Hanoi, Vietnam

In March, 2007, my family and I (I'm Glenn, by the way) took a trip to northern Vietnam. I know I don't have to tell you where Vietnam or Hanoi is, but you may not know much about the layout of the city. Hanoi is on the Red River, which would probably be more appropriately named the Brown River. You can see the two bridges coming over it. The top one is the older, built by the French in 1905, and the bottom one is the one you will use when you come into the city from the airport. The section there where the bridges is the old town, and most tourists will be staying there. You can see a fairly large lake that has roughly the same shape as Taiwan - that's the one with the island and the monument you'll find pictured below. The square shape at 11 o'clock from the lake is the official section that includes Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum.

We didn't spend much time in Hanoi, so don't look for seasoned commentary from a longtime Hanoi insider here. This is a page of snapshots by a guy like you with a Sony digital camera. If that suits you fine, read on.

To just see all our pictures, good and bad, and dispense with my comments, click this sentence.

I booked a room on-line at the Camellia 2 Hotel, because we were getting into Hanoi late on Saturday night and we wanted to be set for the first night. We needed a large room since were were a family of four. We got the room above the door in the middle. If you find something that reads something like "Views of the scenic old quarter," run, don't walk, in the opposite direction. Traffic in Hanoi, as in most of the third-world large cities I've been in, follow this rule: "Don't bother to look around while you drive. Just do whatever you want unless someone blows the horn." Consequently, everyone in town is constantly blowing their horn to announce their presence in the interest of safe driving, and the city is a constant blare of car horns that GOES ALL NIGHT.

This is made worse by the fact that EVERYTHING happens in the street in Hanoi. I took this picture out the window of a tour bus one morning as we waited outside a hotel to pick up some more clients, so it is a bunch of Vietnamese having breakfast. I hope this is a restaurant, but there's not too much to indicate that it is, unless that sign behind them means "restaurant" in Vietnamese. Anyway, I ask myself, "Under what circumstances would I go out on the sidewalk to eat my breakfast?" Dunno.

We, or at least I, thought our room was one of the worst we'd stayed in in the last 20 years, so when we got out the door to explore the town, I started stopping into hotels I saw to ask if they had any rooms off the street for a family of four. Nobody did.

But as we walked in the direction of that big lake you can see in the satellite shot, we ran into this market, and we're suckers for markets, even if we never really buy anything.

If you're into tropical fruit, and if you read many of these pages of mine you'll quickly realize we are, you'll find plenty in Hanoi. Just check out those durians by the owner's right knee.

Within a few blocks we hit the lake, which is called Turtle Lake, and the first thing we noticed was this bridge going out onto a little island in it. What is on the island was not so easy to tell, since it's covered with a lot of trees. But since there seemed to be a lot of people going and we figured we may never be back in Hanoi, it seemed like a must.

You can walk over the bridge for free, but once you get on the island there's a gate and they need some money. What you get for your money is a look at this temple, which may be called Chuc Mung Nam Moi, or may not. In the left door there is a large replica of a turtle in a glass case, and a guide was telling the legend of Turtle Lake. Since it's already been written up by somebody else better than I could do, click here to read about the legend.

In front of the temple is a little place to give you some shade on sunny days. We didn't have many of them while we were in Vietnam. Our kids were hanging out there after taking the picture above.

Out in the lake is another island with this structure on it. I'm sure the Lonely Planet will tell you all about it, but I don't know its name or history.

Just off the lake is the water puppet theater, and we had been advised that the puppet show was a "must see," so we bought tickets for the 4 o'clock show. Before the show started, we got in a taxi and had the driver take us to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. For reasons we couldn't understand, the taxi took us way north of the square (take another look at the satellite picture above) and then we came south to it. The driver communicated to us that it was because of one-way streets. While we were at the mausoleum, there was a changing of the guard, and a bunch of young girls in ao dai posing for pictures, which was pretty good timing.

Strange thing when we wanted to leave, we got it a tiny little taxi and a uniformed guard ran over, put his hands through the window, and started pulling hair and otherwise assaulting our driver. We wondered what he'd done.

When we got to the puppets, we found out what he was going to do. Although we went with the one-way streets this time and the trip back took half the time, when I looked at the meter the price was over three times more than the trip to the mausoleum had been. I thought it was a joke, but the cabbie was adamant. Well, I wasn't going to be had, so I thought about what would increase my bargaining leverage. Since we were already at our destination, I opened up the door, got out of the cab, and started looking for someone official looking. A ticket taker at the lake came over, assessed the situation, and said something to the driver. Suddenly, the price dropped 67% to the same fare as the first cab ride and we settled, but it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Caveat emptor. Just because the cab uses a meter, you may still be getting scammed.

We made our 4 o'clock puppet show all right. Although we were in the last row of seats and it was dark in there, I was able to hold the camera still enough to get one shot that wasn't too blurry, at left. You can see the musicians on the left, and the green in front of the pagoda-roofed building is the stage - a pool of green water. There are people standing in the water inside that building moving the puppets with poles held under the water. It is pretty elaborate and like nothing else you've seen, but I found myself dozing off at times and my kids later told me they were asleep halfway through. Not to worry; I think the tickets were USD$2 each.

We saw those square flags all over while we were in Hanoi. If anyone knows their significance, please e-mail me.

Back outside by the lake, the tri-shas or cyclos, as they are often called, were in full force. We wanted to take them just for the experience, but never did find the right time. We really only spent the one day in Hanoi, so we couldn't do everything.

The picture above left is a corner one block from our hotel. In the daytime it looked like this, and at night there were people selling shoes on that corner. Like I said, everything goes on in the streets in Hanoi, day or night. Just walking around gives you a sensory overload. It's fine for a vacation, but I'm not sure I could take it on a daily basis. It would take some getting used to.

In the evenings in the old town, "Cool Beer" signs appear everywhere, and you'll find lots of Western tourists of all ages sitting on the sidewalks on plastic furniture, drinking keg beer. I decided to go for some myself and found out the price was eight glasses for a dollar! Sure did beat the bottled beer prices in the restaurants. So although I said I'd rather not eat my breakfast on the sidewalk, a little night cap on the sidewalk sounds OK. Consider it a sidewalk cafe, Hanoi style.

I'd like to tell you more about Hanoi, but that's about all I know. I've got a lot more pictures we took, though, so if you'd like a little better idea of what Hanoi was like just click the link below and you'll see them all.