Dodging Motos in SE Asia

I was recently in SE Asia with my wife and daughter for what has become our annual international vacation. We started taking these trips with our daughter a couple of months before she turned two and she would celebrate her fifth birthday on this last one. As we were anticipating this vacation and telling people about it we were often greeted with a look shock from many people and even a "wow" every now and then at the idea that we would take a five-year-old to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Some people were impressed by us, others thought we were crazy. I think the ones who thought we were crazy didn't think we had really thought it through really well. But we had quite a bit. Before this trip our girl had been on four foreign vacations and in a total of eight countries, all in Europe but having taken a step in to Asia by being in Istanbul.

In all the traveling we've done with her she has been fantastic and easy on the flights and pretty much all aspects of the trip. Sure she gets tired and cranky on occasion but that can happen at home, too. Having done the 12-hour flight to Istanbul and back with no problem we figured we were ready to up our game with our choice of vacation destinations. And my wife, who traveled much more than me when she was younger, really wanted to get out of the Europe trend we'd been in since our daughter was born..

My wife and I had gone to this part of the world as our last trip before trying to have a kid, six years earlier, so we knew what we were getting in to. Sure SE Asia is a hectic place, but it is also so beautiful and full of wonderful people.

But there was one part of the trip that maybe confirmed our craziness for taking a five-year-old to this part of the world. They drive like lunatics over there.

It is really hard to explain to people who have never been to this part of the world just what the driving is like. If you go to cities like New York, Chicago, or Boston and think that the driving is insane there you have no idea how much worse it can be. The best description I've ever been able to come up with is imagining you are on a crowded New York City sidewalk with all the people weaving back and forth and going around each other, coming within millimeters of one another, getting out of an oncoming person's way just before you would bump in to each other. Now imagine that with everyone on cars, motorbikes, and bicycles instead of walking.

Nowhere that I've been is it any worse than Hanoi. And it got worse since we were there six years ago. Sure traffic was bad with all the motorbikes but when you got off the main thoroughfares you could usually find some breathing room on small streets like in the charming Old Quarter. Not any more. Traffic seems to be a constant flow on those small streets just like in the more urban looking parts of the city. And a lot more of the vehicles are cars (as opposed to motorbikes) now that more and more Vietnamese can afford them.

This makes crossing the street very tiring, especially when you are trying to do it with a five-year-old. We spend so much time as parents trying to train our kid the rules of crossing the street only to have to throw them out the window. I explained to her that we she had to hold our hands and when we said "go" to just start walking and don't stop for any reason. Telling her that when there are motorbikes and cars coming at us they will swerve around us. Rightly, she looked at me like I was crazy.

I had such a great memory of how charming Hanoi was when I visited before but that's been replaced by sheer hatred of the place. It is just exhausting to be there. Luckily we were only there for one day as a stopover on our way to Hoi An. We were staying away from the bigger cities on this trip and after the stay in Hanoi I knew we made the right decision. And a big reason that Hoi An was one of my favorite places - on top of the fact it is a charming town with lots to do and see - is that for several parts of the day the Old Town section is closed to motorized vehicles. The calm it creates in contrast to the chaos of the traffic is as wonderful as being in a typical European pedestrian plaza.

It is as crazy as Hanoi all over this part of the world. There is no sense that there are any rules to follow. Major roads are clearly marked with solid or broken lines to indicate a passing or no-passing zone but they are completely ignored. Drivers will pass going in to blind curves without giving it a second thought.  They will also begin an overtake even if there is oncoming traffic only 100 yards away. The right-of-way rule seems to be whoever is bigger gets their way. It is like the bully on the playground method of traffic control. For instance, there was an oncoming truck that started flashing his lights at the car we were in on a trip between Hoi An and My Son, telling our driver to make way from about 200 yards away. Except that the truck was the one that was passing and was in our lane. But if we hit him, we would lose.

This applies to pedestrians as well. No way should you assume that if crossing the street at an intersection with a stoplight that the cross traffic will stop when they have the red. You should assume they won't.

This of course was not new to us since we had been there before. We knew the traffic and driving there would be crazy, that people in these countries were nutty and aggressive drivers. But one thing did change in the time we had last been there:

They all have freaking smart phones now!

Holy shit, if you thought driving under the influence of smart phones was bad in the States...well...you ain't seen nothin'. I was biking between the beach and town in Hoi An and a guy came by me on a motorbike while casually texting, face buried in the phone, while within centimeters of me. This was a common sight, drivers texting while swerving around pedestrians and other vehicles, sometimes while driving a motorbike with their toddler child between their legs.

Probably the most bizarre/hilarious/frightening example was during our ride between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia, for which we had hired a driver to take us on the four-to-five hour trip. While our driver was in the middle of passing another car at about 60 km/h on the patchy narrow highway (I use that term lightly) with oncoming traffic in sight he decided that would be a perfect time to take a picture of the sunset happening to our left. I suppose it is nice to see someone still appreciates the beauty of his country enough to snap a photo of a nice sunset. It was a really nice sunset.

There is something about traveling that makes you throw your usual rules out the window. "Why yes, we can have gelato for dinner." You know, things like that. This time we threw out pretty much any standard we have at home for transportation safety for our kid (except that we did do several of our trips by boat to avoid buses on the highways in Vietnam). At home we always make sure to have her booster seat if we are going to be in a car, we make her wait for the light at intersections, always cross in a crosswalk, etc. You know, responsible middle-class American parents.

In Cambodia we rode tuk-tuks so many times every day. If you've never seen a tuk-tuk, this is it:

The family on a tuk-tuk in Siem Reap

It is basically a trailer hooked on to the back of a motorbike and then a guy drives you somewhere in the previously described traffic. My daughter loved this more than just about anything else we did on the trip. She begged to take a tuk-tuk every time we left the hotel. And so we did.

At one point during out trip I was telling our daughter about how when I was a kid that we would just pile in the back of a pickup truck but how that wasn't allowed anymore because it wasn't safe. And then in Luang Prabang we went on a hiking and kayaking trip with a guide. And how did we travel the 40 minutes to where we were trekking? In the back of a pickup truck, of course.

When in Rome, I suppose. Even if it is the most dangerous thing you can do.

One tries not to judge the culture of another country while traveling. But on both trips to this part of the world I could not help but think that there must be a decent amount of people who don't like the status quo. There must be a high number of people that have lost children to accidents because of the insane lack of traffic rules that would like to see a change. I just wonder what it will take to change the madness. Looking at the situation it seems impossible to change. But it wasn't that long ago that there weren't any drunk driving laws in the U.S. Or seat belt laws, car seats for kids, and helmet laws.

There is, I discovered, a helmet law in Vietnam that came in to effect just a few years ago. So there seems to be the beginning of an effort to change things there. And I noticed a lot more traffic lights than when we visited before.

Some drivers even stop for them.

The Long Way Home

So this will probably be my shortest post of the SE Asia series (everyone together now, "YAY!"), because there was not much to remember in the drudgery of the long trip home.

We left our hotel at about 5:30pm local time in Hanoi. We had an 8:30pm flight from Hanoi to Bangkok that was about two hours or so and then a 3-ish hour layover in Bangkok before our 16-17 hour flight to JFK.

For some reason the flight from Bangkok to New York leaves at 1:05 in the morning and you get in at around 7:00am, and then you have to try to stay up the entire day to get back on your time schedule.

So it was getting to the airport, checking in, popping an Ativan, having a beer and flying to Bangkok to catch the non-stop to JFK.

The most annoying thing in the world about the new Bangkok airport is just so unbelievable that they even designed it this way. There are no services inside the security area. No gift shops, no bars, no restaurants. Not even any vending machines. A water fountain is the extent of amenities at Suvarnabhumi airport once you go through security. So we sat there for two hours with nothing to do and no alcohol to calm the nerves of this nervous flier.

A flight that long is really hard on the trip there, when your excitement has you going and is keeping your mood up, but is is excruciating for the trip back, when you are tired and road-weary.

This time it just seemed a lot longer, no matter how much Pong I played or Singha beers I drank.

After getting to JFK, where it was raining pretty bad, and catching a really long cab ride home (Lisa put her foot down and said no to the subway with all the bags we had) we walked into our apartment about 9:30am local time.

It was 28 hours after we had left the hotel in Hanoi. That was after having a whole day in Hanoi before we even left.

Needless to say I felt like warmed-over shit by the time we got home.

Next time we stop somewhere midway and spend the night.

One interesting thing about the flight, just like the trip there we flew east again. So we went over a completely different set of countries this time. Instead of Europe and the Middle East we went over China, Russia, Alaska and Canada before getting home. So we circled the globe on this trip.

That was kind of cool.

Day 17 - Goodbye Vietnam

OK, the home stretch. I'm going to finally finish this long-winded travelogue a little less than six months after returning from the trip. I realized what I got myself into shortly after starting, but since I had already begun I had to finish it. I'll be honest, the rest of these will be from memory only because after Halong Bay I didn't write anymore in the journal. I was pretty wiped.

So this epic story will finally end this week. In the end I'm glad I wrote it. I've had some nice notes from people who found the blog while searching for info about traveling to SE Asia and they mentioned they found a couple of things I wrote useful. I should have my final SE Asia post up by Wednesday, when I leave town for a family gathering in Iowa. Another trip which may become blog fodder if anything interesting happens. So probably not.

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November 25th - We woke up a little late today. This was our last day in Asia but our flight wasn't until later this night. We knew that the next day-and-a-half was going to be arduous and exhausting so we wanted to make sure to take it easy before we left.

We had bought a bunch more souvenirs the night before, about 10 conical hats to give to various people, including my four nieces, and a few of the red star flag t-shirts. But I also wanted to get some coffee to take home and Lisa wanted to buy some candy.

The nice ladies at the desk told us where we could find the coffee and candy districts and we went to get that taken care of so we could come back to pack up and check out. We found the coffee and I loaded up. I ended up buying, going back a second time after deciding I needed more, four full kilos of coffee. That is almost nine pounds for you Americans. I bought enough for me to keep two kilos and to give a half-kilo to my buddy Joe, who loves his coffee, and a quarter or half-kilo to various family members of both Lisa and me.



The beans we bought were the most popular variety in Vietnam, called chon, or weasel. It is called this because it is made from beans fed to a type of weasel and then collected from the animal's excrement. I think the roasting is done after the shitting process, but I'm not sure.

Oh yea, hey Joe, I meant to tell you that but it slipped my mind when I gave you the beans.

Then we bought something like two kilos of candy.



We took our loot back to the hotel and packed up our bags, as it was getting to be check-out time.

We went to the desk to check out and leave our bags to be stored. The first thing the manager said to us when we walked up was, "You are leaving us today" and took the time to tell us how much they enjoyed having us and lots of other nice compliments. I swear everyone at this hotel has a PhD in hospitality.

They took our bags and we went out to do a little more sightseeing before our car picked us up at 5:30 for the trip to the airport.

Over the last few days we had asked a couple people what the announcements coming form the loudspeakers twice a day were and we got somewhat vague answers. Both our tour guide in Halong Bay and the manager at the Hanoi Elegance 2 kind of brushed it off as "new regulations" being announced for each district. We didn't want to pry too much so we didn't really ask anymore after that. But we did take a picture of one of the speaker poles.



I mentioned in an earlier post that there were fruit sellers who would try to put their basket poles on tourists to take a picture and we had turned them away ever time up to this point. Well, today Lisa decided she wanted to go ahead and do it. She and her mom have a collection of cheesy tourists photos of that type (wearing sombreros on a mule in Mexico, putting a hand in the mouth of a fake alligator in Florida, etc) so she wanted one with the fruit baskets to give to her mom.

It wasn't long before we were offered. The woman tried to put it on me at first, but we told her we wanted one with Lisa and I asked her how much. The answer was, "no pay picture, just buy some fruit."

So we got the picture and she bagged up some bananas and a couple of other things for us. I figured it would be more expensive than when Lisa bought fruit on the street a few nights before, since this was a tourist trap kind of situation. But I allowed myself to get hosed. She said what I thought was 50,000d and I pulled out my money and gave her a 50,000 bill. But she took that and kept telling me it was more and I was going to give her another twenty or so but she saw the 100,000d bill in my hand and she grabbed it and then went on her way before I knew what happened.

We just paid about nine bucks for a few bananas and a couple rambutans.

You could tell that we were at the end of a long trip because Lisa and I started arguing over who's fault it was that we just got ripped off (it was obviously mine but I didn't want to admit it) and ragging at each other.

In the grand scheme of things it wasn't really that much money, and the picture turned out pretty good with just about the precise cheese factor you want out of these things.



It did take about a month before I wasn't pissed over being taken by the fruit lady.

We cooled down at the Ngoc Son Temple on Hoan Kiem Lake, and ate some of our expensive bananas.



We also hadn't taken a cyclo ride in Vietnam so we decided since it was our last day we should. We went to where there were a few of them hanging out and started to ask one or two of them how much to go to the Women's Museum. First they wanted to take us in two different cyclos but we wanted to ride in just one. Guy first said $5 each and I said 50,000d (about $3) for both. He wanted to negotiate from there but this poor guy had the misfortune of dealing with me right after I had been taken like a common tourist, so I was sticking to my guns.

He was super nice and we ended up giving him double what we agreed to anyway, which was pretty close to his opening price.



After a quick look around the Women's Museum, which turned out to be under major renovations and most of the exhibits were closed, we walked towards the history museum. We ended up not going in and just sitting in the cafe in the courtyard.



We made our way back to the Old Quarter to have dinner. We finally went to eat at the vegetarian restaurant across from our hotel, a place for Western tourist which is why we had not gone there yet. Lisa got Pho and I got Pineapple fried rice. While we were waiting for our food a huge motorcade drove up and stopped right outside. A bunch of dignitaries and press people got out and went into a building right next to our hotel, something called Memorial House that we had completely missed checking out. The motorcade was from the U.N.





Everyone was outside looking at the motorcade, the staff from our hotel noticed us across the street and started waving.

The motorcade took off after about 20 minutes and we got our food. A van pulled up and we saw Pete and Shelagh, the Aussies we met in Halong, get off. We got to talk to them for a few more minutes before they had to go find a hotel room for the night.

We finished our last meal in Vietnam and then headed across the street to grab our bags and jump in our car to the airport.





Next - The long journey home and then some thoughts on Vietnam

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Day 16 (Part 2) - Back In Hanoi For Water Puppets & Bia Hoi

Before we left for our tour of Halong Bay, on the morning we were waiting for our ride to show up, we asked one of the ladies at the desk of the Hanoi Elegance 2 if she could get us tickets to a performance at the Water Puppet Theatre for the day we returned. She said she would look into it and asked what performance times we wanted (she said we needed to have more than one choice in case it was sold out, there are several shows a night) then we were on our way to Halong Bay.

I had pretty much forgotten about that by the time we got back. When we walked in the front door to the hotel we were welcomed back warmly by the staff, asked how we like Halong and the same desk person we asked about the tickets told us she got them for the 6:30 show.

I'm telling you, if you ever get a chance to go to Hanoi I can't stress enough that you should stay at Hanoi Elegance 2. I really don't think I've ever had a better hotel experience.

So off to the Municipal Water Puppet Theatre we went.

It is really hard to explain the water puppet show except to state the obvious that it is puppets in water. Instead of above or below running the puppets, the puppeteers control them from behind a screen with the puppets on the end of long poles. It really is quite fascinating to see.

The show had no translation so it was only in Vietnamese. But with a program that described what each scene was about, mostly Vietnamese folklore and mythology, it was pretty riveting without knowing what anyone was saying. I didn't even come close to loving it as much as my wife did. We bought a DVD and a soundtrack CD.

We didn't get any pictures during the performance because, well, we hate people that do that. But we got a shot of the stage before the show started.



They also sell replicas of the water puppets at shops around the theatre so you can see what they look like.




No, the cat was not part of the show. Just a shop kitty posing perfectly for a picture.

After the show we had dinner once again at the Indian restaurant Tandoor which, if you are a vegetarian looking for a safe choice in Hanoi or just having a hankering for Indian food while traveling in Vietnam, for my money was a great place for some good grub.

After dinner I had one more thing I wanted to check out in Hanoi, this being our last night in town. I had read about a local brew called known as bia hoi that I wanted to try. Bia hoi supposedly translates as fresh beer and is a Pilsener brewed without preservatives and meant to be drank the same day it is made. I had to try some.

There are several places in the Old Quarter where they serve it. We went and found one intersection that had bia hoi bars on three of the corners. And by bar I mean a collection of little plastic tables and chairs on a sidewalk with a couple of kegs.

So we grabbed seats and I got a glass of bia hoi. As we sat there watching the street scene and the woman and her sons work the bar (they seemed to serve mixed drinks as well) we couldn't help but notice how this little operation wouldn't be legal at home in just about any way. Pretty much everything about it would be some sort of code violation; the woman dunked the glasses in a bucket next to her stool to clean them, her teenage sons were the servers and we were sitting on a public sidewalk.



I had a couple of them at a cost of 2000d, or about 13 cents a glass! The beer was pretty good and I could probably even drink Coors Light at 13 cents a glass. Well, that's not true. I doubt I could choke down Coors Light even if it was free.

There's a good chance I would have spent the whole night there in my younger, unmarried days.




Next - Last day in Vietnam and the long trek home

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Day 16 (Part 1) - Morning On Halong Bay

Got up early on November 24th for breakfast on the Halong Phoenix, the Chinese junk that was our base for the tour of Halong Bay. Once again our dining companions were Pete & Shelagh from Australia and Niko from Germany. After having our omelettes we packed up our things in the cabin we stayed in for the night, settled up the bar tab and threw some money in the tip box for the staff. We then went back up to the top deck for our relaxing cruise back toward Halong City. This morning was clearer than it was the day before so the views were even more stunning.

(as usual, click on any of the pictures for the larger image)



Our boat made a pass through a floating fishing village on the way. Like when we saw them in Cambodia, I just couldn't wrap my brain around what that life must be like.





Finally it was time to say goodbye to our newest friends. Pete & Shelagh and Niko were all on the three day-two night tour that included Cat Ba Island. So they disembarked onto a transport boat to go south to Cat Ba as we continued west to Halong City. We did the usual trading of emails with them, which we have yet to use but I plan to rectify that soon.

We waved at them as they pulled away then relaxed and took in the scenery as we meandered through Halong Bay. I was still very much in awe of the beauty of the place and was disappointed we didn't go with a longer tour. Oh well, next time we'll do Cat Ba Island.






We got back to Halong City for lunch at the big hotel there and sat with an older middle-aged couple from Malaysia that I had started talking to the day before on the Phoenix. They were there with a large number of family members, mostly their children and one grandmother, for just a weekend trip. A very sweet couple, but for the life of us we couldn't figure out the ethnic mix of their brood. The oldest daughter/step-daughter looked like she was part Hispanic and spoke with what sounded like an American accent. We didn't get to talk to them long enough to start asking those kinds of questions.

After lunch our ride back to Hanoi showed up. This time we were in a smaller van of the 13-seat variety. The Malaysian family and others rushed to the seats and Lisa and I were stuck with seats in different locations. Since she has the car sickness problem she volunteered to sit in the front next to the driver. I think she would have preferred to be sick over seeing the view from the front seat. It was the usual Vietnamese style of driving - zig-zagging through traffic, passing in the oncoming lane even at blind curves, last second lane switching as an oncoming car is bearing down - and I think her nerved were pretty shot afterwards. Add to that that the driver was actually drifting off as he drove like that. She kept talking to him as much as she could.

We were then delivered back to the splendid comfort of the Hanoi Elegance 2 Hotel where the congenial staff welcomed us back.

And they had tickets to a show waiting for us.

Next - Water puppets and bia hoi

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Day 15 (Part 1) - Ha Long Bay Tour

We got up early on November 23rd to get ready for our trip to Halong (or Ha Long as it seemed to usually be spelled in Vietnam) Bay. We packed up the small suitcase we bought the night before and headed down to breakfast. One of the ladies who works at the front desk got in the elevator, said hello and remarked that we were going to Halong Bay this morning. Like I said, the staff at the Hanoi Elegance 2 were on top of everything all the time. We were just going to take our bags with us to breakfast, but when we got to the ground floor she insisted on taking them and holding them at the desk for us while we ate.

After that we waited in the lobby for our ride to Halong City, which was supposed to show up at 8:00. There were several other guests waiting in the lobby going on various tours that day. A driver would show up and the front desk staff would know who was going with who. Eventually we were the only ones left waiting and it was way after the time we were supposed to leave.

Something I forgot to put in my last post was this picture of Lisa getting her shoes shined and fixed by one of the shoeshine kids on the street our hotel is on. This was the previous morning when we were leaving and he convinced Lisa to let him shine her shoes, which really needed it, and he also fixed the front of the sole that was peeling off and had been bugging her for a while. And he only asked for like a dollar or something, so of course she gave him a pretty big tip.

Unlike in the States, here they don't shine your shoes while you are wearing them but instead have slippers for you to put on while they work.



Anyway, as we were waiting for our ride to Halong City the shoeshine kid was outside again looking to get Lisa to come get another shine. Problem was, she was wearing the same shoes he did the day before and they still looked fantastic from his work. I really think the kid had a crush on my lady.

Finally our ride showed up and we went out to a crowded mini-bus. Luckily we were the last pick-up, so we didn't have to go through the whole snaking slowly through the city for an hour or so picking up a bunch of other people. Lisa and I sat down, with me on a seat that folded out from the row into the aisle, next to another American. We started chatting him up, his name was Richard and he was from San Francisco. A really super nice guy who was traveling alone. A few times he would say something about his "friend" not being able to come on the trip with him this time. My wife and I, being people who have had a ton of gay friends and like hanging out with gay people, have pretty good gaydar and it was beeping.

I don't remember what exactly we said but we threw in a few comments here and there to make it clear we were "gay-friendly" people and Richard finally started using words like "partner" instead of "friend" when talking about his other half.

After a few announcements by the guide of our bus, including a bunch of jokes about how the Vietnamese drive, we were left to chat with Richard for the whole trip. I always love talking to other Americans when we travel to the more "exotic" foreign countries because they tend to not be Republicans. Conservatives are usually afraid of things that are different from them so they stay at home or only travel to places where other white people live.

And certainly a gay man from San Francisco is not going to a member of the GOP, generally speaking. So we had a great time talking to Richard on the ride, spending a lot of time on the topic of politics and how it can be embarrassing these days to be from America when you travel to another country.

We had hoped to be hanging with Richard for the whole time in Halong Bay but it was not to be. He was only doing a day trip to Halong before leaving for Laos the next day, so when we got to Halong City we had to say goodbye as we were going to be on different boats. We were somewhat disappointed because talking with Richard was the best time we had talking to someone since we had met Roger from Australia in Cambodia.

We said goodbye to Richard, exchanged emails and then followed our new tour guide with about a dozen other people.

The pier area in Halong City was a chaotic scene with throngs of tourists trying to stay with their guides while having to navigate through all the other people trying to follow their guides. Losing our guide wouldn't just be an inconvenience because of missing the boat, this guy also had our passports. This was how it was in Vietnam all the time, by law the hotel you are staying at has to hold your passport.

We had started talking to a couple from Australia as we were walking with the group. The conversation started because our tour guide, when he was collecting passports, noticed that it was the woman's birthday that day and made kind of a joke out of it. So after telling her happy birthday and commenting on how this was a cool way to celebrate, we started talking with them about all the same stuff you talk with fellow travelers about; the places you've been so far on this trip, where you are going next, the craziness of the ride here, that kind of stuff.

Finally we made it to the actual pier and we walked down the concrete steps to the water's edge to climb aboard the small boat that would take us to the larger boat for our tour.

We snaked our way through the harbor and the maze of other boats waiting for their groups of tourists.

(click on photos for larger image)



Then we came to the Halong Phoenix Cruiser, the Chinese junk that would be taking us on our tour of Halong Bay and that would also be our hotel for the night.





Next - Cave exploring and kayaking in Halong Bay

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Day 14 - Looking For Uncle Ho & Sandals

Got up in the morning of November 22nd in our gorgeous hotel room, had some coffee and checked my email. Well, went to check my email but the computer seemed to stop working. It wouldn't connect to the Internet for some reason. So we got ready and went down to breakfast, I knew I could check my email at the computers in the lobby anyway.

Though while we were getting ready we heard the loudspeakers outside again. It started with a very anthem sounding song with opera-like singing and then the announcements went on for at least a half-hour. I really wanted to ask someone what the announcements were saying.

After breakfast we stopped and talked to the manager because we wanted to book a Halong Bay trip for the next day. He showed us a few options and we decided to do a one night trip. He set that all up for us and I mentioned the problems with the computer in the room before we left.

After walking outside we remembered something we forgot in the room and went back up. When we got up to the room the housekeeping staff was already cleaning. And, I swear it had only been a couple of minutes since I brought it up to the manager, there was a guy working on the computer. Seriously, anybody reading this ever gets a chance to go to Hanoi you have to stay at this hotel, the Hanoi Elegance 2.

We finally got out of there and we made our way toward the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex. Referred to as Uncle Ho by the Vietnamese, Ho Chi Minh lays in state like Lenin in Russia. This was only mildly intriguing, but we read that the grounds of the complex is a traffic-free zone and getting to a place where there were no cars and you could walk around without dodging traffic sounded fantastic. Crossing the street in Vietnam was getting very tiring.

We made our way across town to the mausoleum area, snapping a few pictures along the way.




At some point while walking past the Hanoi Citadel, the military complex in the city, we saw some guys (cops or soldiers) with an open fire they seemed to be cooking with. At this point we saw another whole, cooked dog.

Speaking of the military. I had imagined that, this being a regime state, we would have seen a constant military/police presence. But I didn't find this to be the case the entire time we were in Vietnam.

We got to the mausoleum and discovered that it was closed. Not only was the mausoleum closed, but a large section of the area around the actual mausoleum building was closed off. So we couldn't go and walk around grounds. The reason for it being closed is priceless. Once a year they remove Ho Chi Minh's corpse to take it to Russia for maintenance and this happened to be the time of year he was visiting the former Soviet Union.

We stopped and had bananas and water outside the One Pillar Pagoda while trying to figure out what to do next.



We picked the Temple of Literature as our next stop. Built by one of the emperors in 1070 to honor scholars and men of literary accomplishment, the Temple of Literature is dedicated to Confucius and the site of the first university in Vietnam. A really nice and peaceful place to go hang out for a while.




There was a group of schoolgirls in traditional dress there for some sort of event so Lisa and I did our fake picture set-up where I pose in front of her but she is really focusing on something else. We did this way back in Bangkok with the sex tourist.



Lisa with the doctors' stelae, which recorded the names, places of birth and achievements of those men who received doctorates.


Let's see, a sun hat, a camera bag over my shoulder, and a map out. Could I look any more like a tourist?


We walked around the city a little more, stopping at several shoe stores along the way to see if I could find some sandals. Usually they would just look at my feet and shake their heads no when I asked if they had sandals in my size. I really wanted to find some before we went on the boat the next day.

We decided we should get another suitcase for the overnight boat trip so we didn't have to take our big bags. We asked at the hotel where to find luggage and they pointed us in the right direction, which, of course, was the "luggage area." On the way Lisa saw a shop with some clothes she wanted to look at and she bought some light pants for the boat.

We had to pass by the shoe district on the way to buy luggage so I decided to make one more push for sandals. I really, really wanted some open toe shoes for this boat trip. I was becoming obsessed with the concept. We hit several stores and I tried on at least a half-a-dozen pairs with no luck. Tried one last store......

Eureka!

Not exactly the colors I would pick with unlimited choices but they fit and they were comfortable. With three days left in our vacation I finally had appropriate footwear. And they are a pair of Tevas that only cost me 660,000d, or about $40.

Then we stopped at a couple of the luggage shops and finally got a small rolling bag for about $30. We were set for Halong Bay.

Dropped off the loot at the hotel and then went to an Indian restaurant on Pho Hang Be called Tandoor, it was getting too late to make the walk all the way back to Com Chay Adida where we had eaten the night before and we didn't feel like spending a bunch of time trying to find another vegetarian place. Traveling vegetarians can always count on Indian restaurants. We sat at a table on a small balcony overlooking the street and had some good paneer and korma, happy to be watching the street life rather than walking in it for a while.



Next - Halong Bay

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Day 13 - Hanoi Elegance And The Old Quarter

November 21st, yet another travel day. Hué was a lovely little respite from the craziness of the traffic in Saigon, if only because there are a lot less people there and not necessarily because they actually drive more sane.

We had breakfast at the hotel and then packed up our stuff for checkout. We went down to the desk and settled up our bill. We tried to insist once again that they charge us the full price for the bigger room we were given but they would have none of that. They offered to arrange a car for us to the airport and we left our stuff with them to store until it was time to leave. We had about an hour or so to kill so we just took a long walk around town to places we didn't see the day before.

One last stroll around Hué and off to the airport we went.

The plane to Hanoi as a lot more full then the one we took from Saigon as there was a tour group, senior citizens from England it seemed, on our flight.

This time the pilot of our flight was not American sounding. He sounded British instead. Does Vietnam Airlines not hire Vietnamese pilots?

Glad we had the hotel in Hanoi arrange for our pick-up from the airport so we didn't have to do any of the research on which cabs to catch or avoid, or figure out how much we should pay to know if we were getting ripped off. We walked through the gauntlet of drivers offering us rides to the guy holding a sign with my wife's name on it.

Back in the crazy traffic of another large Vietnamese city, it took forever to get to the hotel. We finally got to the Old Quarter in Hanoi and our hotel.

We were staying at the Hanoi Elegance 2 Hotel, around the corner from the original Hanoi Elegance which causes a lot of confusion among travelers since neither one's sign specify if it is number one or two. This would turn out to be the favorite hotel of our entire trip. First, the people there were so freaking nice and helpful and they always remembered who we were and which room we were in when we stopped to pick up our room key every day after returning from sightseeing.

Also, we had the most awesome room! I had read some reviews on Tripadvisor.com before we picked this hotel and more than one suggested a specific room, #705 on the top floor. This was the most expensive hotel on our trip ($75) except for the one night at the resort in Can Tho, but it was really worth it. The manager showed us to our room and we couldn't believe our eyes when we walked in. The room had huge windows on three sides and glass doors that opened up to a terrace overlooking the street below.

(click on images for larger pictures)



At just about every place we stayed on this trip there was usually Internet access available in the lobby and free wi-fi in the room if you had a laptop with you, which we did not. But in our room at the Hanoi Elegance there was wi-fi in the room with the laptop provided by the hotel!



There was a complimentary bottle of wine and a plate of fresh fruit, which was replenished every day. The fruit, not the wine.



After reveling in our new hotel room for a while and taking a bunch of pictures we decided to go check out Hanoi. We walked all around the Old Quarter, which is exactly what is sounds like. It is the oldest section of Hanoi and has all of the historic-looking buildings with tiny, winding streets and lots of cobblestone sidewalks. It's kind of like Beacon Hill in Boston without the annoying accents.

But the small amount of room on the streets and the mass amount of pedestrians all over the Old Quarter does not stop anyone from driving just as crazy as they do in Ho Chi Minh City. A dizzying number of motorbikes zip around the Old Quarter all day long as well as a decent amount of cars, vans and small tour buses. The sidewalks are really narrow to begin with and then are blocked in a whole bunch of places by parked bikes or motorbikes and the makeshift restaurants and bars that line the sidewalks of Hanoi. So not only is the traffic crazy, but you have to walk in it all the time to get around.

But the Old Quarter is definitely a charming place. The hustle and bustle of life there is just fantastic to be around.







This part of Hanoi is also a lot like New York with each street or block known for selling a particular product. One street might be where all the candy stores are located, on the next block you get your coffee, here's the corner with the luggage stores and on the stretch of road on the NE side of the Hoan Kiem Lake is where all the shoe stores are lined up. Kept thinking of New York's Flower District, Garment District or Indian Row. OK, really I thought a lot more about the episode of The Simpsons when Homer asks his new boss where he can find a hammock (Scorpio: "...it's the hammock complex on third." Homer: "Oh, the hammock district.")

Being such a big tourist area, non-Asian walking around is always being asked if they want to buy a book, some fruit or a ride either on a motorbike or cyclo. Some of the women with the fruit baskets wouldn't just try to sell us fruit. Some of them would walk up and try to put the basket-balancing stick on Lisa's shoulder to have us take a picture. Obviously trying to scam some money out of the tourists. We kept waving them off, though Lisa said she probably wanted to get one before we left because her mom likes hokey pictures like that.

Later in the day we noticed that there was some announcement being made over loudspeakers up on poles all over the Old Quarter. It probably went on for a good 20-30 minutes and sounded very Orwellian despite the fact that we didn't know what as being said. Granted, it could have been the weather report for the next day, what did we know?

For dinner we went and found a place that I found out about on Happy Cow, called Com Chay Adida. It was a little off the beaten path and we had to walk a little ways to get there. We were definitely the only tourists around by the time we got to the area where the restaurant is located. On the block where it was located there were a bunch of street vendors as well, and I'm pretty sure we saw a whole cooked dog hanging on a hook at one of them.

Com Chay Adida is a fantastic restaurant in a colonial-era townhouse. In the middle of the place there is an open shaft through to the floors above with a rock garden and little pond on the ground floor. The ladies who waited on us didn't know English but they were super nice about the language barrier and we just pointed to the menu to tell them what we wanted. This is a lot easier to do at a vegetarian restaurant, knowing that no matter how badly you communicate you won't be brought a plate of squid or dog testicles.

This was one of the best places we ate on this trip, they had great faux meat and noodle soup.

After dinner we walked around Hoan Kiem Lake. At several spots around the lake, when the walkway would open up into a little plaza, there were groups of people out doing aerobics. And damn if Hanoi didn't also have those guys with scales all over the place. Although here they seemed to be even poorer and older people hawking the weigh-yourself service. Several of them had even had just your common bathroom scale instead of the fancier stand-up versions. Who knows, maybe they had a run of business after the aerobics people finished exercising.

Back at the hotel I enjoyed some complimentary wine on our terrace before bed.



Next - Uncle Ho not at home, Temple of Literature and sandals!

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