Hanoi and around

Day trips from Hanoi

Ninh Binh is a popular day trip from Hanoi and is often referred to as Halong Bay on land due to the Karst scenery. The tour itself was a simple one visiting Hoa Lu and then the Tam Coc area for a boat ride. My tour had told me that they would collect me from my hotel in the morning, which they did. What they had not told me was that they would collect me on a moped. Could I really say no?^[1]

The moped ride was short and sweet and we reached the tour bus in a few breezy minutes to join a group of 10 or so. I sat fairly sleepily and gazed out of the window for an hour or so until the first stop. As we walked out, a guy behind me struck up a conversation and asked where I was from. Naturally, I responded "London" to which he responded "oh, me too". His accent didn't sound particularly Londony but I always say London welcomes all. I didn't question it^[2].

The Ninh Binh tour was pretty standard and involved a visit to the old capital city of Hoa Lu, which is now quite a small space. It was the capital for a relatively short time and so it is a fairly simple set of temples and the stories behind it are arguably more interesting than the actual site. The tour guide showed us a few items, explained a bit of the history and then walked us to one temple. After that, we had "free time" which is always my favourite bit of these tours. I do enjoy tours generally but travelling alone means that it is by far the simplest way of seeing things so some of the choice is removed. These little snatches of freedom are, therefore, quite nice and the enjoyment of seeing things is slightly modified by the jeopardy of missing things. The fact that you can miss things, however, adds to the enjoyment for me a little - it adds a little bit of agency into the mix. I made my way to the temples to see that they were pretty similar to each other so I can see that people would not have missed too much, but I would have retained the feeling of having missed something so I am glad I looked.

The guy who'd spoken to me earlier continued the conversation as we returned to the bus and told me he was from Mumbai and where he lived in London. He told me quite a lot. I'm not sure I reciprocated to the same degree.

One of the things that my (sage-like) manager at work had told me about travelling in Asia, and maybe generally, as I pontificated about destinations was to assure me that I would enjoy the trip wherever I went and that it was all about the people that you meet along the way. I thought, as she said it, but did not respond, "true enough if you are an interesting person yourself, but I'm not sure I want to do social interactions, really. I can get that sense of disappointment at home!". And this comment swilled around my head in a couple of different ways: one, I'm trapped here; two, he thinks that holidays are made by people you meet and he's just met me - I'm about to ruin this.

We were then taken to the next item on the itinerary which was a boat ride and lunch in Tam Coc. The Tam Coc area is known as "Halong Bay on land" but this wasn't so helpful to me as I hadn't been to Halong Bay (and at this time of year, it just isn't) so I based expectation on the photos I'd seen which were an astonishing display of bright colours. Today was not that. The weather was a little grey and that meant a quite different feel but it was still a pleasant trip. The boats are rowed by locals and they use their feet instead of arms which makes an interesting visual as you watch them. There is a simple bit of differential pricing as foreigners have a maximum of two per boat but not sure what it is for domestic tourists - a lot more though from what I saw. The ride is pleasant enough with a little stop for refreshments at the halfway point where you are persuaded to buy snacks for the rower. As I understand it, they often accept and then sell straight back to the shop to realise an instant cash profit. I think that is what they call arbitrage. Clever.

Travelling alone, I was still to be paired up and paired I was with, the guy from earlier. He was pleasant enough but really quite a bit more talkative than I had wanted, especially as I just couldn't get any hooks into an interesting conversation. Instead, I suffered the banality of hearing about other holiday destinations, how much flights cost, life history, places to visit in Vietnam and the itinerary. I didn't enjoy the conversation particularly but I also felt guilty for not doing so and I didn't want to get trapped - yet here I was on a boat.

Returning to land was followed by a buffet lunch where I tried, subtly, to sit with other people who were potentially more interesting. I did chat with a few more people and it flowed a bit more freely but these chats generally follow a pattern that it is difficult to escape from and I don't have much interesting to say on those topics of introduction. For other people, there isn't much of a hook to me either, an accountant living in a city that it feels like everyone already knows. The answer "London"^[3] is a bit of a double-edged sword sometimes.

After a fairly decent lunch, we had an hour of "free time" with the offer of bicycles or just hanging about in the town so I chose the cycling option to get out a little bit with a couple of other people. I was surprised at how few people wanted to cycle but it was a good option. In all honesty, we cycled along a road that had trucks and other HGVs so it wasn't always relaxing but it still gave a different view. This was actually an advertised bit of the tour so I was a bit disappointed at how unstructured it was and that it wasn't quite the rural idyll that I'd been expecting. There seemed to be lot of construction happening, although maybe stalled, for a greater tourist infrastructure with signs for hotels and inns. Even so, rattling along on ropey old bikes in Vietnam is always pretty fun and I did enjoy the lack of conversation for a bit. Well, the lack of that particular conversation anyway - more the "which direction?" type.

On the coach back, I wondered about how to extricate myself from having to awkwardly go for drinks or something like that with other tourers but the nature of the drop-offs to each individual hotel was very convenient in both the geographical and social senses for me. Released from the societal pressure I wandered the streets of the Old Quarter in the evening to find some dinner and returned to the hotel.

The sights of Hanoi

As I had booked my Halong Bay tour based on the weather, I was staying in Hanoi for one day more than expected - and it was a day that I knew would not have particularly good weather. This also meant I had no more nights booked at my present hotel and so I needed to book another hotel for one more night. Picking one that was nearby for convenience seemed sensible and stored my bags at the hotel I had already stayed in to move at check-in which would be at a time after 2pm and headed out.

This day was sort of an "extra" day and so I wasn't really sure about it but thought I'd embark on a basic city sightseeing thing which, for me, just means walking between sights and getting a bit lost. I started off at the Hoa Lo prison which had a history of being used by a few different regimes but seemed to have a particularly nasty period when under French colonial rule. It was interesting to see the guillotine and read about the past but it did feel a little distant. The prison was also used during the Vietnam War (US War, as it may be known here) to hold US PoWs and got given the name "Hanoi Hilton". There was an exhibition at the end which had a lot of information on the US military held there including, famously, John McCain. From there, I had a bit of a wander around and made my way to Hanoi train station in order to buy my ticket to Hue, a city in the central region of Vietnam.

As I mentioned earlier, I rather like buying tickets on the streets rather than via the Internet but it can be a bit problematic to communicate. The Vietnamese Railways website is not too bad and I could see the tickets I wanted and which train and sleeper compartment I was after. Even so, I had asked at a few different shops about the price of train tickets and they charged quite significant markups so I went to the Railway station itself. Here, I entered and went to the ticket office (or at least what I thought was). I asked there if they spoke English and explained exactly what I wanted. They then typed some numbers into the calculator - the international symbol of being taken for a ride. It was still quite a bit higher than the website price and they said, "not here". This was not, apparently, a ticket office but a ticket agency within the station. A little walk along and a very similar section revealed an actual ticket office where I was able to buy the ticket I was after - a sleeper train to Hue. There are two types of compartments - 6 and 4 berth rooms and I was after a 4 bed as I thought it would be a little easier. That was the point of difference at which I felt I could be mis-sold so I was very clear about this.

Not too far from the station, I grabbed some lunch at an open air (sort of) restaurant and made my way to Van Mieu Mon (Temple Of Literature) which also had a pleasant landscaped garden around it. It felt very Vietnamese in the touristy "real Asia"^[4] sense) to me which was nice.

I returned to the area I first went to where the Mausoleum and the associated museum was and tried to visit the area as it was far quieter although still a little busy. There was a pretty good reason that it was quieter, although it did not explain why it wasn't quiet in absolute terms - the museum was closed. As kind of evidenced by the crowds, the area was still interesting from an architectural angle and the space was pretty impressive and photogenic. This was also the area where Government sat and so there was quite a bit of security there and also open spaces that you were not allowed to enter. In many ways, it is those gaps that make it more photogenic. Near this area was the World Heritage site of Thăng Long Citadel which was home to the seat of power for many years. Entering was not clear as it is not really designed for walk-ins, more for coach trips. Even so, there are some things to see at the ticket office and then a walk to the citadel area (walking past a small military exhibit of warplanes, oddly). It was quiet and didn't have much there really but this made it enjoyable. Something pretty uncommon happened there too - I was asked to take a photo for a group of girls. There is something quite lovely about it not being a selfie and the growth of the selfie has been really obvious over the last few years. After this, I returned to shift my luggage and check in - and of course, I walked.

An upgraded room

As I checked in, I was informed that there was a problem with my room's air conditioning and I was being "upgraded" to another hotel which just happened not to be particularly close to where I was or where I wanted to go in the evening… It also did not look particularly different to what I had booked. The hotel "very kindly" offered to book me a "taxi" to that new hotel so I got on another moped (with my luggage this time) for a short hop to Kingly Hotel.

As a fan of flexibility, I decided to stick with my original plan of returning to the spa and having a walk around the city at night. I was getting a sense of familiarity with Hanoi and was referring to the map a lot less and just getting a feel for the area so I made my way to Vega Travel to inform them that my pick up hotel had changed. As the evening encroached, the light was pleasant and there was a buzz and hum from the early evening movements of the city which felt quite nice. I returned to the spa via a different route and ended up having the same masseuse who remembered me, I do have a relatively uncommon name after all.

It was a risk, but I thought it relatively low risk, and I felt like I could do with a haircut. It was a thing in Hanoi to have haircuts by the side of the road - street barbers - but I'd not seen many so I found a salon that looked open and asked in English whether they were open and how long for. They didn't really understand me but, even so, I thought "why not?". I figured that I could sort it out in the UK if needed before I went back to work and people here didn't know me anyway. I'd guess that the photograph of me that has been seen most widely by the most people is one to illustrate a haircut that I had a number of years ago by someone that didn't speak English. That photo has been used as my "profile picture" for Facebook and Twitter for many years and it showed that English communication is not always needed. Just usually needed. They didn't really understand and it took a few attempts to get close to what I was after but it ended up close enough and it was a memory made.

Walking back using a slightly different route, the city had transformed into a pedestrianised (sort of) one of markets and festivities. One of the major roads had stalls all the way down and the area around the lake was now completely devoid of cars. And in place of those cars were hundreds and hundreds of people doing the kinds of things city planners dream of them doing. Where once there was the risk of being run over by cars, now you were more likely to be hit by a lit shuttlecock or by some dancers. Apparently, central Hanoi, which at most times is full of mopeds, scooters and cars is pedestrianised each week and I was fortunate enough to see this on the Friday and it really was like a family-friendly party. There was actual street food and drinks, people singing using portable sound systems, large semi-formal dances and other kinds of impromptu activities. I was particularly taken by the aforementioned lit shuttlecocks. Football is hugely popular around the world but even countries where it is popular, and this is quite true in Asia particularly, the level of ability isn't necessarily that high. It seems counterintuitive that people so interested in a sport would not have got better at it. On the streets of Hanoi (and I saw it in other places too), there were groups of people in a circle kicking these shuttlecocks (and they were often with lights at night) up and doing group keepy uppies or playing a game similar to badminton^[5]. It looked pretty fun and I was pleased to see such diverse groups enjoying the act of kicking things. Kicking things is the best.

I needed to get all my bags sorted for the trip and ensure I had all my things charged so I went back to the Kingly Hotel to prepare. I would come back to Hanoi after Halong Bay, but only briefly so I soaked in what I could and retired to ready myself for being stuck with strangers for a couple of days.Strangers, but hopefully not strange people. We shall see.

CLICK FOR HANOI PHOTO ALBUM

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<sup>1. In early 2017, I went to Bangladesh for the first time in more than a decade. Elements of it were a pleasure but the traffic was definitely not and it was constantly remarked on by the Dhaka people. The traffic in Hanoi was arguably denser yet faster moving due to it being made up of lots and lots of scooters in the main. I'd noticed this in the cab but at ground level, it was quite an intense experience and this made it quite the practical illustration of neoliberalism - everyone doing as they feel and no concern for the consequences. Obviously, I had crossed the road a few times the day before but it was not a case of finding a crossing and waiting. It is not even a case of finding a crossing (there are markings for crossings at most junctions) and waiting for a gap, there is not really a gap to wait for. Instead, you have to become as one with the flow of traffic - read the runes and insert yourself in. The previous night's tour guide had told us that it was just a case of walking out with your arm outstretched to a stop to show people you were crossing and just walking. This seemed risky and a little too reliant on the awareness of others. It worked that night but we were in a group. My method was to find gaps, but gaps in a type of traffic rather than the traffic as a whole. The scooters were pretty well controlled and agile so they were able to avoid each other but this was not the case for the cars so I decided to cross by avoiding cars but being as one with the mopeds. It was a method that served me well for crossing the road that day and the trip as a whole. Not everywhere in Vietnam was quite so hectic but they all seemed to have a liberal interpretation of the rules of the road…
I did actually get hit by a scooter later on when I was in Ho Chi Minh City but this wasn't when crossing the road, it was when I was walking by the side of the road and a moped drove up the wrong side into me. And then sped off. I limped for a bit but was alright. ↩

2. I have, rather guiltily, questioned similar responses in the past which made me feel bad almost instantly. I did this in Budapest, where I also thought through some of the ramifications of the "no, really?" response [link].↩

3. This is a recurring theme in these posts.↩

4. I heard this phrase a lot about cities or places that had developed in some sense not being the "real Asia". It annoys me greatly to denigrate those living in cities as not being "real" and now happens in the UK regularly talking about London not being part of the "real" UK (especially re: it being a left-leaning city and where it voted for on the Brexit debate) even if it has approximately 20% of the country's population. Asia has quite large cities and so the proportion of the population living in cities is huge - the late 20th Century to now, modern history, is a story of urbanisation across the world and to say that these people are not "real" is pretty offensive to me.↩

5. Walking around Hanoi, there were quite a lot of Badminton courts painted on to the public pavements but I have to be honest, I only saw one street game taking place.↩</sup>