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Other entries in Hanoi

068 - Hanoi, Vietnam

We chose to fly to Hanoi in 50 minutes rather than take the 22 hour bus journey. Airport taxes, taxis back and for from the airport, checking in times and baggage reclaim times sometimes put a dampener on flying. These hidden costs and times escalate when you fly but it is difficult to put a price on the aches and pains of bus journeys. My dodgy looks attracted the attention of the communist officials at the Hanoi airport. I was pulled out of the passport queue for further questioning. Luckily I don't possess an Anti-communist T-shirt or an Al Quida membership card. A minor irritation later, I was out with the others in Hanoi, Vietnam.



We had a little wait for the minibus to fill before leaving for town. Pretty much all transport in Vietnam is state owned and these buses don't budge until they are full. An elderly English gentleman among us led a minor rebellion by telling the driver we would be getting a taxi unless the bus departed immediately. I saw this as a pointless exercise because we had already paid for the tickets but I was wrong. They listened to this guy and off we went.



Hanoi was over run by thousands of motorbikes. In fact, there are 4 million people in Hanoi and 2 million motor cycles, but I didn't see all 2 million of them thankfully. There didn't seem to be any rules. Riders did everything and anything on two wheels. Strangely for an Asian country, there weren't any Tuk-Tuks. Our bus driver told us the name of the hotel we had requested had changed. It was much later that we discovered that he had taken us to a completely different hotel. It wasn't too bad, I guess he was on commission.



In the afternoon, we wasted some time by walking to the railway station. Time is never wasted according to Julie, this was a good walking tour of the squalor and good crossing the road practice. Our next stop was the Hanoi prison – sometimes referred to as the Hanoi Hilton. If the literature is to be believed, the French invaders treated Vietnamese freedom fighters with extreme cruelty and many years later the American aggressors were treated so well here that they even exchanged presents with prison guards on their departure.



After walking back to the hotel to wash off the buckets of sweat we went to see the almost legendary (?) water puppets show. It was a cultural experience, performed in Vietnamese telling the story of life in farms, dancing with buffalos and wrestling with dragons while two women screeched in a high pitched voice. Back at the hotel, we treated ourselves to a western cultural delight in the form of Ben Affleck in Dare Devil. I don't know which was worse.



Next morning, we got a taxi to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. The driver dropped us off at the end of mile long queue for locals. Nearly an hour later, we got to the point where foreigners were joining the queue. We put that down to experience. Next time we see a dead man sleeping we will look for a shorter queue. After having Maximum's all day big breakfast at an Australian café for lunch, we went to an aircraft museum. Many MIGs (no super fast biggies – only up to MIG 21) and massive transport and attack helicopters were parked in a large park. They weren't guarded very well, the local children used this place as a play ground and were climbing all over the aircraft.



Our taxi driver was kind enough to wait for us and made the most of his time by adjusting his meter to the dumb tourist extortionate rate. Once we got on, the meter started to roll like I had pulled the lever on a one armed bandit slot machine. Once we got to the oldest pagoda in Hanoi we decided to ditch him.



Feeling a bit adventurous, we went back to the hotel on a three wheeled bicycle called a cyclo. To be in the thick of it as the traffic rushed past us in all directions was not for the faint hearted. We felt bad about him struggling with our combined weight of 20 stone but not enough to get off.



After dinner and a long wait, we made our way to the railway station to get the over night train to Hue. Our first class sleeper was a room with 2 sets of bunk beds. We slept on the top bottom two bunks and the top two were taken up by two Belgian girls. Julie hates me making generalisations about butch girls with short hair – so I won't say they looked like something that rhymes with tykes.



The money for the train was well worth it because we had a good night's sleep and arrived without the aches and pains associated with a bus journey. Needless to say, we also save on the hotel fee for a night.

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