Hanoi: Good Morning Vietnam!

After just over 3 weeks in China and Hong Kong, I finally headed into Southeast Asia, where my first stop would be Hanoi, Vietnam. My flight was a rather frustrating one; they changed my gate at the last minute leaving Hong Kong, then the flight was delayed while we waited for several lost passengers, and when we finally arrived, I waited over an hour for my bag to come through. After about 40 minutes waiting, as other passengers from my plane began to peel off with their bags, I was starting to sweat. Having lost my bag once before, when flying out to Honduras, baggage claim is always a nerve-wracking wait for me. Thankfully, it did eventually appear, and the relief of seeing my bulging gray and red backpack emerge onto the conveyor belt was wonderful. I caught a taxi from the airport into central Hanoi, and after about 20 minutes the fear of being robbed or swindled somehow died down. It took about an hour to get to my hostel and when I arrived I quickly discovered that I'd managed to mess up the booking. I booked a lot of hostels for the trip, a long time ago, and apparently for this one I had failed to change the month when selecting dates (which is automatically set to the current month), so I'd unwittingly booked a room for July, rather than December. Oops! Thankfully the hostel had space for me, but only a private room, which I was happy to accept rather than try looking elsewhere - at least in Vietnam a private room only cost me about ten pounds!

I settled in a little and brought my tablet down to the common area to enjoy a cold can of coke and catch up on emails. It seemed a little unfriendly at first, but after about 20 minutes one of the members of staff emerged with a cake and explained that it was one of the guest's birthday's that night, so we all sang happy birthday to him and enjoyed a slice of cake, and after that the atmosphere improved a lot and we all got chatting. I ended up befriending a British couple and we went out for a few beers and dinner that evening. We started out with a stroll (if you can call it that in Hanoi's old quarter, where you are constantly dodging motorbikes, stray dogs and street vendors) down to the small lake nearby, which was very pretty at night. After that we headed back up into the old quarter to try and track down a bar that the hostel had recommended me, where they serve local beer that is apparently 'made' fresh daily. I'm not quite sure what that means, but we wanted to give it a try. After a fair bit of meandering, and a lot of map-checking, we found the right street, and as we approached number 26 we found not so much a bar as a bunch of children's plastic furniture arranged outside a fairly run-down building. There were lots of locals sat eating and drinking, and a few westerners, and we saw a sign for the Bia Hoi which we were looking for, so we decided to go for it. The beer was 15p a pint, and not half bad. It had a slightly nutty taste to it. It was clearly quite drinkable, as we got through 3 pints each. We opted not to stick around there for dinner, though, and instead walked a couple of streets up to a restaurant, also recommended by the hostel. The restaurant was quite nice (a little basic if you aren't used to Asia) and the food was delicious and very cheap. I had my first taste of real Vietnamese spring rolls (which were amazing!), and between us we shared sweet and sour pork, fried noodles and pork ribs. By this point it was getting fairly late, and my new friends had an early start the following morning so we returned to the hostel and went to bed. 

The next day I checked out of the hostel and headed across town to my new accommodation - a 2-star hotel organised by the Intrepid group I would be joining for the next 2 weeks in Vietnam. This was a sort-of-tour; accommodation and transport included but with a lot of independent free time and lots of optional activities to dip in and out of. At this point I was having some serious second thoughts about whether this kind of travel was for me; I'd been enjoying the freedom of lone travelling, although it did seem an attractive option to travel with other people and not to have to worry about navigating train and bus stations alone. I figured I'd at least give it a try. So I checked into the hotel and met my new roommate Sylvia before heading out alone for the afternoon to explore some more of Hanoi. The hotel was right next to the Temple of Literature, so I started my sight-seeing there. This was originally where scholars would come to study, and the grounds were packed with new graduates dressed in their gowns and mortar boards taking photos with their new diplomas. The Temple of Literature was beautiful and very ornate, with lots of gold statues of Confucious and some of the Kings of Vietnam. 

After a good wander around inside, I left the Temple of Literature and walked north to check out the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex. It was only a few blocks away, and the roads were relatively easy to navigate. I had been warned by other travellers that the roads were hellish, and although they were very busy with motorbikes, the traffic felt far more laid back and less aggressive than China. I found the One Pillar Pagoda, which was pretty and looked very old. I got distracted taking photos of some very cute little squirrels that were running around in the trees next to the Pagoda.

After that I found myself drawn to a large, white, official-looking building nearby, that turned out to be the Ho Chi Minh museum. For the very reasonable price of 15,000 dong (less than 50p), I enjoyed a fairly pleasant stroll around the museum, which was dominated by an imposing statue of the man himself. Several of the exhibits were only in Vietnamese, but the time-line of his life was very interesting. I didn't spend to long there, as I was hoping to visit the mausoleum as well. When I came out I was immediately hassled by a extremely happy, friendly, elderly Vietnamese man who began the standard thinly-veiled sales tactic of asking about my day, where I was from and whether I like Vietnam, followed, without fail by, "oh and by the way, I can give you a guided tour of the city for a very reasonable price, just hop on the back of my moto". I politely declined, as usual, but I did gain one useful piece of information from the encounter - the mausaulem is only open in the morning. I actually already knew this, I remembered as soon as he said. 

So, instead I decided to wander back towards the hotel, stopping off at a shopping street that was marked on my map, and hopefully finding some food along the way. I didn't have to walk very far before finding a nice cafe where I got a sandwich and cold drink. It was right next to the flag tower, so after I ate I had a quick look at that and stumbled upon a load of old american tanks and fighter planes - the outdoor portion of the Hanoi war museum. It was free to look at the war debris outside, as well as the exhibits inside, so I checked it out. This was my first of many tastes of the Vietnam war (or the American war, as they call it) from the other side - the side we aren't taught about at school in the UK.

That evening at 6pm I met the rest of the group I would he travelling with for the next 10 days, and we enjoyed a delicious dinner together at a restaurant in the old quarter, and a few drinks before bed. The group seemed nice, if a little older than I expected, but I was already feeling that a group trip might not be right for me, especially after over a month of travelling by myself, with complete autonomy. That meal came to a rather less pleasant end when the waiter accused me of trying to leave without paying, which wasn't the case, although after a while my tour guide stepped in and vouched for me and we were allowed to leave.

The next day we got up bright and early for the 4 hour drive to Halong bay. The weather started out bad and as we drove it only got worse. Along the way we stopped to see the traditional methods for making pottery; painting and sculpting the elegant designs by hand was done with incredible speed and accuracy. Finally, we arrived at Halong bay around lunchtime and boarded a boat to Cat Ba island. We had a nice lunch on the boat and tried to enjoy the scenery, but the weather was apauling - gray skies and choppy water peeping through between heavy rain and harsh, cold winds. About halfway into the boat journey we stopped to see the Dau Go cave formation. It was quite impressive and rather beautiful, although somewhat spoilt by tacky, multi-coloured illuminations. Coming out the rain had stopped, temporarily, and I saw a sea-eagle souring over head.

It was clear that halong bay would have been very beautiful in better conditions; hundreds of small, foliage-covered islands jut out of the water in interesting shapes and one famous island, known as murial island, is almost perfectly square in profile, thus reassembling a murial. Unfortunately, the weather continued to disappoint, and we arrived at Cat Ba island around 5pm feeling cold, wet, and rather hard-done-by. That evening we went for dinner together again, and I indulged in a little western cuisine in the form of one of the best pizzas I've ever tasted, followed up by a delicious chocolate cake. We found a nearby bar for a few happy hour drinks before bed. 

The next day the weather had cleared and on the ferry back to the mainland we enjoyed Halong bay as it is meant to he viewed - lush, green islands protruding out of deep-blue sparkling water. The drive back to Hanoi was another 4 hours but we stopped off once to buy some handmade art and have lunch in a small restaurant. I rather extravagantly bought a beautiful lacquer painting, and resolved to post some of my increasingly bulky selection of souvenirs back to England the following day.

That evening we went out for another group dinner in the old quarter, and after dinner a few of us were convinced by some very enthusiastic bar staff to check out the opening of the bar next door, enticed by the promise of free shots. There were indeed free shots, as well as fairly cheap drinks and shisha ...  we had several beers before moving on to cocktails. It was nice to see a bar with a fairly even mix of westerners and locals, and I chatted to a few German guys (and tried some of their shisha), and later hung out and danced with a big group of locals. Then more free shots appeared, this time sambucca, and more drinking and dancing. I took a lot of very cool photos with my new friends. By the time the bar closed I was more than a little merry, and me and the two remaining people from my group got a taxi back to the hotel. As I climbed out of the taxi I suddenly realised my camera - the little compact one I take on nights out - was gone. I had been so careful with it all night, but the last 20 minutes were a bit of a blur, I must have either dropped it then at the bar, or left it in the taxi. I turned back to check in the taxi, but it had already driven off. Thankfully I had only lost 1 night of photos, and my smallest memory card, but I was upset to have lost the photos from one of my best nights out so far. 

I awoke the next morning late, feeling a little worse for wear. I had missed breakfast, so I dragged myself out of the hotel and walked to the west lake, the largest in Hanoi, about half an hour north of my hotel. The lake was quite nice, but nothing special, although there was a pretty temple surrounded by enormous plastic lillies floating in the lake. I bought an overpriced banana which made me feel a little better, and then started to walk south east towards the old quarter. The walk was relatively quiet, but it was immediately apparent when I entered the old quarter - the streets narrowed, the number of motorbikes doubled, and I was surrounded by bustle and an overwhelming concoction of smells and sounds. I wandered through the old quarter for a little while before heading to the post office where I was pleasantly surprised to find I could post over 1kg of souvenirs back to the UK for just under £10. Then I hastily ate some lunch before meeting back up with the group for a traditional water puppet show. I bought a ticket but we had over half an hour to wait and the guide told me where the bar was that we had been the previous night, so I decided to walk over and see if my camera had miraculously turned up. The bar was a complete mess when I got there - clearly it had been a successful opening night! Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, my camera was nowhere to be seen, so I left the business card of my hotel with the friendly Aussie owner incase he found it later in the clean up, and left with no real expectation of ever seeing it again. 

The water puppet show cheered me up, though - for about an hour I watched a series of short shows involving traditional puppets, controlled under the water by skilled puppeteers hidden behind a screen. The show was very cute and quite impressive in places. 

After the show I had a couple of hours to kill before catching the night train to Hue, so I decided to try and squeeze in one more attraction that I had wanted to see - an old prison turned museum, that had famously been dubbed the Hanoi Hilton by American prisoners of war when they were released, on account of how pleasant the conditions had been during their stay. It was, as expected, a fairly depressing attraction, with about half the museum dedicated to the appauling conditions experienced by Vietnamese prisoners during the French occupation, and the other half showing how well the Vietnamese authorities treated their American prisoners. 

Finally, I headed back to the hotel, stocked up on supplies for the overnight train and headed to the station with the group. The station was pretty basic, and far less security conscious than my experience of Chinese train stations, and we boarded the train almost immediately. One major bonus of being in a group was that this time, I was not sharing a cabin with strangers. The setup was similar; four beds per cabin and two toilets (some western) per carriage, with a restaurant carriage at one end of the train, and a free supply of boiling water to make tea, coffee and instant noodles. I had my noodles and a couple of beers with the group before going to bed. We arrived around 8am the following morning in Hue, south of the capital.