Hugoanddenis's travel blogs:
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Hanoi- Day 2
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Hey All,
Yes. We are in Vietnam. Two xanax, a scotch and 24 hours later we arrived in Hanoi via Tokyo. I wont say that the trip is for the faint of heart but all in all very pleasant. I have to admit that after my recent trouble with the TSA in Virginia, the Homeland Security crew patrolling the international terminal at JFK was courteous and professional. (For any of you not up to speed with that story.... more later)
Hanoi is pretty fantastic. I guess like many large international cities it is a beautiful mixture of old and crumbly with shiny and new. Its been a couple of days now trying to negotiate the language and menus but we are coping well on both fronts. Our hotel is in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, the traditional center of commerce. Each street is crammed with storefront and stalls, each with its own curious mix of goods- impossible arrangements designed to take advantage of every square inch of space. The time shift has us waking very very early, particularly Denis who is unaccustomed to opening his eyes in the single digits of the morning. As Hanoi clatters awake around 7am ( later on colder mornings) you can often see the shape of men asleep on beds in the back of the store while a woman with straw broom in hand sweeps the "sidewalk", wipes down the windows or begins to arrange wares that will ultimately spill forward to the street.
Just a couple of impressions. It is very clean if you dont count the often choking clouds of motor bike exhaust There is very little begging, ( not none but much much less than in India) there are a LOT of war museums in Hanoi. Our visit to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum was creepy. Its not everyday that you see the 35 year old embalmed body of a famous world leader which to all appearances seems more asleep than dead. bathed in soft pink lighting, surrounded by heavily armed soldiers. There are very very few cars here but the streets are teeming with scooters, motorcycles, bicycles and tiny women wearing traditional conical hat and ugly polyester print blouses carrying bamboo poles counterbalanced on either side with fruit. lacquer ware or even hot smoking pots of food. People are either so used to tourists or there is a social taboo against staring... too much. Most of the attention D and I have gotten has been from the many Korean tourist wanting to take pictures with us. Truly odd. The guide books dont tell you that " the delicious and cheaply priced street food" looks lethal....lol. Interestingly, real restaurants, the ones with chairs and not miniscule plastic stools are not serving chicken. But out on the streets there are heaping piles of boiled chicken and chicken feet sitting out all day on platters just feet away from the ubiquitous open drainage system. Yum! And yes, if its not wearing a collar its probably dinner.....
Yesterday, we were luckily adopted by a very ambitious and locquatious young lady who has been our guide and language teacher since we met. Her name is Flower... much easier to say than her Vietnamese name Hoa which, if misspronounced could mean many things, some not so nice. There is an art to purchasing just about anything in Hanoii- everthing is negotiable. While she is a ruthless bargainer on our behalf we realize that we are paying a 17 year old girl who is off from school for a couple of weeks around the national event of Tet ( Vietnamese New Year) about 7 times what the average Hanoian makes a day. Still... 8 dollars a day for instruction in a strange language full of honorifics and singsongy tones AND a short cut to the "good plice" seem like money well spent.
Ok... enough for today. We will be having dinner at Koto which the guide book has recommended under the title Dining for a Cause. Koto is really a foundation set up to teach homeless and orphaned kids the culinary arts and provides lodging as well. Im happy to spend my 2 dollars on dinner there...
More later,
Hugo
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