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We flew into Hanoi from Hue and although we stayed in
Hanoi itself we also visited a couple of other parts of Vietnam on
day-trips.
One of the nights in Hanoi we went to the Thang Long
Water Puppet Theatre. Here they have traditional music to accompany an
array of puppet shows that are controlled from behind a netting by
puppeteers who must have incredible skill and flexibility. The puppets
range from troops of dancers, to smoke-breathing, water-blowing dragons,
to processions of puppets that are so far from the curtain you have to
wonder how they manage to control them! Not only do these puppets have to
be held by a pole under the water from behind a curtain, but they
also interact with each other whilst moving around the water, picking
things up and taking things off each other. It really was an incredible
show.
From the puppet show we went to one of Vietnam's oldest
and traditional restaurants. It is that old and has such a reputation
that they actually named the street it was on after the restaurant. So
Cha Ca Street is home to Cha Ca La Vong Restaurant. Here they serve a
special fish dish first made by the Doan family in Hanoi over 100 years
ago. When you arrive, if you are hoping for a quite, romantic dinner you
will be disappointed! Intimate it is, romantic and private it is not!
You may well find yourself sharing a table with a couple from Hanoi, or
Iceland, either way you will have a fantastic experience and eat wonderful
food!
Once you have ordered your drinks a clay pot filled
with red hot coals is placed in between you with a pan containing fish and
some oil balanced on top. Then, various sized dishes are placed on the
table containing beansprouts, spring onions, sweet basil and coriander,
mixed green vegetables, peanuts, chillies and
rice noodles.
You then empty the mixed vegetables and whatever herbs,
etc, you want into the pan and mix it around until it cooks. In your bowl
you place some noodles, break up some peanuts into small pieces, add some
chilli and then put the pan mix on top. You then stir
it all up and scoff it down as quickly as your chopsticks allow! At any
point if you run out of anything they will gladly refill the bowls for
you, but more fish costs more money, the rest is free!
The first time we went, yes we loved it that much we
went back another night, we had no clue what we were meant to do and so we
watched what the locals did, but didn't ask for anymore food, we just ate
what we had and left. However, the second time, as we had watched other
people the first time, we felt more confident and after stirring in all
the right ingredients we held up our bowls and they were promptly
replenished, a couple of times! We even had a Japanese lady sat next to
us ask what she should do!
We did a city tour around Hanoi which was far more
interesting than Saigon. Firstly we went to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and
then walked around the Presidential Palace grounds and the place where Ho
Chi Minh lived and worked. We then walked to the One Pillar Pagoda and
around the Ho Chi Minh Museum. The queues for people paying their
respects to Ho Chi Minh can apparently be one to two kilometres long on
many occasion! We then walked around the Temple of Literature and after
having Shrimp Fishcakes for lunch by West Lake walked around Tran Quoc
Pagoda.
The final part of our city tour was a "cyclo" ride
around the old quarter which was fascinating. A cyclo is a back to front
Rickshaw but with a bicycle instead of a moped. The poor old guy peddling
me around had to get off a couple of times, when we crossed busy roads,
and push because he was too small to properly reach the peddles and I was
too heavy! Moving slowly around the tiny streets watching everyday life
go past was awesome. Frail looking ladies carrying more weight in fruit
than seems possible would almost sprint past us to get to the next
customer, whilst mopeds and pedestrians would weave seamlessly around each
other.
One of the first things we were told was not to run
across the roads like westerners do, but to walk slowly and let the
traffic drive around you! When you look at a road filled with cars,
buses, vans and hundreds of mopeds walking across it is a daunting task!
However, walking slowly works, they really do drive round you without any
shouting or gesticulating, the beep of the horn is simply to make sure you
have seen them and which way they are going.
The white lines on the road mean absolutely nothing in
Vietnam. We were coming back from Ha Long Bay one evening and heading
into town on a "dual" carriageway. However, as there was no central
reservation, or barrier, we suddenly realised that there were three lanes
of cars and buses coming towards us! This did not include the thousands
of mopeds that were zipping around the other traffic and driving at us
from all directions! Our driver meanwhile was trying to get across to the
one small lane we had left without killing the hundreds of mopeds drivers
going in our direction who were also being squeezed out the way!
During the middle of all this a huge thunderstorm
erupted and people then just stopped in the middle of the road, on
bridges, and anywhere else you can think of that was not sensible, to put
on rain jackets, without warning! What they didn't do was stop using
their mobile phones! They drive in traffic like I have described, the
wrong way down the road, in a thunderstorm and one in three of them was
still either texting or calling someone! Nutters!
One of the trips we did from Hanoi was to head 160
kilometres north-east to Ha Long Bay, northern Vietnam's biggest
attraction and classed as one of the natural wonders of Asia. "Ha Long"
means "Where the Dragon Descends into the Sea." The reason it got the
name is because the islands that are dotted all around the bay are meant
to represent the scales on the dragon's back. They class Ha Long Bay as a
marine "mountain range" as there are approximately 3000 islands
stretching over a distance of more than 100 kilometres. We stayed for
about four hours, but our guide told is it would take four days to fully
explore the hidden caves, lagoons and beaches in the area. We did see the
floating village, some incredible caves and strange rock formations
though!
The other trip from Hanoi was to a place called Ninh
Binh, this time travelling 65 kilometres south-west from Hanoi. From here
we took a canoe to a place called Tam Coc, known as "Ha Long Bay on the
rice paddies" because of the huge rock formations surrounding the rice
fields along the Ngo Dong River. Ngo Dong means "Three Caves" and comes
from three caves (funnily enough) that the river has eroded through the
rocks which you have to pass through to get to Tam Coc.
Once we got to Tam Coc we were financially raped by our
two canoe rowers, who demanded we pay for the food and drinks they took
from a lady selling stuff on another canoe! We had a bottle of
water between us and she tried to charge us US$10. When I showed her that
we only had about US$7 on us and tried to make her take back the drinks
and food she took $5, but as the two crooks on our canoe had already
opened the stuff we "bought" we had no choice anyway! The cheeky
sods then tried, on the way back, to get us to buy some souvenirs and
looked disgusted that we didn't want any! Finally, as we got close to
Ninh Binh again they demanded a 20,000 Dong tip each! I took out all the
money I had left, 36,500 Dong, and just placed it on the seat before
stepping out of the canoe and walking off in total shock!
We genuinely loved the canoe trip, ignoring the cheek
and audacity of the people, as the scenery and tranquillity
of the place was amazing and worth the appalling behaviour of the locals.
When we spoke to our guide about it he knew exactly what had happened and
explained that it happens all the time! In which case, why didn't he warn
us?
From Ninh Binh we also went on another boat trip to
Kenh Ga Floating Village, although it isn't strictly a floating village,
as many of the people live in the village on the banks of the river and
the network of waterways running through it. However, it was again a
fantastic journey, past fishermen and rice workers, through a floating
bridge that connects the two sides of the village and seeing the locals
who live and run their lives on boats.
Both the trips from Hanoi had great journeys to and
from the destinations as you got to see everyday life along the way,
working in the fields and trading produce at the side of the road. The
other thing to mention is the houses in Vietnam. They are taxed on the
width of their houses, so they are all extremely narrow, but very long and
on anywhere between three and six levels! Many of the houses in the old
quarter have converted the ground floor into shops, some even two shops
which makes getting into them to look round virtually impossible,
especially for westerners! Therefore they put all the goods on hooks
outside the shops and if you want something from inside they normally
bring it out for you!
We are glad we came to Vietnam and saw the history and experienced the
culture, but unlike the other countries we have been to in Asia, we are
also happy to leave. It was easily the least favourite of any of the
countries that we have been to, not just in Asia, but everywhere. |