Hanoi

Having got very little sleep on my final Chinese train I arrived at Hanoi station just before 5am where, even though he would grossly overcharge me, I was pleased to find a taxi driver available. The roads were empty so I could enjoy a horn-free drive over the river to my hostel while the driver showed off his police style red and blue lights in the back window. Having spent the last month struggling to communicate with taxi drivers, I found it immediately so much easier in Vietnam as even the driver spoke a decent level of English.

Soon enough I was dropped off at the Hanoi Astoria, one of few hostels pre-booked months ago in England, to find myself staring at the metal grating pulled down over the front doors. Thinking I would have to hang around the street until sunrise I was pleased when a quick bang on the grating yielded a response. It turned out the lobby was also the staff bedroom and my arrival had interrupted their sleep. Despite this they were very friendly and welcoming even after they lugged my bag up to the fourth floor. I hit the bed pretty hard and didn’t resurface until early afternoon.

Despite not heading downstairs until lunch time I was still offered a free breakfast including toast, bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushroom and beans. The woman who made it was one of the nicest people I had met on my travels so far, so I opted against questioning why only the eggs and toast arrived.

I had arrived in Hanoi one day in advance of Linsey’s arrival in Vietnam so I could find the hostel and make sure I was there to pick her up with time to spare, and as we wanted to explore the country’s capital together, I put myself under voluntary house arrest and never left the hotel. Although I was happy with this plan I did find myself questioning why I was thousands of miles away from home, in as amazing a city as Hanoi, on a once in a lifetime trip but watching hour after hour of CSI and Hawaii Five-O.

Again I slept and remained in my room until lunch time on my second day, but this time was offered some rather nice beef noodles for lunch as opposed to any breakfast. The only reason I had emerged from my room was to try and pay for my nights stay for the third time after they had got confused about my booking twice before. Having failed once again to pay I retreated to my room having at least managed to book a car to take me to the airport to pick up Linz.

That evening I set off for the airport pretty excited about not just seeing Linz for the first time in a month, but also just having someone to travel with. Also it was my first time outside in two days. Following a tedious wait at the baggage carousel, Linz finally arrived and we headed back off to the hotel. It seemed that the only people more excited about Linz’s arrival in Vietnam than me were the hostel staff as all of them appeared at the door to welcome her in. Upon entry she was immediately informed of two crucial bits of information by the staff, firstly that I hadn’t been outside the hostel to explore, but more importantly that I “didn’t have any Vietnamese girlfriends”.

Having reached our room, and again having not paid for anything, I showed Linz the features of our room including the leaky toilet plumbing, the bathroom window that didn’t close and the suspicious brown stain on the sheets. I had been travelling around for about a month at this point and had never come across and bug or insect anywhere, but of course within hours of Linz’s arrival a cockroach was spotted under the bed. This was possibly the worst start Linz could imagine, but rather than hang around the cockroach chose to flee under the front door as opposed to let me unleash a flip flop on him.

After a night of questioning every little noise in the room Linz was ready for her first day of four and a half months travelling. We started by heading towards the centre of the Old Quarter, the district in the city where most activity seemed to be, but we were stopped on the way by someone determined to fix my shoes. As well as decent walking shoes I had brought with me a fairly knackered pair of old shoes with holes and worn away rubber that most people would have thrown out by now, but this man was saying for just £1 he could salvage them. After he started work on them a friend of his came over and started to help out, and although I highly enjoyed sitting there a chatting with them, the mood was seriously killed when they asked for £15 payment. In the end I paid £10 and left rather annoyed but thinking back on it I still enjoyed the chat and actually they did a really good job on the shoes, so I’m over it now.

My shoes being fixed to the great interest of a local boy

That morning we spent our time following a walking tour described in our new Lonely Planet guide to Vietnam around the Old Quarter seeing various markets and hidden away temples including one dedicated to a horse. The best thing about Hanoi though was not a specific part of the walk but instead the amazing quantity of motorbikes and the crazy atmosphere they make. I was becoming quite good at dealing with road crossing by this point, but the fact that a motorbike just a few meters away is considered a gap in the traffic was something that Linz hadn’t quite established yet. This made simply getting from one side of the road to the other quite a lot of fun.

Following a mango milkshake we headed to the west of the Old Quarter to visit the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh – the leader of the North during the Vietnam War and liberator of the country from the colonial French. However, on the way we were to be given further experience with one of Hanoi’s most popular tourist activities – being conned. Taxis in Hanoi charge about 30p plus another 30p per kilometre, so you can imagine our surprise at being charged almost £10 for a 2km trip. It was the shoe repair mafia all over again.

We didn’t seem to be able to go in Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and see his embalmed body as it appeared to be shut, but even if it was open I would have apparently been turned away for inappropriate shorts. Instead we went into the Ho Chi Minh museum (which we actually thought was the mausoleum to start with) which was fairly lost on us as it was all in Vietnamese or French, but only set us back a few pence. Following this, and trying desperately to do enough things to warrant the taxi ride, we went for a wander round the Presidential Palace and the One-Pillar pagoda which did appease us slightly. The highlight however was the return trip as we opted to take a cyclo which is a three wheeled bike with a bench-like seat mounted on the front for tourists to be pedalled around in. These were all over the city and you cannot go 5 meters without being offered one so we thought we should try them out, and following some haggling managed to get all the way back for just £3. As well as the saving, when compared to the taxi, it was a very fun way of getting round.

After a month of blogging I thought I should put a photo of myself in. After posing with a local's produce I was, of course, asked for money

After an hour relaxing back at the hostel we headed into the night when avoiding motorbikes becomes even harder. Although I almost found myself on the handlebars of a few, we did a good job of avoiding them.  We had bought tickets for a water puppets show earlier in the day so headed towards the theatre not really knowing what to expect. Despite a power cut in the large chunk of the town centre, the show went ahead and we watched various wooden puppets dance, sing and play instruments above the surface of a pool of water. Occasionally over the last month I found activities and shows that fall into the category titled “it’s so crap that it’s good” which the water puppets easily fit into. By this I mean the lack of control of the puppets combined with almost everything being in Vietnamese, produced an hour of comedic flailing about in water rather than the organised and choreographed performance it was meant to be, which easily entertained me and justified the £2 ticket price.



Hanoi's crazy nightime traffic around the centre of the Old Quarter



 Following this we headed back to the hostel in need of a good night’s sleep as we were shattered after a long day in the hottest temperatures I had seen so far. However, it turns out Linz has a very good level of hearing which means she can make out the faintest sounds when others may think it’s silent. This includes tiny cockroach feet under the bed so every so often a full room search with my torch was required. They say a cockroach could survive the fallout of a nuclear bomb, but I can confirm they can’t survive attack by flip flop. The next day we would board our bus to Ha Long bay and our two day cruise around it’s hundreds of islands, having finally paid for our hostel.