Christmas 09 con't: Hanoi, Vietnam

The continuation of our travels into Vietnam did not start on a particularly auspicious note. One morning in Laos, we decided to investigate travel possibilities to Hanoi. We quickly ruled out a thirty-hour (if everything went everything according to plan, which it usually doesn't) bus ride and went to a travel agent to look for flights. We ended up having to fly separately: two on the slightly-cheaper but definitely-less-safe Lao Airways, and two on Vietnam Airlines.

Kaleb and I were the lucky ones, and arrived in Hanoi just as it got dark on the 23rd. Airports in most of Southeast Asia, incidentally, are not terrifically user-friendly. For one thing, there is no taxi pool -- and so we ended up agreeing to pay some guy $20 to take us to the Old Quarter and our hotel (an hour away) in basically a private car. In the dark. In a city we didn't know. [Travel advice: don't do this.]

To make matters more tense, Kaleb waited until we were just out of sight of the airport before telling me in a whisper, "I read that they take you somewhere secluded and then beat you up and rob you." A very tense 45 minutes followed. We told him anything and everything: that our friends and the hotel were waiting for us (mostly true), that Kaleb was Japanese (because it's amusing that people will believe that) and I was Canadian (because who doesn't like them better than Americans), that we were newlyweds on our honeymoon (angling for sympathy). Nothing ended up happening to us, at which point everything he had done to get us to agree to take his "cab" became funny and charming and I felt really guilty for being so suspicious.

Our big outing in Hanoi was out to the much-recommended Museum of Ethnology, which I will agree is very well-translated. Perhaps a bit too well: there are some dozen or two distinct ethnic backgrounds in Vietnam, and I'm afraid the subtle differences between them were a bit beyond me. I preferred the spotlight exhibit on the cultures of the Mekong (which runs through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and the way that the river affects their lifestyles and culture across national borders.

Also fascinating were the grounds, where they had re-created several styles of traditional Vietnamese homes. We saw one girl in a fluffy pink dress being posed on the various steps and in the windows, and wondered who would choose such a place for their wedding photos. Then we saw other girls in fluffy purple and yellow dresses and wondered who would choose such a place for prom-dress-catalogue photos.

To get back to the Old Quarter, we decided to save money and take a bus. Buses in Hanoi stop for a total of 2.5 seconds (I timed it) and then start again regardless of who might be on or off -- or under -- the bus. Figuring out which bus to get on, and when to get off, was a somewhat daunting task; kudos to Aoe and Louise for figuring it out, because I would probably just have called a cab.

That evening, it being the 24th and all, I decided to go to church. We'd already found the church, and discovered that its giant creche made it quite the attraction amongst the locals. By night, the lights attracted even more people -- who, I discovered once I successfully fought my way inside, saw no reason to consider what was going on inside as anything more than a continuation of the spectacle.

On my way back to the hostel, I stood for so long at one corner that a Vietnamese woman came up to ask if I needed help to cross the street. Whatever you have heard about the traffic, I guarantee it's worse than you're imagining.

I have heard from various travellers that Hanoi is better then Ho Chi Minh, and vice versa. I don't know which is true, but I do know that although Hanoi has an almost unbelievable number of fascinating sites, we decided to forgo them all (after only 24 hours in the city) in favor of some peace and quiet.

So we signed up for a two-day budget tour of Halong Bay. The bus picked us up from the hostel and took us to the pier, where we eventually got onto our junk (named after the Chinese fishing boats that the design is based on) and set sail. The first afternoon we stopped at some highly-gentrified caves: they were only discovered ten years ago, but have already been fitted out with colored lights and wooden pathways.

As we floated, we passed several tiny floating villages; the people mostly make their living fishing, and I saw a fisherman's daughter selling someone (probably a tourist boat's cook) a fish: she scooped it out of a net-lined hole in her front porch and dumped it into a plastic bag to thrash its life away as the customer carried it away.

We slept in tiny berths tucked in the bottom of the boat. In the morning, I woke up at 5.15 to see the sun... not rise. Second time that's happened to me, but it did mean that I was awake to go kayaking with Kaleb before breakfast. It was really interesting to see the mountains up close: some of them have caves where people live, often with a single canoe or rowboat tied nearby.

We floated our way back to port, arriving around two and setting off for Hanoi shortly thereafter. We checked back into Hanoi, where our desk clerk somewhat reestablished my faith in the existence of nice Vietnamese people.

Backstory: the Vietnamese make some of the world's best coffee. You order as black, in which case god help you, or white, in which case you receive a small metal filter sitting on top of a small cup in which there is already a rather large amount of sweetened condensed milk. This is because the coffee is unbelievably, deathly strong. So you make it drinkable with the milk, then pour the result over a separate glass of ice.

Anyway, so I decided that I wanted to buy a Vietnamese coffee filter. My friends agreed to go on this quest with me. This is how the quest proceeded:

December 25th, about 8.30 am, on the bus: Notice a street filled with shops of metal kitchenware. Commit name of street to memory.
December 26th, about 5 pm: Determine location of street on map.
5.15 pm: Ask front desk clerk how to say coffee filter in Vietnamese.
5.17 pm: Desk clerk finally understands what I mean ("You want buy cup of coffee?... No?").
5;18 pm: Desk clerk takes me by the hand and helps me cross the street.
5:19 pm: Desk clerk demands of owners of shop across the street where their coffee filters are.
5:20 pm: Desk clerk demands 40,000 dong ($2) to give to shop owners.
5:20:30 pm: Coffee filter is mine! In a very dusty, very authentic Vietnamese box.

Vietnam overall was... not my favorite country. The Vietnamese seem to be of the belief that their country is doing fine with just Vietnamese people. Foreigners are beneficial merely for the purpose of providing much-needed dong.

This is, if you think about it, not an altogether unreasonable attitude. But it does make it a rather user-unfriendly place. Until desk clerks help you buy coffee filters.