Halong Bay and Sapa have been fantastic but the highlight for me has been Tam Coc just outside Nimh Binh. It was a fantastic experience being rowed through the rice paddies, grottoes and limestone peaks. Even though it isn't really heavily promoted out here you should definitely pay it a visit if you ever come to Vietnam.

Sapa to Hanoi

The trip back to Hanoi was even longer than the trip there . . . a mere thirteen and a half hours door to door.

The bus driver from Sapa to the train station in Lao Cai was considerably better than the one there, as he only tried to kill us three times. Twice by nearly plowing into herds of water buffalo that had wondered into the road, and once by repeatedly trying to overtake a truck through a series of blind hairpin bends! Even the locals looked relived when we made it to the train station in one piece! And of course, because this time the route was all down hill the journey was taken at a considerably higher speed than previously. That combined with the twistyness of the roads led to one poor local women heaving her breakfast back up. It's a good job she was sat by the window because the driver didn't offer to stop or even slow down.

This time we caught the morning train at half past nine which allowed us to see some of the beautiful scenery we had missed on the way there on the sleeper. The scenery was great, rugged mountains in the background with rice paddies and the Red River in the foreground. It's always really interesting traveling by train abroad and seeing how different it is to back home. Doing a bit of people watching and trying to work out whats going on. It always seems more buzzy what with the vendors working their way up and down the train. Selling all sorts of stuff from crisps and chocolate to a go on a pipe! I can't remember the last time you could buy a new watch or a four inch hunting knife on a British Rail train.

The people here always seem far more friendly than the average train traveler back home. If you find yourself sat opposite a local it wont be long before they strike up a conversation to find out about who you are, where you are from and what you do. When the conversation turns to football, which it often does, they really know their stuff. Although rather strangely none of them are Wolves fans!

One poor guy from Sweden on the seat behind us was sat next to a couple of Vietnamese businessmen who had brought two bottles of vodka onto the train and were having a drinking competition. Their hospitality meant that he had to join in and was only able to escape a couple of hours later when they both passed out! I like a drink as much as the next man but a neat vodka marathon at half nine in the morning is even a bit much for me.

We made it back into Hanoi for nine in the evening and checked back into our quiet fifth floor room at North Hotel No2 where we had stayed last time. Then we headed of out for dinner at a rather unusual restaurant called Cyclo, where all the chairs are made from the passenger seats of Vietnamese cyclo bikes. It was fun but unfortunately it looked a little like we were dining from wheelchairs

Bac Ho

On Saturday we made our way over to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex. Ho Chi Minh is not the real name of the former leader but means Bringer of Light in Vietnamese. His real name is Nguyen Tat Thanh but is more affectionatly known as Bac Ho, Uncle Ho to you and me.

Despite the fact that Bac Ho had requested he was cremated, his body, like many other communist leaders is now on display. This is a place of great importance and pilgrimage for many Vietnamese and is absolutely crawling with military personel.

Unfortunately for us the actual Mausoleum is closed during the months of September to December because Uncle Ho has to go to Russia for maintenance! Whilst we were there we also got to see the Presidential Palace and the old Vietnamese stilt house where Uncle Ho used to live.
We also made a visit to the Temple of Literature, which is the site of Vietnam's first University founded in the 11th century to educate the Mandarins. It's a really beautiful collection of traditional Vietnamese buildings.





As we made our way back into the Old Quarter we stumbled across the rather strange museum that is the Army Museum. It's displays seemed to mainly consist of bits of American hardware that had been shot by the Viet Cong!

We finished the day at a fantastic tapas restaurant called La Salsa. We've promised ourselves that we'll go back there when we return to Hanoi at the end of the week.

A bad burger and a rusty football

We returned to Hanoi from Halong Bay late Friday afternoon and checked into the North Hotel No2. It's barely fifty meters from the Phu Vinh where we stayed a few days ago but it's much quieter as it's a little further from the road on a pedestrianised street.

Since we left Augusters in Macau the rooms have been getting cheaper but better. This time for just under a tenner a night we have a quiet fifth floor room with a private bathroom, hot water, air con, fan, fridge and cable TV. We now also have the added luxury of furniture other than the bed; things such as chairs, a table and a wardrobe. I never thought I would find the sight of furniture so exciting!

All of the food we've had since leaving the UK three weeks ago has been fantastic, not one bad meal. All that changed on Friday night.

Whilst we had been on the Halong Bay trip we had only eaten Vietnamese food, mainly noodle based stuff. Although it was all really tasty I was looking forward to having something more solid that I could get my teeth stuck into. It's not very often that I have a craving for a burger but tonight was that night.

We ended up at a cafe/restaurant in the old town that shall remain nameless (to protect the guilty) and found ourselves a nice seat on an upstairs balcony overlooking the street. We thought we would treat ourselves and have a bottle of white wine, which when it arrived was so hot you could have made a cup of tea with the contents. Not the best of starts. It didn't get any better when the burger arrived. Well, some people may have called it a burger but technically it was so thin it was more of a meat venere. Oh, and when a menu says burger and chips the word chips is plural!

After the calamity that was dinner I needed another drink to cheer me up (and to help me forget how awful the meal was). We found ourselves in a little pub called The Polite Pub where in the corner was what we have now identified is the worlds worst table football table. The unoffical rules of table football state "and thus there shall be no spinning". Well the bars holding the players were so rusty that even Arnold Schwartzenegger in his prime would not have been able to spin the men on this table. We barely had enough strenght to move the players side to side let alone turn them with enough force to actually kick the ball. The situation was also hindered somewhat by the fact that the table sloped by about fifteen degrees to the one side. This resulted in the ball spending most of its time up against the edge out of reach of the players feet.

Wednesday 19th November

Today has been a bit of a quiet one on the tourism front. We've spent most of the day planning the rest of our stay in Vietnam and making the necessary bookings for travel and accomodation.

Tomorrow we head off out to Halong Bay (thanks for the tips Stevie G). We will be staying over night on a boat in the bay before heading back to Hanoi on Friday. Then on Sunday were off to the mountains of Sapa on the Chinese border before a few days down in Ninh Binh.

Hanoi Old Quarter

We are currently staying at the Phu Vinh guest house in the heart of Hanoi's Old Quarter. The Old Quarter is a real maze of a place where in the 13th century the city's 36 guilds settled. Each street is named after the trade that settled there. We spent all of our first day in Hanoi wandering about the Old Quarter on foot. We started off by visiting the Ngoc Son temple which is on a small island in a lake just to the West of the Old Quarter. The temple is a real oasis of calm in amongst the hustle and bustle of Hanoi. There was also a giant turtle in a glass case which was found in the lake. It is supposed to be very lucky if you catch sight of a giant turtle but we didn't see as much as a ripple in the thick green lake.



Then we headed back off the island along the red Huc Bridge. We passed the Water Puppet Theatre which we are going to visit during our time in Hanoi. Then it was past a street selling nothing but shoes up to Memorial House. This was a lovely restored Chinese merchant's home opened as a museum. Then it was past a road of jewellery shops and clothes shops to the Bach Ma temple which was very colourful. As we then went past Cua O Quan Chuong, the quarters well preserved old east gate, a tour of 20 cyclos went past. It looked like fun so we we are thinking of taking a cyclo today which is a bicycle propelled vehicle with a seat at the front for two people. Then we finished off our walking tour past roads filled with blacksmiths, herb sellers and shops selling Buddhist alters and statues.




We finished off back by the lake at the 5th floor City View Cafe. The Vietnam beers were very good and the view of the 5 way traffic junction was quite mesmerising! I say traffic junction but it was more of a traffic area, a complete free for all with traffic moving around in every direction! Later we went to the Mediterraneo Restaurant which served great Italian food and wine. We had another great meal last night at the Cafe des Arts which was just like a lovely little Parisian brassesie. Then we headed back to our hotel for a few quiet hours of sleep before the horns started again at the crack of dawn!

Hanoi Honky Horns

Hanoi is without doubt the noisyest place we've ever been. It's definately one to be wary of if you are a light sleeper - even Liz has been disturbed!

Here the main mode of transport is the moped and motor bike and the most frequenty used part is the horn. The streets are absolutly jammed with bikes from about half six in the mornin until midnight. During this time, and this is no exaggeration, rarely a second goes by when you can't hear a horn or ten.

The rules of the road appear to be somewhat more fluid than back home. The obeying of Traffic signals, signs, lights and road markings appears to be purely optional with most drivers choosing not to take the option. Most confusing of all is that even though in Vietnam vehicles drive on the right even this is appears to be at the drivers discression! And when the roads are jammed more often than not the bikes then take to the pavement.

The reason for all the horn honking is not an angry "get out of my way" as we get back home but more of a "woo hoo, here I am".

The owner of our guest house said that we can borrow his moped for free if we wanted to go out for a drive around town. But as much as I'd like to take him up on his kind offer I'n not sure exactly how long I would last. More worrying would be the chaos a Vietnamese driver would cause if they ever found themselves on a UK road.

The other big problem that this free form approach to driving has is when you try to cross the road on foot from one pavement to the other. The guide books advise stepping slowly out and letting the traffic swerve around you. Don't run or change pace otherwise they won't know whether to pass in front or behind you. As a Westerner, this takes a hell of a lot of getting used to! You can't wait for a break in the traffic as there aren't any. Even if you manage to find a zebra or pellican crossing no one will stop.