Actually - it all starts at 03:20 in the morning of Day 0, but you don't need me to dedicate a whole post to describing what it is like to sit on a plane for 12 hours...
We eventually arrived in Hanoi at about 17:30 local time (21:30 Sydney time - long day). As we descended into the low clouds blanketing the city, we had no idea that it would be the last time we would see the sun for the next 2 weeks. Mistake #1: assuming it would be hot and humid in Vietnam...
The hour long drive from the airport to our hotel gave us our first taste of Vietnam traffic. They drive on the right-hand side of the road, and the general strategy seems to be to aim the car where you want to go, trust that anything smaller than you will get out of the way (lots and lots of scooters), yield only to vehicles at least twice your size and honk ALOT.
We did, however, arrive at the hotel alive and after dumping our stuff, braved the streets again to find something to eat. We soon discovered that it's one thing to be driven through the traffic, and another entirely to try and forge our way across streets that buzzed with what seemed like a solid stream of scooters. Our exploration that night was therefore limited to the block on which the hotel stood (chicken I know, but we were tired). Ryan took a long pause at a street stall laid out with a delicious (I use the term loosely) array of chicken's feet, brains and other meats of questionable origin, but (lucky for me) the lady there stolidly ignored him so we were forced to move on. After a complete circumnavigation of the block, we ended up buying bowels of Pho from a street stall right next to the hotel. I thought I was managing quite well with chopsticks (as in more food was actually making it into my mouth than what got dropped back into the bowl), until the lady running the stall came over and placed a spoon into my other hand, showed me how the other customers were scooping their noodles into their spoons and firmly pushed my head down closer towards my bowl. Apparently I still wasn't doing a good enough job, because she returned a minute later with a large pair of scissors which she dipped into my broth and proceeded to chop my noodles into smaller lengths. Sigh.
We woke the next day to constant, misty rain and a city shrouded in cloud. The plan was to walk to a few interesting landmarks (a combination of suggestions from the tour company and named structures on Google maps). This meant that we very quickly had to figure out how to cross the roads. The key seems to be to just look straight ahead, walk directly across and trust that the scooters and cars will dodge around you. Looking at what is coming is a definite mistake. Or, alternatively, to find a local who also happens to be crossing the road and use them as a body shield. We made one hurried crossing over 4 lanes of traffic after a distant guard outside an imposing gate who was toting a large gun sternly signaled us to stop, then pointed emphatically for us to cross the road (from about 50m away). Not sure what it was he was directing us away from, but he didn't look like someone you would want to argue with.
Our first stop was the Imperial Citadel. In hindsight, I think we may have missed the actual citadel, and just visited the military museum on the grounds (English signs/directions in Hanoi are few and far between). It didn't really matter because the museum was interesting enough, although I have to admit that I am still not really any wiser to the history of war in Vietnam. There were alot of artifacts from enemy soldiers and displays celebrating Vietnamese heros for shooting down planes or destroying enemy outposts, but English translations were sporadic and seemed to miss the actual gist of what happened. Outside there was a monument made from parts of wrecked enemy planes directly adjacent to the massive 200-year-old flag tower. I was left pondering how much our view of history is shaped by who it is that is doing the telling.
From there, we want to see Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. The imposing stone building is hard to miss - but at every intersection where we tried to access the seemingly open grounds we were directed onwards by more armed guards (despite seeing people freely wandering out from the other side). Eventually we came to the main entrance and were funneled in single file along a covered walkway and through several security checkpoints before finally being ushered into the Mausoleum itself. The steps and doorway were flanked by uniformed guards holding bayonets. As Ryan ascended, one of them sternly gestured for him to unfold his arms and put them by his sides. We were ushered inside a small group at a time, walking through single file to the central room in the structure where the old president was laid out in a glass case surrounded by more guards in ceremonial uniforms and toting bayonets. We filed silently past and then back outside again, the whole thing seeming a little surreal. Finally, then, we were free to wander the grounds at will.
We walked through the gardens of the old palace. The building itself we could only see from a distance, but we were allowed to wander around the living quarters where some rooms were open to the outside and the presidents old cars were on display. We also saw the One-Pillar Pagoda, which seems to be a major attraction in Hanoi, but turned out to be a small temple perched atop a single column in a small pond in the gardens. We couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about. Westerner cretins...
Next stop was the Temple of Literature. We exited the grounds of the mausoleum freely from one of the previously blocked streets (it seemed that visits the the mausoleum itself ceased at midday and from then on the guards became disinterested) and braved the Hanoi traffic once again. The temple was set at the end of a series of courtyards within a large walled-off garden. One courtyard was flanked by rows of turtle statues with their heads protruding from one side of the wall and rears from the other. The insides of each courtyard gate and the temple itself were surprisingly ornate in contrast to the austere and crumbling stone outside.
By this time we were starting to get a bit weary of wandering around and rather than visit the Old Quarter as planned, we decided to finish the afternoon by heading back to the Ho Chi Minh Museum. We avoided the first level which was choked with a throng of school kids and wandered around the displays upstairs. Again, there was lots of interesting things to see, but we never really learned much about the man himself. At least we were out of the rain. We also discovered that the Vietnamese have a fondness for order (despite the way they drive) and once we completed the top level, we were funneled down the exit stairs leading outside with no ability to walk back through the displays. We had to ask (and by ask, I mean gesticulate to) a lady downstairs to pass through a barrier so we could see the floor we missed. Which turned out to have no English translations. Needless to say, we also had to repeat the prescribed path through the rest of the museum before we could once again access the exit stairs.
Finally, we wandered back to the Hotel to await the arrival of our guide. We sat in the lobby for 90 minutes next to the only other person on the tour without knowing who he was (although we did guess it was probably him, knowing that we were sharing the tour with a 58 year-old British guy and what were the odds of randomly sitting next to someone else fitting that description??)
The guide arrived, took us out for dinner and then to the train station to catch the night train to Lao Cai.
I don't know how you would figure out the train if you weren't a local. After sitting at the station for 15 minutes or so waiting for the train to "open", there was a mass exodus despite the complete lack of any discernible signal or announcement. We then walked over about 8 other train tracks in the dark to our train which looked exactly like all the other trains we had passed. I guess that's why we were paying a guide...
The train carriage was divided into sleeping compartments with a narrow passageway down one side. Each compartment held two bunk beds. Ryan and I took the two top beds and our guide and the Brit the bottom. Ryan didn't fit in the bed by a good 10 inches or so and neither of us really slept. Can't say the same for our companions, who both snored pretty much the whole way. The train was slow, unsteady and seemed to stop alot of times during the night, so that altogether it took us 11hrs to travel about 300km (which is comparable to how long it takes to drive the same distance)(this fact made us wonder just how bad the roads were going to be...)
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