We awoke Sunday morning ready for our adventure to Halong Bay. We got up early in the morning, ate a quick breakfast in our guesthouse and sat down in the lobby to wait. And wait. And wait some more. At 9: 20 am we conceded defeat and resigned ourselves to the fact that we would not be going to Halong Bay on this trip to Vietnam. Instead, we would spend one final day in Hanoi.
Travel in SE Asia is at times extraordinarily easy and at other time extraordinarily frustrating. On Saturday we had stopped at a travel agency, Kangaroo Travel, to buy day tickets to Halong Bay. We were told by the proprietor that our trip might be canceled depending on the dreaded typhoon. He said that a van would be at our guesthouse to pick us up in the morning and that if it didn’t arrive, we could assume the trip was canceled. And this is exactly what happened. No Halong Bay for us. Instead, we were given one final day to explore Hanoi.
After returning our unnecessary items from our backpacks to our room (bathing suits, hats, extra sunscreen *sigh*), we headed out into the city once more. This was a hard day for us as we had really done everything we had wanted to do in Hanoi by this point. Having thoroughly explored the Old Quarter already, Zenia and I headed back to the area around St. Joseph’s Cathedral to explore it a little more thoroughly. We wandered through tiny alleyways and larger thoroughfares, enjoying a leisurely journey through a slightly quieter part of Hanoi. After three days in Hanoi I discovered the trick to finding a bit of peace in the cacophony – leave the main part of the city. Just run away to the back alleys and avoid the sight of any type of vehicle. Even then, the faint sound of honking can be heard from the main streets in the distance, but if you try very hard you can almost convince yourself it is just a few strange sounding birds. (I have obviously caught Bobby’s sickness. Hanoi tends to do that to you.)
We ate lunch at another restaurant near the Cathedral, La Salsa and then got a foot massage. Our time was relaxing and enjoyable, but as we stumbled back out onto the city streets we realized we had nothing left to do. Indeed, we spent the rest of our afternoon and evening whiling away the hours, sitting on benches by the lake, eating a last sorbet at Fanny’s, and a dinner at a terrible restaurant near our guesthouse. In a final grasp for something to do, we headed off to the Night Market, which was located only a few blocks from our guesthouse in the Old Quarter. That was an utter nightmare. Unlike the Night Markets of Thailand, Laos, and Camboida, which are dedicated towards trade with tourists, the Night Market of Vietnam is oriented toward natives and they come out in droves.
The evening was extremely hot and humid, so much so that our skin was bathed in a sheen of perpetual sweat. Unfortunately, this was true for everyone, which I can attest to personally. There were thousands of people wandering down the street. Shops on the sides of the street were open and ready for business and tables with tents over them formed an aisle in the center of the road. Follow the rules of the road (drive on the right side) people flowed down these aisles in a constant stream, leaving not a single ounce of breathing room between bodies. To enter the river of people you had to simply push your way in and hope for the best. Once you entered it was impossible to leave. I led the way with Zenia behind and as we walked/were pushed along I found it impossible to turn in any direction, unable to even move enough to direct my attention to where she stood behind me. The density of the crowd made the night even hotter and we were smashed so tightly together that I could feel the sweat on the arms of my neighbors. (Ew!) We managed to walk down four blocks in this manner before we turned around to return the other way. If anything this side was worse…babies were being pushed in strollers, taking up an inordinate amount of room and making the crowd even slower so that we moved only 15 feet in 2 minutes or so. We thought we would never survive and at the first opportunity, shoved our way to the outskirts of the crowd so that we could turn down a side-street and escape.
Having pushed and shoved our way to freedom, Zenia and I looked at each other and knew we were done with Hanoi. We headed back to our guesthouse and breathed a sigh of relief at being alone in the silence (relative silence – those horns were still blaring) of our private room. We showered and got into bed, ready to leave Hanoi in the early hours of the morning, content with our experiences in Vietnam.
It is probably unfair of me to make a comparison of the SE Asian countries I have seen with Vietnam based on so limited acquaintance with that country (I had only seen the capital city after all), but I feel comfortable saying that it was my least favorite country of SE Asia and the last one I would return to on any second travels I make to this region. Comparisons on any level show that this is the lowest country on my list. Food-wise, Laos ranks at the top of the list followed by Thailand and Cambodia with Vietnam coming in dead last. On a scale of history and things to see, Vietnam is by far the lowest as their history seems to begin and end with Ho Chi Minh and the constant need to tear down the old and build something new they seem to feel means that there is very little of the ancient Vietnam to see today. After visiting the four SE Asian countries of BABSEA, I am extremely happy I was placed in Laos. Zenia and I agree that there is no place quite like Laos and the calm and serenity the country exudes is the perfect tonic at the end of a long day at work. My only sorrow now is that I have so few days left in this beloved country (yes, only days left).
This weekend I will be exploring one final place in Laos, Vang Vieng, which is located just a few hours north of Vientiane. Tomorrow morning we will be taking a bus up to Vang Vieng to meet our Chiang Mai friends, Ellie and Vanessa, for a weekend of tubing on the Nam Song River, exploring nearby caves, and general fun. I will be back on Monday afternoon, so expect some amazing stories around then!
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
The Typhoon Arrives
In our original plan for Vietnam Zenia and I were supposed to get up early on Saturday morning and be heading for a two day trip to Halong Bay, but an incoming typhoon nixed that idea. Instead, we were given another day in Hanoi and our Halong Bay adventure was transformed into a one day visit on Sunday. Having had only one evening to explore the Old Quarter so far, Zenia and I decided that we would start our adventures there and wander through the maze of the oldest part of Hanoi.
For such a small place it is amazing how much can be packed in and how much time it can take to wander through the streets. While the city may at first seem to have no real plan or organization, it would be a mistake to assume so. It takes quite a bit of meandering and close observation, but a dedicated walker will discover that Hanoi organizes itself into sections within sections. Firstly, you have the sections of “Quarters” of the city. In Hanoi you can get any cab to take you to the Old Quarter, the French Quarter, etc. Within each Quarter, there is further organization of the myriad shops and stores. You see, Hanoi organizes itself so that the majority of a type of store (shoe stores, t-shirt stores, motorbike repair shops, etc.) will be located on the same street. While some streets present a hodgepodge of goods and wares, occasionally you will make a right turn and find yourself presented with a long line of shoe stores, where tables spill out of the shops onto the sidewalk (the areas not covered with motorbikes) and are covered in every type of shoe imaginable. Another right turn at the end of that street may find you presented with a street of hat sellers, selling traditional Vietnamese conical hats, fedoras, straw floppy hats, etc. It is true that you may be able to find a single shoe store or hat shop on any one street in Hanoi, but to find the good deals and widest selection you must travel to the street of hats, shoes, and other items sold by the shop keepers.
Time flew away from us in the Old Quarter and soon it was time to meet Bobby near St. Joseph’s Cathedral, the one Catholic Church we know of in Hanoi. St. Joseph’s Cathedral is an oddity in the center of Hanoi. It is located near Hoan Kiem (the central lake) and looks as if someone took a moderate sized (moderate for a Catholic church built in a grand style) French cathedral and dropped it into the center of a modern city. Hanoi itself has very little in the buildings or architecture to reveal that it is in SE Asia. In fact, it takes some serious looking to find the Asian influence within the buildings of the city, which can most often be spotted in the rooflines where small spires stretch toward the sky at each meeting of multiple sections of roof. But the people and customs more than make up for the western style architecture as they are decidedly SE Asian (once again I must point to the motorbike-sidewalk issue). Therefore, despite the general architecture of the city, within which the cathedral might have looked normal, it looks like a complete oddity, set down in the middle of Hanoi without thought for its ability to blend in with its surroundings.
There is no denying that the Cathedral is quite beautiful and after two and a half months living in SE Asia it was a relief to see something so Western and familiar. We met Bobby and ate lunch at a small restaurant in the Cathedral square called La Place. As we were sitting on the rooftop waiting for our meal it began to rain, forcing us to seek shelter inside. The leading edge of the typhoon had arrived ant throughout the rest of the afternoon we were plagued with spitting fits of rain. In defense against the insane weather, Bobby and Zenia purchased some ponchos (read, trashbags) while I stuck with my umbrella. We had a wonderful lunch and then began to wander around St. Joseph’s Cathedral.
Our exploring of the area concluded early as we were merely wandering around without a goal or purpose and without stopping in any of the stores along the way and as soon as we were finished with that area, we headed around the lake in search of a bookstore called The Bookworm that Lonely Planet recommended we visit. Now, the thing about bookstores in Vietnam is that you won’t be able to find any books that are not vetted and authorized by the Vietnamese government. All book publishers must get a government ok to publish books, meaning it is impossible to find any book on the history of Vietnam that is not 100% in line with the current government’s thoughts. Scary. After coming from a country that allows any books to be published, whether for or against the current administration, it is disconcerting to enter a country where the government controls all forms of media with such a strict hand. We walked for over 30 minutes looking for this bookstore and never managed to find it! :) We explored some interesting parts of the city though and ended up in the French Quarter, which simply had buildings that looked more French than most.
After we conceded defeat on the book front, we headed back toward Hoan Kiem and visited one of the two small temples that sit on islands in the lake. One temple sits on an island very near the center and has no visible means of transportation to or from (besides the obvious – a boat). The other temple sits very near the shore and is accessible by a bridge. Unfortunately, this temple is not very interesting as it is very commercialized. The island itself is quite small, able to hold maybe 100 people total, and motorbikes are parked behind the main building making it obvious that this is a temple made for tourists rather than a devout spot to visit. In fact, compared to the other SE Asian countries we have visited, there are very few temples in Vietnam, which should not have been such a shock to me as I knew that Vietnam was quite different than the other countries as it does not have a high concentration of Buddhism. In fact, most of people in Vietnam are of a religion that has no true name (according to my source) and that is mix of religions from India, China, and ancient native religions. Therefore, we had expected this temple to be something quite interesting as it was something of an oddity in Hanoi, but, alas, we were doomed to be disappointed. In the end, we simply walked around the island and left, a bit sad that we had wasted 10,000 Dong on that experience. We continued to circle the lake and then headed off to our guesthouse to relax for a little while, away from the heat of the afternoon.
That night we ate dinner at a restaurant near the lake and then headed over to Fanny’s for more(!) sorbet. I took every opportunity I could find to eat that delicious icy treat as I knew I would not be able to experience it again until I am back home. As we were leaving Fanny’s we met up with Laura and Abbey and two of the Vietnamese girls they work with, Hien and Tram. The two girls were amazing and we spent the evening bar hopping around the Old Quarter. We listened to classic American music in the Mao Bar, went dancing at the Cheeky Quarter, and ate grilled cheese sandwiches at our final bar of the night. :) Vietnam is another country that has imported the most delicious drink of all time – cranberry juice – and the whole night I was ordering them! Delicious!
During the course of our visit to Mao (the first bar of the evening) it began raining in a torrential flood outside, forcing people in out of the wet and our new Vietnamese friends home before the streets flooded too badly. While Hanoi is built for the intense weather it suffers each year, no amount of preparation can deal with the amount of water that comes down when Vietnam gets serious about the rain. Laura, Abbey, and Bobby assured us that flooding was completely normal and that they had been forced to wade through knee deep water to reach work on multiple occasions. On rainy days in Vietnam, you won’t see any natives out and about because they know that when it rains, it pours. That night, he typhoon came to Hanoi. The rain was intense, lightening for a few minutes here and there, and then coming down in a mad fury designed to wash away anyone silly enough to be outside. Luckily we were not that silly and stayed indoors, having a good time talking with the Vietnamese girls, getting our nails painted by them, and singing along to our American music. Quite an enjoyable way to spend an evening!
For such a small place it is amazing how much can be packed in and how much time it can take to wander through the streets. While the city may at first seem to have no real plan or organization, it would be a mistake to assume so. It takes quite a bit of meandering and close observation, but a dedicated walker will discover that Hanoi organizes itself into sections within sections. Firstly, you have the sections of “Quarters” of the city. In Hanoi you can get any cab to take you to the Old Quarter, the French Quarter, etc. Within each Quarter, there is further organization of the myriad shops and stores. You see, Hanoi organizes itself so that the majority of a type of store (shoe stores, t-shirt stores, motorbike repair shops, etc.) will be located on the same street. While some streets present a hodgepodge of goods and wares, occasionally you will make a right turn and find yourself presented with a long line of shoe stores, where tables spill out of the shops onto the sidewalk (the areas not covered with motorbikes) and are covered in every type of shoe imaginable. Another right turn at the end of that street may find you presented with a street of hat sellers, selling traditional Vietnamese conical hats, fedoras, straw floppy hats, etc. It is true that you may be able to find a single shoe store or hat shop on any one street in Hanoi, but to find the good deals and widest selection you must travel to the street of hats, shoes, and other items sold by the shop keepers.
Time flew away from us in the Old Quarter and soon it was time to meet Bobby near St. Joseph’s Cathedral, the one Catholic Church we know of in Hanoi. St. Joseph’s Cathedral is an oddity in the center of Hanoi. It is located near Hoan Kiem (the central lake) and looks as if someone took a moderate sized (moderate for a Catholic church built in a grand style) French cathedral and dropped it into the center of a modern city. Hanoi itself has very little in the buildings or architecture to reveal that it is in SE Asia. In fact, it takes some serious looking to find the Asian influence within the buildings of the city, which can most often be spotted in the rooflines where small spires stretch toward the sky at each meeting of multiple sections of roof. But the people and customs more than make up for the western style architecture as they are decidedly SE Asian (once again I must point to the motorbike-sidewalk issue). Therefore, despite the general architecture of the city, within which the cathedral might have looked normal, it looks like a complete oddity, set down in the middle of Hanoi without thought for its ability to blend in with its surroundings.
There is no denying that the Cathedral is quite beautiful and after two and a half months living in SE Asia it was a relief to see something so Western and familiar. We met Bobby and ate lunch at a small restaurant in the Cathedral square called La Place. As we were sitting on the rooftop waiting for our meal it began to rain, forcing us to seek shelter inside. The leading edge of the typhoon had arrived ant throughout the rest of the afternoon we were plagued with spitting fits of rain. In defense against the insane weather, Bobby and Zenia purchased some ponchos (read, trashbags) while I stuck with my umbrella. We had a wonderful lunch and then began to wander around St. Joseph’s Cathedral.
Our exploring of the area concluded early as we were merely wandering around without a goal or purpose and without stopping in any of the stores along the way and as soon as we were finished with that area, we headed around the lake in search of a bookstore called The Bookworm that Lonely Planet recommended we visit. Now, the thing about bookstores in Vietnam is that you won’t be able to find any books that are not vetted and authorized by the Vietnamese government. All book publishers must get a government ok to publish books, meaning it is impossible to find any book on the history of Vietnam that is not 100% in line with the current government’s thoughts. Scary. After coming from a country that allows any books to be published, whether for or against the current administration, it is disconcerting to enter a country where the government controls all forms of media with such a strict hand. We walked for over 30 minutes looking for this bookstore and never managed to find it! :) We explored some interesting parts of the city though and ended up in the French Quarter, which simply had buildings that looked more French than most.
After we conceded defeat on the book front, we headed back toward Hoan Kiem and visited one of the two small temples that sit on islands in the lake. One temple sits on an island very near the center and has no visible means of transportation to or from (besides the obvious – a boat). The other temple sits very near the shore and is accessible by a bridge. Unfortunately, this temple is not very interesting as it is very commercialized. The island itself is quite small, able to hold maybe 100 people total, and motorbikes are parked behind the main building making it obvious that this is a temple made for tourists rather than a devout spot to visit. In fact, compared to the other SE Asian countries we have visited, there are very few temples in Vietnam, which should not have been such a shock to me as I knew that Vietnam was quite different than the other countries as it does not have a high concentration of Buddhism. In fact, most of people in Vietnam are of a religion that has no true name (according to my source) and that is mix of religions from India, China, and ancient native religions. Therefore, we had expected this temple to be something quite interesting as it was something of an oddity in Hanoi, but, alas, we were doomed to be disappointed. In the end, we simply walked around the island and left, a bit sad that we had wasted 10,000 Dong on that experience. We continued to circle the lake and then headed off to our guesthouse to relax for a little while, away from the heat of the afternoon.
That night we ate dinner at a restaurant near the lake and then headed over to Fanny’s for more(!) sorbet. I took every opportunity I could find to eat that delicious icy treat as I knew I would not be able to experience it again until I am back home. As we were leaving Fanny’s we met up with Laura and Abbey and two of the Vietnamese girls they work with, Hien and Tram. The two girls were amazing and we spent the evening bar hopping around the Old Quarter. We listened to classic American music in the Mao Bar, went dancing at the Cheeky Quarter, and ate grilled cheese sandwiches at our final bar of the night. :) Vietnam is another country that has imported the most delicious drink of all time – cranberry juice – and the whole night I was ordering them! Delicious!
During the course of our visit to Mao (the first bar of the evening) it began raining in a torrential flood outside, forcing people in out of the wet and our new Vietnamese friends home before the streets flooded too badly. While Hanoi is built for the intense weather it suffers each year, no amount of preparation can deal with the amount of water that comes down when Vietnam gets serious about the rain. Laura, Abbey, and Bobby assured us that flooding was completely normal and that they had been forced to wade through knee deep water to reach work on multiple occasions. On rainy days in Vietnam, you won’t see any natives out and about because they know that when it rains, it pours. That night, he typhoon came to Hanoi. The rain was intense, lightening for a few minutes here and there, and then coming down in a mad fury designed to wash away anyone silly enough to be outside. Luckily we were not that silly and stayed indoors, having a good time talking with the Vietnamese girls, getting our nails painted by them, and singing along to our American music. Quite an enjoyable way to spend an evening!
Friday, July 16, 2010
Museum Madness: Part 2
Now where were we? Ah…
We ate lunch at a cute little restaurant opposite the Temple of Literature that had been recommended by Lonely Planet as not only a place with good food, but one that helps out in the local community as well. KOTO, Know One Teach One, is a restaurant that employs street kids from a shelter, teaching them how to work in the restaurant industry in various capacities as waiters, managers, chefs, etc. The food was simply stunning, a wonderful array of traditional Vietnamese food. I ordered and devoured a plate of fried wontons, served with a traditional sweet Vietnamese dipping sauce and fresh vegetable salad. It was a relief simply to be inside with air conditioning and out of the heat of the day, which felt like an oppressive weight on our shoulders, pushing us slowly into the ground until each step was difficult. Our time eating, drinking lemonade (still limeade, but it’s no use telling them that), and resting under the A/C was very rejuvenating and after a leisurely time at KOTO we headed out for the next activity on our list.
I feel it is important to tell you at this time that we were not eating in the traditional Vietnamese way. While the restaurants we patronized were often serving traditional Vietnamese food, the restaurants themselves were in no way traditional, being very westernized sit-down places. Most Vietnamese restaurants are small hole-in-the-wall places with no English menu and no real English language. You simply walk up to the woman who appears to be in charge (the one next to the clay cooking pot on the ground in front of the shop is usually a good bet) and ask for food. If you are brave you can ask for a particular dish, but do not hold your breath that you will receive it, for odds are that you will get something completely different – whatever they happen to have left. There are no adult sized tables or chairs in these places, but small plastic tables that three year olds would appreciate and plastic stools that sit one foot off the ground. These are where you dine. Your food will arrive, what you ordered or not, and you will sit at your little doll-sized table and eat whatever has been prepared, springroll soup, pig ear, dog, you name it, they will serve it. To be perfectly honest with you all, I simply could not get myself to eat in this manner and stuck to places where I could sit down at a table meant for people above three feet in height.
Our final planned stop of the day involved heading out by taxi to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, which is dedicated to the display of traditional ethnic tribe cultures of Vietnam. While the main Museum building looks fairly impressive, it is really the grounds that are worth the 15,000 Dong admission price. (Roughly 19,050 Dong = $1 US, giving Vietnam the highest gap in value with the dollar.) When we arrived at the Museum we immediately began walking towards the main building that stands behind the white metal gate guarding the driveway, but our attention was caught halfway to our destination by a large sign off to one side of the walkway. Heading over to see if any information was pertinent to our visit, we discovered that in addition to the Museum building itself, the Museum of Ethnology includes extensive grounds where various building reproductions have been built that display structures and lifestyles of traditional Vietnamese rural cultures. Deciding that we should take advantage of the slightly cooler atmosphere that had descended on us as clouds had rolled in after noon we followed the path around the side of the main building toward the first of 25 building exhibits.
We wandered around the buildings for over an hour, enjoying our time outside even though the heat was increasing exponentially as the cloud cover moved away. We climbed up impossibly steep ladder-stairs to reach meeting houses on stilts and explored compound style homes that would fit generations of families in a space that would only fit one traditional family in North America. When we finally got around to exploring the Museum later we were a bit disappointed and rushed through, eager to go somewhere cool for a break from our day of exploration.
Somehow we had managed to finish Lonely Planet’s “A Day in Hanoi” by 2 pm (as the Museum of Ethnology was the last visit on our list) and had nothing much left to do that evening. We headed back towards our hotel and after a stop for some sorbet at Fanny’s we wandered into the Old Quarter, content to simply meander our way through the winding streets. Like many of the other SE Asian countries, Vietnam’s main streets are very wide boulevards reminiscent of their French colonial period (all except Thailand, which was colonized by the English - those dummies drive on the wrong side of the road!); however, the Old Quarter of the city is a different story altogether. Jammed into a space only 10 or so blocks square, the Old Quarter is full of twisting winding alleys and narrow lanes. Every bit of land is filled with shops of one kind or another making the small area seem even smaller as wares from the shops that can be as narrow as a three foot opening in the wall spill out onto the street. Every bit of sidewalk is commandeered by the hundreds of motorbikes used by the Vietnamese residents, forcing pedestrians onto the streets where they are incessantly honked at by angry cars trying to wind their way through the maze.
It is impossible to get lost in the Old Quarter of Hanoi as it is simply not big enough to get lost within and there is always something new to see as you wander down the same streets you have visited before. We wandered around the streets of the Old Quarter for a few hours, stopping anywhere that caught our fancy and at several cafes for lemon juices and water. That night Laura and Abbey were unable to come out with us, so Bobby, Zenia and I remained in the Old Quarter, dining at a small restaurant with more traditional Vietnamese food. After eating Vietnamese off and on during my time there I can now attest that it is my least favorite Asian food. I simply don’t like it. The only Vietnamese that I ate during our time in Hanoi that I actually enjoyed was at KOTO and I suspect now that was simply a fluke (probably Westernized Vietnamese). It is hard to pin down what I don’t like about the food from this country, something about the blend of flavors does not sit well with me and I will be happy not to eat Vietnamese for a long time.
That was the end of that evening and as Zenia and I were quite tired and Bobby needed to get home, so we called it a night and headed back to our guesthouse (Bobby went home in a cab). Now, many of you may recall that Zenia and I were supposed to travel to Halong Bay for an overnight on a junk boat on Saturday morning. Well, it was canceled. Why? A typhoon blew into Vietnam specifically to ruin our fun! On Friday afternoon we heard that there were typhoon warnings for Halong Bay and that our overnight was no longer an option. We decided that it was a good thing as we had no desire to be on a boat in the middle of a storm. After visiting a travel agency, we decided to schedule a day trip to Halong instead on Sunday and content ourselves with one afternoon on the Vietnam coast. Therefore, Saturday was filled with more touring of Hanoi…
We ate lunch at a cute little restaurant opposite the Temple of Literature that had been recommended by Lonely Planet as not only a place with good food, but one that helps out in the local community as well. KOTO, Know One Teach One, is a restaurant that employs street kids from a shelter, teaching them how to work in the restaurant industry in various capacities as waiters, managers, chefs, etc. The food was simply stunning, a wonderful array of traditional Vietnamese food. I ordered and devoured a plate of fried wontons, served with a traditional sweet Vietnamese dipping sauce and fresh vegetable salad. It was a relief simply to be inside with air conditioning and out of the heat of the day, which felt like an oppressive weight on our shoulders, pushing us slowly into the ground until each step was difficult. Our time eating, drinking lemonade (still limeade, but it’s no use telling them that), and resting under the A/C was very rejuvenating and after a leisurely time at KOTO we headed out for the next activity on our list.
I feel it is important to tell you at this time that we were not eating in the traditional Vietnamese way. While the restaurants we patronized were often serving traditional Vietnamese food, the restaurants themselves were in no way traditional, being very westernized sit-down places. Most Vietnamese restaurants are small hole-in-the-wall places with no English menu and no real English language. You simply walk up to the woman who appears to be in charge (the one next to the clay cooking pot on the ground in front of the shop is usually a good bet) and ask for food. If you are brave you can ask for a particular dish, but do not hold your breath that you will receive it, for odds are that you will get something completely different – whatever they happen to have left. There are no adult sized tables or chairs in these places, but small plastic tables that three year olds would appreciate and plastic stools that sit one foot off the ground. These are where you dine. Your food will arrive, what you ordered or not, and you will sit at your little doll-sized table and eat whatever has been prepared, springroll soup, pig ear, dog, you name it, they will serve it. To be perfectly honest with you all, I simply could not get myself to eat in this manner and stuck to places where I could sit down at a table meant for people above three feet in height.
Our final planned stop of the day involved heading out by taxi to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, which is dedicated to the display of traditional ethnic tribe cultures of Vietnam. While the main Museum building looks fairly impressive, it is really the grounds that are worth the 15,000 Dong admission price. (Roughly 19,050 Dong = $1 US, giving Vietnam the highest gap in value with the dollar.) When we arrived at the Museum we immediately began walking towards the main building that stands behind the white metal gate guarding the driveway, but our attention was caught halfway to our destination by a large sign off to one side of the walkway. Heading over to see if any information was pertinent to our visit, we discovered that in addition to the Museum building itself, the Museum of Ethnology includes extensive grounds where various building reproductions have been built that display structures and lifestyles of traditional Vietnamese rural cultures. Deciding that we should take advantage of the slightly cooler atmosphere that had descended on us as clouds had rolled in after noon we followed the path around the side of the main building toward the first of 25 building exhibits.
We wandered around the buildings for over an hour, enjoying our time outside even though the heat was increasing exponentially as the cloud cover moved away. We climbed up impossibly steep ladder-stairs to reach meeting houses on stilts and explored compound style homes that would fit generations of families in a space that would only fit one traditional family in North America. When we finally got around to exploring the Museum later we were a bit disappointed and rushed through, eager to go somewhere cool for a break from our day of exploration.
Somehow we had managed to finish Lonely Planet’s “A Day in Hanoi” by 2 pm (as the Museum of Ethnology was the last visit on our list) and had nothing much left to do that evening. We headed back towards our hotel and after a stop for some sorbet at Fanny’s we wandered into the Old Quarter, content to simply meander our way through the winding streets. Like many of the other SE Asian countries, Vietnam’s main streets are very wide boulevards reminiscent of their French colonial period (all except Thailand, which was colonized by the English - those dummies drive on the wrong side of the road!); however, the Old Quarter of the city is a different story altogether. Jammed into a space only 10 or so blocks square, the Old Quarter is full of twisting winding alleys and narrow lanes. Every bit of land is filled with shops of one kind or another making the small area seem even smaller as wares from the shops that can be as narrow as a three foot opening in the wall spill out onto the street. Every bit of sidewalk is commandeered by the hundreds of motorbikes used by the Vietnamese residents, forcing pedestrians onto the streets where they are incessantly honked at by angry cars trying to wind their way through the maze.
It is impossible to get lost in the Old Quarter of Hanoi as it is simply not big enough to get lost within and there is always something new to see as you wander down the same streets you have visited before. We wandered around the streets of the Old Quarter for a few hours, stopping anywhere that caught our fancy and at several cafes for lemon juices and water. That night Laura and Abbey were unable to come out with us, so Bobby, Zenia and I remained in the Old Quarter, dining at a small restaurant with more traditional Vietnamese food. After eating Vietnamese off and on during my time there I can now attest that it is my least favorite Asian food. I simply don’t like it. The only Vietnamese that I ate during our time in Hanoi that I actually enjoyed was at KOTO and I suspect now that was simply a fluke (probably Westernized Vietnamese). It is hard to pin down what I don’t like about the food from this country, something about the blend of flavors does not sit well with me and I will be happy not to eat Vietnamese for a long time.
That was the end of that evening and as Zenia and I were quite tired and Bobby needed to get home, so we called it a night and headed back to our guesthouse (Bobby went home in a cab). Now, many of you may recall that Zenia and I were supposed to travel to Halong Bay for an overnight on a junk boat on Saturday morning. Well, it was canceled. Why? A typhoon blew into Vietnam specifically to ruin our fun! On Friday afternoon we heard that there were typhoon warnings for Halong Bay and that our overnight was no longer an option. We decided that it was a good thing as we had no desire to be on a boat in the middle of a storm. After visiting a travel agency, we decided to schedule a day trip to Halong instead on Sunday and content ourselves with one afternoon on the Vietnam coast. Therefore, Saturday was filled with more touring of Hanoi…
Museum Madness
Today was a day of exploration and adventure in Hanoi. We ate breakfast at our hotel (a complimentary breakfast with our stay) and were just finishing up when Bobby arrived to spend the day touring with us, which he had not yet done in Hanoi. Zenia and I had planned out our one day in Hanoi with great care, deciding to follow Lonely Planet’s “One Day in Hanoi,” which laid out detailed instructions of what to visit and where to eat if a visitor only had one day to spend in Vietnam’s capital city. Our day was laid out, therefore, with a plan to visit a wide variety of museums and sites around Hanoi.
First Stop – Ho Chi Minh Museum
To get a cab to take you to the correct location in Hanoi you must write own the address of your proposed destination in Vietnamese with the proper accent marks on every letter or you may end up somewhere off the beaten track. You can’t try to say the name of your destination because there is no way you will ever pronounce it correctly – the Vietnamese language is too insane (filled with ng sounds that are impossible to actually make unless you grew up using them). Therefore, my first act before we set off on our grand adventure was to look up the addresses of all our trip locations for the day and write the Vietnamese names out very clearly.
Prepared, addresses and plan in hand, we set out to find a cab and go to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, our initial destination for the morning. After pointing to the name of our first stop on our list of locations, we settled back for the ride through Hanoi traffic to the Mausoleum. We were dropped off in front of a large complex simply named Ho Chi Minh, with no real idea of where to go. We looked back at our cabbie for reassurance that we were at the right place and after a nod of confirmation we went inside to wander around and find the Mausoleum on our own. After exploring the grounds for a bit we stumbled upon a large imposing structure labeled the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Unable to locate the Mausoleum around the grounds (we had seen pictures and knew what to look for), we finally asked the man selling tickets to the Museum and were told that the Mausoleum was closed (later consultation with Lonely Planet told us that we picked the one day of the week the Mausoleum is closed).
Fun Fact:
• Ho Chi Minh requested that he be cremated, but after his death this request was denied. Instead, his body is on display in a glass coffin in the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (what we were trying to visit). For two or three months out of the year Ho Chi Minh’s body is sent to Russia for preservation updates. :) For a guy Vietnam loved so much it seems a bit rude to me to deny his final request, but to each their own.
We decided to take the opportunity presented to us at that point and visit the Museum instead of the Mausoleum. If I can only use one word to describe our visit…whoa. Just whoa. If ever there was a place created to indoctrinate individuals, it was this museum. I know it’s the “Ho Chi Minh” Museum, but a walk through its three stories will lead the observer to conclude that Vietnam has no history before or after Ho Chi Minh. He is raised to near deity status throughout this museum, coming across as the god of Vietnam (for example, all “he’s” are capitalized when mentioning Ho Chi Minh). It was a bit scary and an odd museum overall – a strange blend of the ancient, the modern, and futuristic features. For example, in one section of the museum, ancient furniture (the old) rested on a raised lotus dais (the new – modern art looking) that was surrounded by bright silver metal panels (the future – very science fictionish). I was more than happy to rush through the museum, feeling very uncomfortable within its walls as panels discusses Ho Chi Minh’s grand achievement in beating out the imperialist United States from Vietnam during the “US War” and reuniting North and South Vietnam into a single country.
After our visit to the Museum we headed out into the city on foot to our next tourist destination, which was located a brief five minute walk from the Museum complex. Our walk down the street offered us the first opportunity to really get a feel for walking around Hanoi. Unlike many of the other SE Asian countries, walking seems to be a fairly accepted mode of transportation in Vietnam. However, walking can be extremely hazardous to your health. On a first view via car, Vietnam seems very friendly to walkers as they have provided very decent sized sidewalks for pedestrians, unlike Thailand, which has no sidewalks. However, the sidewalks are often unavailable as they are used as parking lots for every car, motorbike, and bicycle in the city. Entire city block sidewalks will be covered with motorbikes parked at all angles, forcing poor hapless pedestrians to walk in the street instead. Unfortunately, walking in the street is a good way to die. You see, in Vietnam, no vehicle will stop for you. To walk in front of a car or bus here, even at a crosswalk, would be suicide because large vehicles simply do not stop and will run you down in the road. Motorbikes are somewhat more considerate in that they will weave around you. To truly explain how this works let me give you an example…
As you go to cross the street in Hanoi, often on roads with two or more lanes of traffic going in a single direction, you must first look for buses or cars. Any large vehicle of this nature MUST be allowed to pass before you even step foot in the road. Once the cars are clear, watch for a break in the constant stream of motorbikes, if none appear to be coming, simply close your eyes, send up a prayer, and take one step into the street. Stumble forward at a steady pass and don’t freak out as hundreds of motorbikes zip past you, some coming so close you can feel the brush of handlebars on your arms. The key to not being mowed down like a blade of grass in the ever continuing onrush of ravening metal motorbike beasts is to walk at a continuous pace and don’t flinch. However, if a car comes…get out of the road! Every time you step onto the pavement on the other side of the street you thank goodness that you have arrived there in one piece…assuming you did. It is impossible to wait for traffic to pass as it never will in Hanoi. On any road (except the extreme back alleys) there will never be a large enough break in the sea of traffic to allow a pedestrian to cross the road without braving cars or motorbikes and specter of death that lingers on the roadways, ready to spirit away the next victim of the Hanoi traffic system.
We managed to meander our way through the streets of Hanoi until we reached our destination, a place called the Temple of Literature. At one time (evidently) a place where scholars came to learn and study ancient writings (there were only 5), the Temple of Literature now resembles something more akin to a park. The entire area takes up about three city blocks and is surrounded by a tall stone wall. There is only one entrance to the Temple where visitors are required to pay a fee to enter, a nominal charge of 10,000 Dong (a little over 50 cents). The Temple is separated into sections that roughly feel one block long. The first two sections (out of three) are simply gardens with small rectangular pools filled with water on either side of a green belt that borders the central path. The third section leads to a courtyard where an actual temple stands to the front and on the left side great stone slabs that rest on the back of stone turtles stand in long lines. These stone slabs are covered in writing that dedicates them to the scholars who studied at the Temple of Literature when it still functioned as a place of learning. While there were some impressive sites to see here (the turtles were great – and I touched each of their heads to gain their wisdom and knowledge!), it felt more like a traditional city park and I felt deceived by the name. There wasn’t any literature!! How could Vietnam do that to a bookaholic like myself?! It just seemed like cruel and unusual treatment after my deprivation from my beloved books at home.
We fled the Temple of Literature as soon as I began to expound on this topic (for some reason Bobby and Zenia didn’t seem too keen to discuss the appalling misconception the Vietnamese were spreading by calling a park a “Temple of Literature” – I’m not sure why) and headed out to lunch as recommended by Lonely Planet and our growling stomachs/parched throats.
***I hate to do this to you, dear readers, but I must break off in my post for a short time. You see, some friends from Chiang Mai have been here in Laos for the past two days to visit us and are leaving this afternoon to visit Luang Prabang. We are, therefore, going out to lunch with them and I must leave now to get some amazing Fruit Heaven sandwiches and smoothies for my noon meal. I will come back and finish my post and will have it up for you to read this evening (in the morning for you). :) Good night!
First Stop – Ho Chi Minh Museum
To get a cab to take you to the correct location in Hanoi you must write own the address of your proposed destination in Vietnamese with the proper accent marks on every letter or you may end up somewhere off the beaten track. You can’t try to say the name of your destination because there is no way you will ever pronounce it correctly – the Vietnamese language is too insane (filled with ng sounds that are impossible to actually make unless you grew up using them). Therefore, my first act before we set off on our grand adventure was to look up the addresses of all our trip locations for the day and write the Vietnamese names out very clearly.
Prepared, addresses and plan in hand, we set out to find a cab and go to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, our initial destination for the morning. After pointing to the name of our first stop on our list of locations, we settled back for the ride through Hanoi traffic to the Mausoleum. We were dropped off in front of a large complex simply named Ho Chi Minh, with no real idea of where to go. We looked back at our cabbie for reassurance that we were at the right place and after a nod of confirmation we went inside to wander around and find the Mausoleum on our own. After exploring the grounds for a bit we stumbled upon a large imposing structure labeled the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Unable to locate the Mausoleum around the grounds (we had seen pictures and knew what to look for), we finally asked the man selling tickets to the Museum and were told that the Mausoleum was closed (later consultation with Lonely Planet told us that we picked the one day of the week the Mausoleum is closed).
Fun Fact:
• Ho Chi Minh requested that he be cremated, but after his death this request was denied. Instead, his body is on display in a glass coffin in the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (what we were trying to visit). For two or three months out of the year Ho Chi Minh’s body is sent to Russia for preservation updates. :) For a guy Vietnam loved so much it seems a bit rude to me to deny his final request, but to each their own.
We decided to take the opportunity presented to us at that point and visit the Museum instead of the Mausoleum. If I can only use one word to describe our visit…whoa. Just whoa. If ever there was a place created to indoctrinate individuals, it was this museum. I know it’s the “Ho Chi Minh” Museum, but a walk through its three stories will lead the observer to conclude that Vietnam has no history before or after Ho Chi Minh. He is raised to near deity status throughout this museum, coming across as the god of Vietnam (for example, all “he’s” are capitalized when mentioning Ho Chi Minh). It was a bit scary and an odd museum overall – a strange blend of the ancient, the modern, and futuristic features. For example, in one section of the museum, ancient furniture (the old) rested on a raised lotus dais (the new – modern art looking) that was surrounded by bright silver metal panels (the future – very science fictionish). I was more than happy to rush through the museum, feeling very uncomfortable within its walls as panels discusses Ho Chi Minh’s grand achievement in beating out the imperialist United States from Vietnam during the “US War” and reuniting North and South Vietnam into a single country.
After our visit to the Museum we headed out into the city on foot to our next tourist destination, which was located a brief five minute walk from the Museum complex. Our walk down the street offered us the first opportunity to really get a feel for walking around Hanoi. Unlike many of the other SE Asian countries, walking seems to be a fairly accepted mode of transportation in Vietnam. However, walking can be extremely hazardous to your health. On a first view via car, Vietnam seems very friendly to walkers as they have provided very decent sized sidewalks for pedestrians, unlike Thailand, which has no sidewalks. However, the sidewalks are often unavailable as they are used as parking lots for every car, motorbike, and bicycle in the city. Entire city block sidewalks will be covered with motorbikes parked at all angles, forcing poor hapless pedestrians to walk in the street instead. Unfortunately, walking in the street is a good way to die. You see, in Vietnam, no vehicle will stop for you. To walk in front of a car or bus here, even at a crosswalk, would be suicide because large vehicles simply do not stop and will run you down in the road. Motorbikes are somewhat more considerate in that they will weave around you. To truly explain how this works let me give you an example…
As you go to cross the street in Hanoi, often on roads with two or more lanes of traffic going in a single direction, you must first look for buses or cars. Any large vehicle of this nature MUST be allowed to pass before you even step foot in the road. Once the cars are clear, watch for a break in the constant stream of motorbikes, if none appear to be coming, simply close your eyes, send up a prayer, and take one step into the street. Stumble forward at a steady pass and don’t freak out as hundreds of motorbikes zip past you, some coming so close you can feel the brush of handlebars on your arms. The key to not being mowed down like a blade of grass in the ever continuing onrush of ravening metal motorbike beasts is to walk at a continuous pace and don’t flinch. However, if a car comes…get out of the road! Every time you step onto the pavement on the other side of the street you thank goodness that you have arrived there in one piece…assuming you did. It is impossible to wait for traffic to pass as it never will in Hanoi. On any road (except the extreme back alleys) there will never be a large enough break in the sea of traffic to allow a pedestrian to cross the road without braving cars or motorbikes and specter of death that lingers on the roadways, ready to spirit away the next victim of the Hanoi traffic system.
We managed to meander our way through the streets of Hanoi until we reached our destination, a place called the Temple of Literature. At one time (evidently) a place where scholars came to learn and study ancient writings (there were only 5), the Temple of Literature now resembles something more akin to a park. The entire area takes up about three city blocks and is surrounded by a tall stone wall. There is only one entrance to the Temple where visitors are required to pay a fee to enter, a nominal charge of 10,000 Dong (a little over 50 cents). The Temple is separated into sections that roughly feel one block long. The first two sections (out of three) are simply gardens with small rectangular pools filled with water on either side of a green belt that borders the central path. The third section leads to a courtyard where an actual temple stands to the front and on the left side great stone slabs that rest on the back of stone turtles stand in long lines. These stone slabs are covered in writing that dedicates them to the scholars who studied at the Temple of Literature when it still functioned as a place of learning. While there were some impressive sites to see here (the turtles were great – and I touched each of their heads to gain their wisdom and knowledge!), it felt more like a traditional city park and I felt deceived by the name. There wasn’t any literature!! How could Vietnam do that to a bookaholic like myself?! It just seemed like cruel and unusual treatment after my deprivation from my beloved books at home.
We fled the Temple of Literature as soon as I began to expound on this topic (for some reason Bobby and Zenia didn’t seem too keen to discuss the appalling misconception the Vietnamese were spreading by calling a park a “Temple of Literature” – I’m not sure why) and headed out to lunch as recommended by Lonely Planet and our growling stomachs/parched throats.
***I hate to do this to you, dear readers, but I must break off in my post for a short time. You see, some friends from Chiang Mai have been here in Laos for the past two days to visit us and are leaving this afternoon to visit Luang Prabang. We are, therefore, going out to lunch with them and I must leave now to get some amazing Fruit Heaven sandwiches and smoothies for my noon meal. I will come back and finish my post and will have it up for you to read this evening (in the morning for you). :) Good night!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Hot in Hanoi
This weekend I visited my final new country in SE Asia – Vietnam. It was quite an adventure, with a few bumps along the way. We left Vientiane for Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, at 5:50 pm. This was our last international flight out of Laos (we will be taking the bus back across the border to Thailand in 9 days!). It was a bit sad to leave “home” again, but exciting to contemplate seeing another new country and hanging out with our friends who are interning in Vietnam.
The flight was easy and uneventful, the descent into the city allowing me my first look at Vietnam and Hanoi. The city of Hanoi is surrounded by craggy mountains that were shrouded in mist as our plane circled the city. It was difficult to see much of the landscape due to a general haze covering the city, either the effects of pollution or the general cloudy/haziness that indicates monsoon season in SE Asia. Hanoi was a bit odd looking from the air, not conforming to the general layout of large cities (usually one large patch of city clumped together), but a grouping of smaller patches, broken up by large plots of green land (rice fields), each section connected to the others by large highways. Interspersed within the small portions of the city are large lakes and ponds, giving the birds-eye viewer an erroneous idea that the city would be a bit more tranquil or idyllic due to the landscaping of the city, which includes so much nature. This is not the case, however, but more on the city in a bit…
As we were disembarking from the plane at 6:30 pm we were informed that it was 33 degrees Celsius in Hanoi, which any converter will tell you is around 90+ degrees Fahrenheit – darn hot! When the Vietnam interns visited us in Laos last week we had heard stories about the extreme heat of Hanoi (110+ degrees with humidity) and now I can personally attest to that fact as well. Vietnam is HOT! As we stepped out of the airport later it was difficult to breath in the heat and humidity of the night, a fact that freaked us out when we contemplated the upcoming days.
In order to enter Vietnam, any international traveler must apply for an entry visa at least two days ahead of their arrival date via the internet, paying a $20 processing fee at that time. I’m not quite sure what they need that information for, perhaps to check against their lists to see if you are allowed into the country, but in any case, every traveler to Vietnam must submit to this process. After they have looked over your information (name, date of birth, passport number, etc.) you receive two letters via email that allow you entry into Vietnam. We had printed these letters off in Laos and were ready when we reached the counter for “Visas upon Arrival.” We handed over the letters and our passports and after paying another $25 for our visa sticker itself (everything is very cheap in SE Asia except stickers evidently since they keep costing me so much!) we were off for a quick pass through immigration (to get stamps all over that expensive visa sticker) and to collect our baggage.
The Hanoi airport is located quite far from the main city of Hanoi, located in one of the outlying chunks of the city I mentioned above. Rather than deal with a taxi, which we had heard horror stories about (ripping customers off with extra charges or doctored meters), we had our guesthouse in the Old City Quarter send us a car. We found our driver immediately (the sign with Zenia’s name on it was a bit of a giveaway) and set off for an hour drive through Hanoi. Hanoi was a huge culture shock after the peace and tranquility of Laos and Vientiane. Hanoi is our first real big city that looks like any modern city you may find at home, but with a few quirks…
• Major highways look surprisingly similar to any highway you might find at home, but in the center divide between the two opposite lanes of traffic there are lights spaced every 15 feet or so. These lights change color constantly, fading from one to the next – green, blue, purple, red, yellow. It makes for a beautiful view of an otherwise ugly concrete roadway, giving the eye a little dash of color.
• There is so much traffic in this city on the main roads that people must drive in the proper lane or risk death. In addition, the drivers in Vietnam are without a doubt the worst drivers in all of SE Asia. The leading cause of death in Vietnam is motorbike accidents, which is not surprising as they drive like maniacs (just imagine everyone in a major metropolis driving drunk and you have an approximation of the driving in Vietnam) and their helmets are not real. In fact, their helmets are small plastic hats that would probably inflict more damage in a crash than simply hitting your head on the pavement.
• Hanoi is filled with an unceasing barrage of sound. Everyone here is constantly honking the horns of their buses, cars, motorbikes, or bicycles. It is impossible to find a quiet spot in this city as it is filled with an unceasing din of honks. As we first drove away from the airport we didn’t notice the noise and were instead captivated by our first view of a major highway in over two months and actual billboards on the sides of the road, all things we associate with cities from home. As we sped away from the airport, however, the noise rapidly became something we could not ignore. The traffic slowly increased and soon our driver was whipping the car around other vehicles and motorbikes at an alarming rate, blaring the horn on each pass. Soon other cars joined the race and the honking became an overwhelming wall of noise. In Hanoi, this is just a state of being. When we mentioned it to Bobby later he gave us a blank look and said, “What? The birds chirping?” Haha! Evidently the only way he can stay sane in this noise is to convince himself the honks are merely birds. Poor, sad, Bobby. :)
• Major roads in Hanoi have roundabouts every once in a while at intersections. Now, roundabouts in SE Asia are a constant puzzlement to me as there doesn’t seem to be any real rules that dictate how you use one. In Laos the roundabouts seem to work on a system that says the right-of-way belongs to the individual going straight through rather than around, but there is equal right to any road entering the roundabout. I’m only surprised that I haven’t seen a major accident at one yet as nobody appears to know what the heck they are doing. In Hanoi the roundabouts are a little different as they only alter the directions of the two inner lanes of the road, meaning the other lanes merely curve gently without being truly effected by the roundabout. We passed quite a few of these roundabouts, which often incorporated five or more lanes of traffic, and I could never figure out their true purpose as they didn’t really do anything to the traffic that I could see.
We arrived at our guesthouse, the Green Street Hotel in the Old City Quarter of Hanoi, at around 7:30 pm and managed to check in and refresh ourselves quickly before our Vietnam friends, Laura, Abbey, and Bobby, showed up to take us to dinner and dessert and for a little exploring of Hanoi. We ate dinner at a Vietnamese-tourist restaurant located on the main lake of Hanoi, Hoan Kiem. Hoan Kiem (“Lake of the Returned Sword”) is an interesting lake as it has quite a few legends attached to it. I will tell you my favorite…Sometime during the Chinese Ming Dynasty the emperor of Vietnam, Ly Loi, was given a magical sword by the gods to use in battle. With the help of the sword Ly Loi drove the Chinese out of Vietnam. Once the country was safe, Ly Loi came to Hoan Kiem and while he was standing by the shore of the lake a giant turtle (a god) came out of the water, grabbed the sword from his hand, and returned it to the depths of the lake where there was a gateway to heaven and where the sword normally resided. Today, there are still giant turtles in the lake, although they are endangered now.
So, we ate dinner looking out over the lake and enjoyed pseudo-Vietnamese food on our first night in Hanoi. After dinner we began walking around the lake and stumbled upon a place called “Fanny” that was recommended by Lonely Planet and many others. Fanny is an ice cream parlor that serves actual sorbet! This might not seem like such a big thing to you at home, but here it is a marvel. You see, most restaurants or dessert places (there aren’t many) claim to have “sorbet,” but what they actually have is ice cream with fruit in it. In a land this hot and humid it is torturous to watch others eat ice cream and other cool treats and be completely left out of the fun. But no more! While in Vietnam I had Fanny and I took glorious advantage, eating sorbet every day! :) I ate a single scoop of raspberry sorbet and nothing has tasted quite that good in a very long time. I savored every bite as slowly as possible, reveling in my first cool treat in months.
We returned to the Old Quarter after our eating extravaganza and relaxed at a bar for a little while before Laura, Abbey, and Bobby took off and Zenia and I returned to our guesthouse for some much needed rest in preparation for our big day exploring Hanoi on Friday.
The flight was easy and uneventful, the descent into the city allowing me my first look at Vietnam and Hanoi. The city of Hanoi is surrounded by craggy mountains that were shrouded in mist as our plane circled the city. It was difficult to see much of the landscape due to a general haze covering the city, either the effects of pollution or the general cloudy/haziness that indicates monsoon season in SE Asia. Hanoi was a bit odd looking from the air, not conforming to the general layout of large cities (usually one large patch of city clumped together), but a grouping of smaller patches, broken up by large plots of green land (rice fields), each section connected to the others by large highways. Interspersed within the small portions of the city are large lakes and ponds, giving the birds-eye viewer an erroneous idea that the city would be a bit more tranquil or idyllic due to the landscaping of the city, which includes so much nature. This is not the case, however, but more on the city in a bit…
As we were disembarking from the plane at 6:30 pm we were informed that it was 33 degrees Celsius in Hanoi, which any converter will tell you is around 90+ degrees Fahrenheit – darn hot! When the Vietnam interns visited us in Laos last week we had heard stories about the extreme heat of Hanoi (110+ degrees with humidity) and now I can personally attest to that fact as well. Vietnam is HOT! As we stepped out of the airport later it was difficult to breath in the heat and humidity of the night, a fact that freaked us out when we contemplated the upcoming days.
In order to enter Vietnam, any international traveler must apply for an entry visa at least two days ahead of their arrival date via the internet, paying a $20 processing fee at that time. I’m not quite sure what they need that information for, perhaps to check against their lists to see if you are allowed into the country, but in any case, every traveler to Vietnam must submit to this process. After they have looked over your information (name, date of birth, passport number, etc.) you receive two letters via email that allow you entry into Vietnam. We had printed these letters off in Laos and were ready when we reached the counter for “Visas upon Arrival.” We handed over the letters and our passports and after paying another $25 for our visa sticker itself (everything is very cheap in SE Asia except stickers evidently since they keep costing me so much!) we were off for a quick pass through immigration (to get stamps all over that expensive visa sticker) and to collect our baggage.
The Hanoi airport is located quite far from the main city of Hanoi, located in one of the outlying chunks of the city I mentioned above. Rather than deal with a taxi, which we had heard horror stories about (ripping customers off with extra charges or doctored meters), we had our guesthouse in the Old City Quarter send us a car. We found our driver immediately (the sign with Zenia’s name on it was a bit of a giveaway) and set off for an hour drive through Hanoi. Hanoi was a huge culture shock after the peace and tranquility of Laos and Vientiane. Hanoi is our first real big city that looks like any modern city you may find at home, but with a few quirks…
• Major highways look surprisingly similar to any highway you might find at home, but in the center divide between the two opposite lanes of traffic there are lights spaced every 15 feet or so. These lights change color constantly, fading from one to the next – green, blue, purple, red, yellow. It makes for a beautiful view of an otherwise ugly concrete roadway, giving the eye a little dash of color.
• There is so much traffic in this city on the main roads that people must drive in the proper lane or risk death. In addition, the drivers in Vietnam are without a doubt the worst drivers in all of SE Asia. The leading cause of death in Vietnam is motorbike accidents, which is not surprising as they drive like maniacs (just imagine everyone in a major metropolis driving drunk and you have an approximation of the driving in Vietnam) and their helmets are not real. In fact, their helmets are small plastic hats that would probably inflict more damage in a crash than simply hitting your head on the pavement.
• Hanoi is filled with an unceasing barrage of sound. Everyone here is constantly honking the horns of their buses, cars, motorbikes, or bicycles. It is impossible to find a quiet spot in this city as it is filled with an unceasing din of honks. As we first drove away from the airport we didn’t notice the noise and were instead captivated by our first view of a major highway in over two months and actual billboards on the sides of the road, all things we associate with cities from home. As we sped away from the airport, however, the noise rapidly became something we could not ignore. The traffic slowly increased and soon our driver was whipping the car around other vehicles and motorbikes at an alarming rate, blaring the horn on each pass. Soon other cars joined the race and the honking became an overwhelming wall of noise. In Hanoi, this is just a state of being. When we mentioned it to Bobby later he gave us a blank look and said, “What? The birds chirping?” Haha! Evidently the only way he can stay sane in this noise is to convince himself the honks are merely birds. Poor, sad, Bobby. :)
• Major roads in Hanoi have roundabouts every once in a while at intersections. Now, roundabouts in SE Asia are a constant puzzlement to me as there doesn’t seem to be any real rules that dictate how you use one. In Laos the roundabouts seem to work on a system that says the right-of-way belongs to the individual going straight through rather than around, but there is equal right to any road entering the roundabout. I’m only surprised that I haven’t seen a major accident at one yet as nobody appears to know what the heck they are doing. In Hanoi the roundabouts are a little different as they only alter the directions of the two inner lanes of the road, meaning the other lanes merely curve gently without being truly effected by the roundabout. We passed quite a few of these roundabouts, which often incorporated five or more lanes of traffic, and I could never figure out their true purpose as they didn’t really do anything to the traffic that I could see.
We arrived at our guesthouse, the Green Street Hotel in the Old City Quarter of Hanoi, at around 7:30 pm and managed to check in and refresh ourselves quickly before our Vietnam friends, Laura, Abbey, and Bobby, showed up to take us to dinner and dessert and for a little exploring of Hanoi. We ate dinner at a Vietnamese-tourist restaurant located on the main lake of Hanoi, Hoan Kiem. Hoan Kiem (“Lake of the Returned Sword”) is an interesting lake as it has quite a few legends attached to it. I will tell you my favorite…Sometime during the Chinese Ming Dynasty the emperor of Vietnam, Ly Loi, was given a magical sword by the gods to use in battle. With the help of the sword Ly Loi drove the Chinese out of Vietnam. Once the country was safe, Ly Loi came to Hoan Kiem and while he was standing by the shore of the lake a giant turtle (a god) came out of the water, grabbed the sword from his hand, and returned it to the depths of the lake where there was a gateway to heaven and where the sword normally resided. Today, there are still giant turtles in the lake, although they are endangered now.
So, we ate dinner looking out over the lake and enjoyed pseudo-Vietnamese food on our first night in Hanoi. After dinner we began walking around the lake and stumbled upon a place called “Fanny” that was recommended by Lonely Planet and many others. Fanny is an ice cream parlor that serves actual sorbet! This might not seem like such a big thing to you at home, but here it is a marvel. You see, most restaurants or dessert places (there aren’t many) claim to have “sorbet,” but what they actually have is ice cream with fruit in it. In a land this hot and humid it is torturous to watch others eat ice cream and other cool treats and be completely left out of the fun. But no more! While in Vietnam I had Fanny and I took glorious advantage, eating sorbet every day! :) I ate a single scoop of raspberry sorbet and nothing has tasted quite that good in a very long time. I savored every bite as slowly as possible, reveling in my first cool treat in months.
We returned to the Old Quarter after our eating extravaganza and relaxed at a bar for a little while before Laura, Abbey, and Bobby took off and Zenia and I returned to our guesthouse for some much needed rest in preparation for our big day exploring Hanoi on Friday.
Notes & Anecdotes
My dearest readers,
Another trip is soon coming our way. This very evening I am flying away from my beloved Laos to Vietnam for a weekend of touring Hanoi and Halang Bay! Zenia and I are very excited about our new trip, although we are a little nervous as we have heard that Vietnam is even hotter than Laos! Yes, indeed. The interns from Vietnam visited Laos last week and told us that the weather here was so much cooler than Vietnam that they actually felt comfortable standing outside at midday. Oh my…I am going to die from heat stroke. Luckily, Zenia and I have planned two wonderful days in Halong Bay, living on a “junk boat,” a traditional looking Chinese boat that is good for Bay cruising, and swimming all day long. I will come back with amazing new adventures to relate and another SE Asian country explored.
Before I leave for Vietnam, however, I want to relay a few notes and anecdotes from my previous travels that I think you will appreciate and that I forgot to include earlier…
1. SE Asia is the perfect land for the cheapskate. Not only is everything here cheap by American/Canadian/European standards, but this is a land without tipping. Yes, my friends. When you receive your bill in Thailand, leave the amount shown. When you go to pay in Laos, leave the extra behind in your wallet. Every meal costs just what the bill says and there is no need to pay any more. If you are cheap and don’t understand why tips are now required whenever you order food at home, come to SE Asia. *15% gratuity added to your bill for this information.
2. Stairs in SE Asia are a serious problem. Climbing any set of stairs in Thailand, Laos, or Cambodia is a test of ingenuity, strength, and balance. You see, in SE Asia, stairs are built without plan or design. Treads (the area where your foot is placed) may only have room to accommodate a child’s foot, forcing any normal adult to turn sideways to walk up and down the stairs. Stairs will vary in height, leading you to lunge up “one” step, a distance that would normally require three, on hands and knees, while taking a normal step up and skipping two in the next batch. And all the stairs are painted a dark color so that it is impossible to tell how steep the next step is going to be. Handrails are thought to be for wimps in this country and completely unnecessary. At the end of the day, if you can walk up and down a single set of stairs and not injure yourself in any major or permanent fashion, you’ve had a pretty good day.
3. Saem and Zenia are cover hogs. They steal the blankets and leave you to freeze. During our stay in Luang Prabang we discovered that the beds in Laos are HUGE. A “double bed” could easily fit all three of us. So, we determined that in Cambodia, we would just share a double and not spend the extra money on a “spare bed,” which turned out to be a sleeping pad for the floor. Therefore, Phnom Penh found the three of us sharing, Zenia and me on the outsides and Saem in middle. The night started out fine, each of us with plenty of space, able to roll over at will without bumping into the others. However, at around 2 am I awoke when my covers were being slowly tugged away from me. I grabbed the top sheet. It continued to slide out of my grip. I pulled harder and rolled myself over it. Slowly, I unrolled. I grabbed with all my might, yanked, and lost the sheet. Yes, I was sleeping with two blanket hogs. I rolled over and managed to sleep for another hour until the cold awoke me again. I cautiously leaned over, grabbed the edge of the sheet near Saem, and pulled. Simultaneously, Zenia and Saem growled at me in their sleep! I was so shocked I let go of the blanket and slid to the edge of the bed and out of, what I now called, the danger zone. At that point I gave up. I got out of bed, went over to the counter, grabbed a spare, dry towel from the stack for the next morning, and used that as a “blanket” for the rest of the night. My advice to you all when traveling in the future? Don’t sleep with a blanket hog unless you have a backup cover plan!
Another trip is soon coming our way. This very evening I am flying away from my beloved Laos to Vietnam for a weekend of touring Hanoi and Halang Bay! Zenia and I are very excited about our new trip, although we are a little nervous as we have heard that Vietnam is even hotter than Laos! Yes, indeed. The interns from Vietnam visited Laos last week and told us that the weather here was so much cooler than Vietnam that they actually felt comfortable standing outside at midday. Oh my…I am going to die from heat stroke. Luckily, Zenia and I have planned two wonderful days in Halong Bay, living on a “junk boat,” a traditional looking Chinese boat that is good for Bay cruising, and swimming all day long. I will come back with amazing new adventures to relate and another SE Asian country explored.
Before I leave for Vietnam, however, I want to relay a few notes and anecdotes from my previous travels that I think you will appreciate and that I forgot to include earlier…
1. SE Asia is the perfect land for the cheapskate. Not only is everything here cheap by American/Canadian/European standards, but this is a land without tipping. Yes, my friends. When you receive your bill in Thailand, leave the amount shown. When you go to pay in Laos, leave the extra behind in your wallet. Every meal costs just what the bill says and there is no need to pay any more. If you are cheap and don’t understand why tips are now required whenever you order food at home, come to SE Asia. *15% gratuity added to your bill for this information.
2. Stairs in SE Asia are a serious problem. Climbing any set of stairs in Thailand, Laos, or Cambodia is a test of ingenuity, strength, and balance. You see, in SE Asia, stairs are built without plan or design. Treads (the area where your foot is placed) may only have room to accommodate a child’s foot, forcing any normal adult to turn sideways to walk up and down the stairs. Stairs will vary in height, leading you to lunge up “one” step, a distance that would normally require three, on hands and knees, while taking a normal step up and skipping two in the next batch. And all the stairs are painted a dark color so that it is impossible to tell how steep the next step is going to be. Handrails are thought to be for wimps in this country and completely unnecessary. At the end of the day, if you can walk up and down a single set of stairs and not injure yourself in any major or permanent fashion, you’ve had a pretty good day.
3. Saem and Zenia are cover hogs. They steal the blankets and leave you to freeze. During our stay in Luang Prabang we discovered that the beds in Laos are HUGE. A “double bed” could easily fit all three of us. So, we determined that in Cambodia, we would just share a double and not spend the extra money on a “spare bed,” which turned out to be a sleeping pad for the floor. Therefore, Phnom Penh found the three of us sharing, Zenia and me on the outsides and Saem in middle. The night started out fine, each of us with plenty of space, able to roll over at will without bumping into the others. However, at around 2 am I awoke when my covers were being slowly tugged away from me. I grabbed the top sheet. It continued to slide out of my grip. I pulled harder and rolled myself over it. Slowly, I unrolled. I grabbed with all my might, yanked, and lost the sheet. Yes, I was sleeping with two blanket hogs. I rolled over and managed to sleep for another hour until the cold awoke me again. I cautiously leaned over, grabbed the edge of the sheet near Saem, and pulled. Simultaneously, Zenia and Saem growled at me in their sleep! I was so shocked I let go of the blanket and slid to the edge of the bed and out of, what I now called, the danger zone. At that point I gave up. I got out of bed, went over to the counter, grabbed a spare, dry towel from the stack for the next morning, and used that as a “blanket” for the rest of the night. My advice to you all when traveling in the future? Don’t sleep with a blanket hog unless you have a backup cover plan!
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Look Below
Hello, faithful readers! I have been informed by one among your rank that some of you may have been confused about my "apparent" lack of blogging recently. I assure you, this is not the case! In fact, I have been blogging, but I have been attaching the proper date to the blogs so they are being filed below the post on Vientiane's sandstorm. To find the "old posts," which document my trip to Cambodia, simply look at the list of posts on the left hand side of the page and click on the post you wish to read.
I hope this helps any who have been confused when their page opens to an old post. I simply thought it would be easier to understand what I was writing about if the post had the correct date. :) (Another idea from that delightful reader I previously mentioned.) So, have no fear! I have been posting and more are to come!
I hope this helps any who have been confused when their page opens to an old post. I simply thought it would be easier to understand what I was writing about if the post had the correct date. :) (Another idea from that delightful reader I previously mentioned.) So, have no fear! I have been posting and more are to come!
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