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Date: 14 May 2011 03:13:25
Title: Hello Vietnam! - Hanoi, Vietnam
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21:02.187N  105:50.830E
 
April 26, 2011 - April 27, 2011
 
We left the boat at Rebak Marina as planned on April 26th and after one ferry ride, a taxi ride, three flights (Langkawi - Kuala Lumpur - Ho Chi Minh City - Hanoi) and a second taxi ride, we arrived at the aptly named Charming II Hotel in the old quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam.  Yes, that Hanoi, in north Vietnam.  We chose to visit the north of Vietnam instead of the south for two reasons.  First, travel planning procrastination on my part led to timing that wouldn't be the greatest for south Vietnam (late April/early May is the start of the rainy season there, and we were hoping to escape high heat and humidity, not endure more).  Second, most of our friends who visited Vietnam before us said the north tended to be more interesting and less developed than the south, all of which sounded good to us.
 
So about Vietnam...
Everyone is familiar with Vietnam - mostly based on memories of the '60's and '70's and the movies that came later - but if you're like us, we found we didn't know much about post-war Vietnam.  Some reading and a few days of first-hand experience changed that a little bit.  Here's a four-sentence summary:  After what the Vietnamese call the American War, the Vietnamese people toughed out an extremely grueling two decades of severe poverty (70% of the population below the poverty line).  This was caused by rigid and sometimes corrupt government, several bad harvests, soaring inflation (as high as 775%), and an economy heavily crippled by sanctions levied by western countries, and later, the collapse of communism in the USSR (which ended financial support for Vietnam).  In the late 1980's things started to look up with a change in Vietnamese leadership, and by the mid-1990's the US trade embargo was lifted and full diplomatic relations were restored between the US and Vietnam in 1995.  At that point, western cash started to flow into Vietnam, tourism began to take off and capitalism was allowed to creep in to some markets.  As they say, the rest is history, and suddenly there we were, smiling in a sea of north Vietnamese people on April 30, 2011, the day the 'Liberation of Saigon' is celebrated.  Of course we remember that day in 1975 a little differently (helicopters frantically ferrying the last Americans off the US embassy's roof and all), but today in Vietnam, Liberation Day is paired with Labor Day and celebrated nationwide over a long weekend.  The Vietnamese are incredibly resilient.  They prefer to look forward rather than back, and as a result, the fact that two Americans were in their midst on Liberation Day didn't seem to bother them in the least.  More to come on our Liberation Day experience in the next blog entry.
 
Moving on to Hanoi... 
Our introduction to Hanoi consisted of a twenty minute taxi ride from the airport to the heart of the old quarter in the dark.  We were braced for crazy traffic based on forewarnings from friends, but what we saw was more intriguing than crazy.  The city is not well lit.  For a city its size (6.3 million), there is very little street lighting and few high rise buildings to create that nighttime city glow usually seen when approaching a large city after dark.  In fact, the skyline is entirely odd.  Hanoi is a city built on a foundation of market stalls.  Market stalls measuring 4 meters (~12 feet) wide, to be exact.  Over time, these market stalls turned into shops, then shops with apartments above, then shops with more apartments above.  All built on a 4 meter wide by 13 meter long base.  The resulting awkwardly tall and abnormally skinny buildings are called tube houses.  The height of each tube house is consistently inconsistent with its neighbors, making the Hanoi skyline look more like a semi-toothless grin than the usual shining mass of steel and glass.  Not an ugly skyline, just intriguing - like the traffic.  Speaking of traffic... our introductory taxi ride wasn't scary, but we did notice an inordinate amount of horn tooting.  Not necessarily angry get-out-of-my-way horn blasting, more like here-I-am-make-room-for-me horn tooting.  Our first taxi driver was a very liberal horn-tooting guy.  If we cared enough to count the horn toots from the airport to the hotel, there may have been as many as eighty.
 
As we approached the city, and the old quarter in particular, we started to get an appreciation for the warnings received from friends.  There are no stop signs.  No yield signs.  No traffic lights.  No attempt at traffic control whatsoever.  Each intersection is a free for all.  However, no one speeds, and from a distance, you could almost say the movement through the intersection is semi-civilized - a meeting of motorists (and bicyclists) rotating, weaving and horn-tooting through.  The advantage of this type of non-traffic control is there is no need for traffic to stop.  In a way, it's very satisfying.  Imagine driving through the streets and avenues of New York City never having to stop.  Of course, overall you would have to drive more slowly, be more polite to other drivers, and employ an inordinate amount of horn tooting, but still, the nonstop thing is attractive don't you think?  As much as the non-traffic control seems to work for buses, trucks, cars, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and cyclos (sort of a backwards tricycle with a chair in front for tourists and a bicycle seat in back for the cyclo peddler), it leaves much to be desired for the pedestrian - especially the tourist pedestrian.  Crossing a street at an intersection in Hanoi's old quarter is, let's say, interesting.  We followed the advice of friends and chose carefully when to start crossing, and once started, never hesitated, stopped, or even looked at oncoming traffic.  The trucks, buses, cars, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and cyclos wove around us, occasionally giving us a quick horn toot to ensure we were paying attention.  We employed this street crossing method throughout our stay in Hanoi and obviously have lived to tell about it.  By the end of our visit, we developed an extremely high level of respect for the drivers of Hanoi.  Anyone that can safely operate a motorcycle through a free for all intersection dodging inexperienced tourist pedestrians while transporting a family of four (wife and two kids), carrying the day's groceries, and chatting on a cell phone deserves a little respect.
 
When we arrived at the Charming II Hotel, which is a converted eight storey tube house, we had to look closely to see a hotel really existed there.  The Charming II tube house is on a corner where the front door is a mere two feet from the street, but the narrow street frontage (you guessed it, 4 meters) made it really easy to overlook.  Once whisked inside, three staff members immediately took care of everything and fifteen minutes later we were standing on the street corner again blinking at an old quarter street map in the semi-darkness, trying to determine the best route to the recommended restaurant for dinner (it was only 1 1/2 blocks away).  After successfully completing our first street crossing, we found it was impossible to walk on the sidewalk.  Hanoi, and especially the old quarter, is a street city.  Everything spills out onto the sidewalks and creeps into the street.  For tube house residents, the sidewalk is a combination kitchen, dining room, living room, backyard and garage all rolled into one.  Meals are prepared and eaten on the sidewalk (while sitting on low plastic stools), it's also the evening hang-out spot, and where the family motorcycle is parked at night.  In the evening, you can't walk down the sidewalk without feeling like you're invading someone's home.  We finally made like the locals and walked down the edge of the street, hopping aside when tooted at by passing vehicles.  The locals don't hop aside for passing vehicles, but we felt it was in our best interest
 
 
A few of Hanoi's tube houses.  The white one looks like a double-wide.  Wow.
 
 
One of the old quarter's free for all intersections.  Don't let the pedestrian crossing marking fool you, it's just there for decoration.
 
 
Hanoi shops spilling out onto the old quarter's sidewalks, and yes, the Vietnamese really do wear those hats.
 
 
We stayed only one night and one day in Hanoi before taking the night train north to Sapa, near the Chinese border.  In preparation for our trip into the mountains, we spent most of the day in Hanoi at the Ethnology Museum learning about Vietnam's huge number of different ethnic minorities.  We decided it was a good idea to learn a bit about the 'hill tribe people' before we met some of them.  A good plan as it turned out because we had lots of contact with several minorities in Sapa - but that's a story for another time.
Anne
 
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