Hanoi Town

We’ve just spent the past couple of days in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. We arrived early in the morning on an overnight sleeper bus. The first sights as we pulled through the suburbs of Hanoi were rows of roasted dog hanging by their front legs with their stiff tails dangling in the wind. It was a grey morning and unpainted concrete buildings soared into the sky on each side of the bus. The greyness and hammer and sickle flags along the roadside threw up images of how I imagine communist Russia to have looked.

Despite the initial murky vista, the sun broke through the clouds as we entered the old quarter and the city was transformed into a cocktail of colour. Bikes zipped down narrow alleys and tradespeople displayed their wares in shops and on bikes: from handmade cake tins to flip-flop factory outlets.

I donned my tour guide hat and dragged Laura through the streets of the old city at a swift pace. It might have been pleasanter to take our time, but I needed the loo and wanted to get back to the hotel as soon as we set off. Regardless of the danger of soiling myself we soldiered on, taking in sites such as the old city gates, a restored Chinese merchant’s house and the less intriguing road of blacksmiths which filled our ears with screeching, drilling and banging noises. Aside from this the only mishap occurred when Laura was bitten by a cat early on in the tour.

Post midday snooze, we picked up train tickets for our next destination (Sapa Valley) and then followed our map to an area that looked like a big green park. It turned out that the map had just colour coded that part of the map green to indicate a separate district, not a grassy park, it was just more built up Hanoi streets bustling with market vendors and motorbikes. By this point we’d gone too far to care so we picked up a huge mango and ate it on the curb side mulling over our options. More eating seemed like a good idea so we set our sights on a restaurant called KOTO. It turns out that KOTO is the Hanoi equivalent of Jamie Oliver’s 15 restaurant, serving top notch grub, cooked by under privileged kids from the city. An extravagant evening out, what with the mango appetiser, but having lived on white rice for the past 2 months it was time for some proper food.

The following day we’d planned to visit Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum complex, where visitors can enjoy looking at his 120 year old body in a glass sarcophagus – rather like a grisly Snow White. Uncle Ho is unfortunately only on display until 11.30am each day, which we think is in case his face collapses and needs touching up. Every year he is shipped off to Russia where his embalming fluids are topped up and he’s given a once over by the commie dictator preserving experts. Despite our good intentions, we slept in so weren’t able to give Ho our best, but I reckon he’ll still be there next time.

Day two in Hanoi was beginning to wear us out. The relentless motorbikes and car horns on every street were deafening and it was time to leave. Our train out of Hanoi left at 9pm so we made our way to the train station and hopped into our bunks for the night. My ears were still ringing when we arrived in Sapa the following day and was distraught to find that Sapa is undergoing some serious tourism development. This means spiteful people with power tools, keen to use them for as much of the day as possible grinding and banging them on hard surfaces until my ears feel like they are bleeding. On the plus side, once you get out the small town, the countryside is stunning and the presence of power tools decreases.



Next stop boogie boarding in Bali!