Hanoi, Vietnam (Post #80)
Hello from Vietnam!
Michele here…right now it’s 9:00pm in Hanoi, Vietnam (while it’s 9:00am U.S. East coast time, 6:00am West coast time). We had an easy 50 minute flight from Vientiene, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam on Tuesday, January 10th. Since we have been here we’ve talked to other backpackers who took the 30 hour-long bus ride (waiting at the Vietnam border for 6 hours) and let’s just say, we’re glad we flew. It also gave us great peace of mind to have a free airport pickup from our mini-hotel. I’ll explain what a mini-hotel is later but first – the story of our exciting ride from the airport into Hanoi’s Old Quarter. The car had 5 people in it. Our driver plus Mike and I and a couple from Belgium. Mike was sitting in the right front seat of the car and I was sitting in the rear right seat. We were all chatting away when all of a sudden, BANG! The sound was extremely loud, ear piercing in fact. Someone said, “Oh my God!” I thought a bullet had hit the car or the windshield where Mike was sitting. I looked at Mike and like everyone else, he was just saying, “What the…?!” so he didn’t appear hurt. I saw that the window by Mike and the window by me were both damaged and Mike said he could see in the rear view mirror that the car door was damaged. Once we realized everyone was o.k., we all sort of laughed and said, “Welcome to Vietnam!” When we arrived at the mini-hotel, none of us could really figure out what had hit the car. At first it looked like some sort of explosive because there was a kind of powder on the windows and both right side doors but upon closer look we saw the windows were more damaged than that, as if they had been side swiped by something. Another guess was that someone threw a large rock at the car since the side of Mike’s door was dented but Mike explained that he could tell by the marks on the windows that a large rock being thrown from the side of the road could not have made those scratches. In the end, none of us could figure out what had hit the car but the impact was extremely loud and it was quite alarming at the time.
It was a bit of a shock coming from laid-back Laos to busy Vietnam. As the Lonely Planet guidebook says, “Vietnam will rush you like a hundredd 110cc motorcycles”. So true. The streets are incredibly crowded with motor bikes of one type or another. For every 100 motor bikes (or motorcycles) there is one car. It’s also very pedestrian unfriendly since there is no room to walk on the sidewalk. The sidewalks are filled with parked motorbikes, and people cooking things, and shops spilling over into the streets. So, when you walk down the street, you literally walk down the street. So, Mike and I, plus women with pole baskets full of fruit or steamed rice walk down the middle of the street while motor bikes skillfully avoid us. There are few traffic lights or stop signs (at least in the part of town we are staying in) and when 20 motor bikes come from four different directions they all somehow avoid each other at the intersections – either that or else 80 motorbikes all stop at once. We’ve seen both things happen. Here is a picture of an intersection in Hanoi’s Old Quarter:
It’s also very difficult to cross the street here since there’s nothing to stop the traffic. However, we learned that you must walk in a very slow and predictable manner even if there are 80 motorcycles in 5 lanes of traffice coming your way. By walking in a slow, steady, pace, the motor bikes can easily steer around you. Today, we got caught off guard and two cars came at us at one time. Instead of panicing and making a mad dash towards the sidewalk, we stood absolutely still in the middle of a busy 4 lane road and one car went on each side of us. Whew! That was exciting! Another interesting thing that we read about in the guidebook that we have observed is how people settle disagreements. The police are apparently totally corrupt in Vietnam so it does very little good to go to them with a problem. Instead, people either physically fight or they get into loud animated arguements. Mike and I have witnessed both of these things too. For me, it’s very surprising to see women in a heated argument on the street. I think it might be surprising or entertaining for Vietnamese people as well since all the people on motor bikes pull over and watch the women argue too.
What have we done since we’ve been here? Well, not much. First, we got here late on Tuesday night so we just went down the street and ate dinner and went to bed. The next day (Wed, Jan 11th) Mike wasn’t feeling well and I didn’t feel that confident wandering around the city by myself so we stayed in most of the day. We are staying in a nice mini-hotel with cable TV (so we can stay caught up on Prime Minister Sharon’s health) and we get new towels everyday – wow! The hotel costs $9/night and it’s called a mini-hotel because there are two rooms on each floor and a total of 9 rooms. Mike and I have the only room on the 5th floor. There are many places like this in Hanoi. The buildings are tall and thin with many floors and like our hotel, they operate several business including guest house, restaurant, internet cafe, and travel agency. In fact, it’s incredible how many travel agencies there are. I am not exaggerating when I say there are at least 5 travel agencies on every block. The other thing is that apparently, you can name your travel agency the same thing as another (successful) travel agency. I have seen 10 Singha travel agencies, 3 A to Z Queen travel agencies, and there are several Kangaroo Cafe travel agencies. This makes it very difficult to find the real travel agency that is in the guidebook. So….(I know you can hear the story coming)…I went out with the intention of booking a 3 day, 2 night tour to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island with one of the 10 companies listed in the guidebook. However, there are so many travel agencies with the same names as the ones in the guidebooks that you can easily get confused about who you are booking with. Anyway, to make a long story short, I put down a deposit with a company that I think is not the company listed in the guidebook. As Mike pointed out, as long as they deliver the service they promise, who cares if it’s the real A to Z Queen Travel Agency or a fake one with the same name. Good point. Still, now I’m sort of worried about how our 3 day excursion will go.
We are scheduled to leave tomorrow morning to go to Halong Bay which is a body of water (technically the South China Sea) that has 3000 limestone islands jutting out of its turquoise water. The first night we will spend on the boat after zig zagging through the islands and the second night we will spend on Cat Ba Island in a hotel. I’ve seen pictures of the boat, the rooms on the boat, the hotel, and the rooms in the hotel, so it looks o.k. from the pictures. While on Cat Ba Island, we will do some hiking in the Cat Ba National Park before going kayaking (that’s what the brochure and the guy said so we’ll see). The third day we wander through the islands a bit more before coming back to Hanoi. (Check back later to find out how it all went down.) Once we get back to Hanoi (on Jan 15th) , we will take an overnight train to Hue, Vietnam. (Yea, I know we said we hated the overnight trains but all the flights were booked).
As if this blog isn’t long enough…I just want to finish by saying that we did, in fact, get out and do some sight seeing today here in the Old Quarter and we bought some nice bootleg (xeroxed) books. I also bought a good fake pair of sun glasses after I lost mine when we were tubing through a cave in Laos. I found it funny that the sun glass case I got with my glasses reads, “Ray-Ban Sung Lasses”.
O.k., gotta go to bed so that we can be ready to go to Halong Bay at 7:30am tomorrow. Bye!
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Tags: Category #22: Vietnam
Michele Harmon
I can just picture you both in the middle of the road! Reminds me of Rome Italy. Although they do have traffic lights. 🙂 What a hoot. I love all of your reports.