Hectic Hanoi

After waiting for what seemed like a very long time to get our visas stamped, we somehow found our way to the minibuses outside the airport that take you into Hanoi city centre for $2 each. Our first glimpses were of a grey city teaming with traffic mostly motorbikes and pushbikes. On scooters you could see single ladies with their high heels and mini skirts, street sellers on their way to the city with a mountain of goods (from produce to livestock) precariously balanced on the back and even families of 4 or 5 people on a single bike. Some of the children were only months old whilst the older ones of 4 or 5 years could be standing in the footwell. It was crazy and their proximity alarming! Most people on bikes wore helmets (rather flimsy ones that would provide little protection during a crash). Unfortunately, there was no head protection for the children, but luckily they did have protection against dust with their cloth face masks.

We found our backpackers on a tiny alleyway not quite big enough for cars but whizzing with motorbike traffic. It was in a great location, right by St Joseph Cathedral and about 5 minute walk to the Hoan Kiem Lake. After a little cool down under the a/c in our room, we headed out again to see the city in the dark. It's hard to describe but it seemed like the city was alive as a living, breathing thing and we were at it's medieval historic heart. There were people everywhere. Hawkers were pounding the streets. The street food stalls had covered the pavements with small plastic tables and stools, their mostly oriental clientele happily conversing with one another, whilst enjoying snails, clams, noodles and many things we had no names for. What little was left of the pavements were used for parking for motorbikes. There were parking attendants giving out tickets and organising rows of bikes tightly parked together. This meant we had use the narrow road along with with cars, bikes and other pedestrians. Rather scary, but the most unnerving thing was trying to cross the road that night. The locals would somehow find a gap and cross whilst you and a gathering crowd of tourist would just stay and wait for a large enough gap in the never-ending traffic. We later learnt that if you start crossing they slow down or swerve to avoid you, but this does sort of mean you put your faith on a the crazy motorcyclists. A local told us that it was very important that when crossing the road you don't stop for traffic or run across, instead just keep walking at the same speed. That is the way they are used to negotiating traffic here and when in Rome, I suppose you have to do as the Romans.

Our food that night was fairly good, but the choices were simply far too exotic for our western taste buds. We did try to be adventurous and ordered cat fish spring rolls with dill, along with pork wrapped in banana leaf, but the menu contained many delicacies, such as: grilled chicken cartilage, crocodile ribs, frogs legs with satay sauce and even crickets, locusts and cicadas roasted with lemon leaves. I later found pepsi and 7up cans filled with tiny roasted chicks on a street stall. With their legs sticking up out of the cans, they looked so sad.

Over the next couple of days we visited quite a few of the historic sites including Hoa Lo Prison Museum, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Museum of Vietnamese Revolution to brush up on our history of the region. Unfortunately most of the information came across biased and did not fill the gaps in our knowledge. We have heard there's a much better war museum in Saigon, so we'll be sure to check that out.