Hanoi and Ha Long

We arrived at the Hanoi airport late in the afternoon on the 28th. When we reached the baggage claim, we found an unguarded, unsloped, unedged conveyor belt at knee level. I was presented with an opportunity I had been waiting a lifetime for. Here's the video link (same as at the end of the Hong Kong post).

Following a lovely trip around with the luggage (which was greeted with a strange mix of conspiring grins and disapproving scowls) we hopped a minibus into town. After we checked in at our hotel, we went on a little wander to check out the Old Quarter. It was late and we were peckish. We couldn't decide what to eat so we found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant filled with locals where a herd of boys led us upstairs and pointed at another pair of locals who were grilling up some assortment of meats and veggies on a skillet attached to the table. At first we were a bit perturbed by the boys cutting up the meat with scissors, but the meal turned out to be delicious and alot of fun, not to mention costing us less than three dollars.

The next morning we began a more thorough exploration of Hanoi. On our wander we had some tea on the sidewalk sitting around on 6 inch stools with the rest of the populous; seven cents a glass. Then we tried pieces of pineapple on a stick, covered in spice, and it was great too. I love street food. Unfortunately, I can't remember or write about every one of the little treats we tried (fried sweet potato pancakes, fried bananas, little baguette sandwiches, etc.) but they're a tasty way to learn about a culture.

That day we walked around Hoan Kiem Lake (in the center of the Old Quarter) whose name means "The Lake of the Restored Sword," as was called such due to the legend of Emperor Le Loi. The emperor had a sword which lead him to victory again the Chinese Ming Dynasty after they invaded the country. The legend says that a magical turtle had given him the sword, and one day, long after his military success, he was on a boat in the lake and a magical turtle came up out of the water, reclaimed the sword, and returned down into the lake.

The Tortoise Tower was built in the center of the lake and has become a symbol of the city. The Ngoc Son Temple was also built on the lake to honor a great military leader, but it also serves as a home for a preserved tortoise of the type which dwells in the lake.

Following the lake, we went to see the Hoa Lo Prison Museum which was quite distressing, but simultaneously fascinating. It was built by the French colonists in the middle of the 19th Century to hold rebellious Vietnamese and then was used during the Vietnam War (called the American War here) to hold captured American troops. The prisoners ironically nicknamed it the Hanoi Hilton and the irony lives on because besides a small section which now holds the museum, the rest of the prison was eventually bulldozed to construct a hotel. It was heart wrenching to see the miserable conditions in which the prisoners lived and the drastic escape plots that some of them brought to fruition (most of these involved crawling through wastewater outlet pipes). Our next stop was a more pleasant one at the Temple of Literature, built in 1070AD as a shrine to Confucius.

I have described temples many times over and this was like most except that in place of the Buddha and other religious icons were teachers and scholars. There was also a library and dormitory and, like may places of importance, a drum and bell. By the time we left the Temple, dusk was enshrouding the city, and we went for a stroll to locate some food. We had picked a restaurant out of our guidebook, but on the way there, we passed through a lovely snack street and decided to pick a place there. We scouted out a massive buffet, and after they (non-verbally) walked us through the process of selecting food and having it heated up, we ordered quite a bit and it was brought over to us on our stools. We didn't know what we were eating, but most of it was delicious! I try not to think about the high possibility of some of the meat being dog. Alas. Then, with our stomachs full, we meandered over to St. Joseph Cathedral. We arrived just in the nick of time, to see it beautifully lit up after a service.

The following day, during our free hotel breakfast, we met a lovely friend named Victoria. After chatting briefly, the three of us went to investigate costs of tours to Ha Long Bay during which we decided to take the trip together. After that, Matt and I found a taxi driver to carry us to the Museum of Ethnology for 60,000 VND (less than 4USD). We traveled for a few minutes before he pulled over and pointed to a museum which seemed to us too close to the town center and with a surprising amount of military debris in the courtyard. Matt stayed in the cab trying to communicate with the driver as I went into the museum in a failed attempt to find an English speaker. Despite the lack of actual proof that we were in the wrong spot, and not being able to find the exact name of the place we wanted to go on the driver's map, we managed to convey that we knew he was trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Several minutes later, we arrived at the Museum of Ethnology with a feeling of triumph.

The museum was lovely and comprehensively described the lifestyle of many minority groups of Vietnam. It was fascinating to see how they had all adapted to their surroundings and the differences between customs of each group. We saw how certain tribes make clothing out of pummeled tree bark and the ritual ceremonies of others. Outdoors there were full-scale replicas of village homes to show the differences in architecture among the various groups. We stayed at the museum for several hours before heading back to the Old Quarter. After a little rest, we headed out into town in search of a cheap massage (very plentiful in this part of the world) but first stumbled upon a lovely street market and browsed before locating our desired end. The massages were wonderfully inexpensive but involved some interesting techniques such as punching (and the tiny masseuse was much stronger than she looked), knuckle cracking, toe pulling, hair combing and, most surprisingly, the masseuse leaping up on the table and straddling me to massage my back. Feeling slightly beaten and confused, Matt and I ambled back to the hotel for bed.

The following day, Matt, Victoria and I hopped on our tour bus to Ha Long City and then scrambled onto the boat. After ages of jostling the other boats (since we were basically triple parked in and surrounded by a TON of other identical ships) we finally got out to the open water. It was a bit hazy, but the bay was still beautiful with karst islands sporadically jutting up from the green water. And in certain protected coves, leeward of the larger islands, were villages composed of floating homes, floating schools, and floating fish farms. I saw groups of kids playing, each in their own rowboat, and some of the kids were (my guess:) as young as four! And meanwhile, the family guard dogs ran deftly around the narrow, wooden, bobbing edges of the fish pens barking. It was incredible to see a life totally based on water (ironically, they have to import the drinking water).

Our first stop was the "Surprising Cave," where we saw an expansive dry cavern with any number of stalactite and stalagmite formations, which our guide Ba pointed out looked like (someone has spent WAY too much time in there) a dragon, a woman with long hair, noodles, phallic symbol, frogs, etc. After the cave, we headed back to the boat to change into swimsuits. We hopped onto kayaks and had a blast exploring all the little caves, coves, through tunnels, and islands nearby. I must say that there's little upper-body exercise where you're travelling and it felt fantastic to get out on the water and work against the breeze for a while. For a 360 degree view of the bay, please check the video link here.

When we got back to the boat, we showered and had a very welcome dinner. Following dinner, we all chatted about everyone's favorite local snacks. I don't know how it came to be the topic of discussion, but it was quite fun to to learn how delicious stroopwafels (Dutch) are with tea and how foreigners don't know how to properly eat marmite (Australian). After a couple of hours of chatting, it was still only eight o'clock and we were all exhausted. After a few card games, and still fading, we decided to start celebrating all the New Years as they rolled around. First it was Central Australia, then Japan, and finally China before we got to celebrate ours in Vietnam. It was a fitting ceremony for such an international crowd.

The following day was gorgeous and clear but still too chilly to swim. As we sat out in the breeze, we kept hip-hip-hooraying for every country on the hour. We had a lovely morning cruising around through Bai Tu Long Bay before we returned to Ha Long Bay for lunch and hopped the bus back to Hanoi. That entire evening was a minor disaster. Even at dinner, the waitress delivered my food to someone else and when I pointed it out, she picked up the partially eaten food and tried to give it to me. Then when we returned to our old hotel, they said someone had called them and said we weren't coming back that night (fibbers!). It took Matt, Victoria, and me ages to find a half decent place with a couple of rooms.

The following morning, Matt bought us some train tickets. We only had time for a short wander through a local market that sold pershible goods (everything from fish to flowers) before we headed to the station and hopped on the train.

The pictures in this post are: busy motorbike traffic, the magic turtle, the drum at the Temple of Literature, buffet dinner, ethnic minority house at the Ethnology Museum, the Surprising Cave (please note the size of the steps in the picture), a floating village and other sleeper boats viewed from the entrance of the cave, and two shots of rocky outcrops in Ha Long Bay.