Hanoi

The flight from Da Nang airport to Hanoi was wonderful, after weeks of travelling on trains and buses it was a joy to get on a plane. It was a brand new Airbus A320 and we had exit isle seats. We felt like royalty.

When we got to Hanoi airport we decided to take the cheap option of catching the 5000 dong bus (US$0.40) instead of the expensive US$2 shuttle bus. This was fine, except it dropped us off at some random bus stop vaguely in the centre of Hanoi. After walking for 20 minutes we decided that we were miles away from where we wanted to be and hailed a taxi, which then drove the long way to where we wanted to go and ended up costing more than the shuttle. We were pretty grumpy with the taxi driver and ended up paying him less than what the meter said, and walking off in a huff.

We found ourselves an OK hotel to stay in and grabbed a bite to eat.

The next day we went exploring around Hanoi and found that there isn't actually that much to see. We had a look around the old quarter, where we were staying, which is full of narrow streets full of traders. Interestingly each street seems to have it's own trade and every shop in the street does the same thing. There's a metal work street, a paper street, a toy street, etc... very odd.

We then went for a walk around the lake in the centre of Hanoi and a quick bite to eat.

Hanoi is a typical busy Asian city with cars, bikes, scooters and motorbikes everywhere. Crossing the road involves picking a spot in the traffic where it is slightly less busy and then slowly walking across the road at a steady pace. Closing your eyes helps. The vehicles will then just drive around you. On no account stop, as this is the last thing anyone expects and will probably result in an accident!

The next day we went on a day trip to Tam Coc. We were the youngest on the mini bus by far!!! It was a really nice day though with the highlight being a 2 hour row down the river marvelling at the scenery. Basically Tam Coc is a river running through the rice paddy fields with huge limestone rocks jutting out of the ground. We were a bit worried at one stage as the man rowing our boat stopped (conveniently half way through and at the farthest point of where we needed to end up) and his wife proceeded to try and sell us things. She showed us bags, tea towels, even embroided tablecloths at which we gave our standard reply of "no thank you". there was a little bit of a stand off with no rowing, and no purchasing, but we finally gave in and purchased a pack of 10 postcards for $1. They were pretty dark with us but at least we made it back to the end!

The other interesting thing from the day was looking at the locals at various stages of their rice crop production. We saw people in the fields harvesting, right through to seeing the rice drying out on the side of the road. You think there would be somewhere better for them to do this as we saw people, chickens, and even dogs walking through the rice. I just hope a lot of processing goes into it all after this!.

We spent the next day in Hanoi again where we got out of bed early to go and see Ho Chi Minh.

'Uncle Ho' as Vietnamese people call him, has been preserved, and his actual body lies in a mausoleum in Hanoi that people can visit. There was the biggest queue I have ever seen to do this, with most being Vietnamese people who have made the trip. The line moved fairly quickly, luckily for Tony as he had a little old Vietnamese lady behind him who came up to the middle of his back. She literally stood 1mm from him and I think she was a bit excited about seeing 'Uncle Ho' as she even started pushing him at one stage. At least it made the time pass quickly giggling and playing games about how to inch forward in the queue. The body is amazingly preserved and it looks just like he is sleeping. We later went to the Ho Chi Minh Museum which is on the same grounds, although didn't really get much seeing as it was all in Vietnamese, and visited his old home (not that impressive either).

That evening we went to see the water puppets (which is just one of the things you do when you are in Hanoi). It's a puppet show performed in waist high water with the puppeteers hidden behind a screen and the poles the puppets are on hidden in the water. The whole thing was narrated in Vietnamese which made it a little hard to follow, but it was entertaining enough and worth every one of the two dollars it cost to go.

The next day we headed off for a three day trip to Ha Long Bay...