Always wanted to say that!! Vietnam was number one on my list of places to visit when we did our travel year planning, so expectations are high. And so far our impressions of Hanoi have gone from complete sensory overload on our first couple of days (but we have come from the Outback!) to being totally captivated by the whirlwind of sights, smells and noises this bustling, scooter-crazy, horn-beeping, crowded city keeps throwing at us. Crossing the street is a death-defying event and pavements here are actually for scooter parking not walking but we just love it!
We also have company…being joined by Cath, Rob and Lani, our long time friends from Brisbane (Cath & I are High School buddies). So we are fortunate to get to share our Vietnam trip with much-loved friends, and Lani is giving the boys some much-needed kid company.
Staying in the Old Quarter gives you a great feel for how Hanoi, and the world, looked before modernism, where each street has its own speciality selling a particular good or service, for example coffee street (they are massive coffee growers and consumers here), linen street, sewing street, copper & stainless steel street, grave goods street, spice street and where our hotel is located, hardware street! Where deliveries of everything is made on scooters as well as whole families out for the day (so far the highest count was 5 people on 1 scooter). Rob and Ben are actually engaged in a photography competition to see who can capture the most overloaded scooter shot – so watch this space. They are also determined to eat their way down Vietnam and try as many different culinary and liquid delights as possible! Today they actually managed to find a micro-brewery… well, more like a corner “canteen” with vats of home-made beer for 35p per glass!
Hanoi, once controlled by the French, retains much of this influence in the grand avenues, houses and public buildings, as well as being very definitely an Asian city, with temples, lakes and no obvious building regs. We walked past a shop on the first day to witness the ceiling falling in on the unfortunate ladies inside having their hair styled – no one was hurt but it was an interesting event! We’ve also visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex, where the body of the father of unified Vietnam, is kept (he is, unfortunately, not on display at the moment) and covered Vietnam’s turbulent history with a visit to the Ho Chi Minh Museum and the Hoa Lo Prison (nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton by American POWs), originally built by the French to house the Vietnamese Revolutionaries captured during the war, complete with a well-used guillotine.
Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum
The popular Night Markets
Less political was a night out at the popular Hanoi Water Puppet Show, watching the ‘puppets’ performing on a stage made of water, replicating the shows put on in villages during the wet season in the rice paddies. Our kids have subsequently put on their own puppet shows inspired by this; surely this covers the ‘drama’ part of our travel school curriculum? A trip to the night markets covered Cath and my own alternative curriculum requirements too.
The temples are a feast for the senses and spirit.
Mmmm food is pretty good here!
Not sure what he bought!
To get a break from the scary prospect of crossing the scooter-fumed, gridlocked roads on foot we’ve also tried the more traditional Cyclos, or seats on bicycles, and the new Green Tourism electric cars (large golf buggies) forms of transport, both of which are much more fun and a great way to explore the hidden gems of the back streets of the old quarter, to find a cool coffee shop for Vietnamese egg-froth topped coffee, to hole-in-wall local eateries with one dish menus or the sumptuous velvet chaise-lounge filled Green Mango restaurant. Now this is travelling!
Finally, a word on the kids… to our amusement they are quite simply the most fascinating things many Vietnamese people have ever seen – both young and old, being constantly asked to take photos with them (sometimes quite forcibly pulled in front of selfies) and have so far been very obliging and patient with it all. One enthusiastic teenage girl actually ‘smelled’ Lani’s hair while getting her picture taken with her?! None of us were sure what to make of that!