There was something gloomy about the low misty grey cloud that never managed to lift all day on Wednesday 12/12/12. It felt like it was signalling the end of something; maybe it was because we were just finishing our trip around, what I considered, the best bit of Vietnam. The bus took us back to Hanoi, this time avoiding another inimitable road hazard. Traders stand on the hard shoulder of the motorways selling bread, and all the bikes, cars, even big trucks, would stop in the slow lane to make their purchases. The traders sit on the side of every other type of road, so why not stand on a three-lane highway too?!! Traffic and its rules seem to be fabulously random and Rodney has decided that vehicles must be designed more creatively in Vietnam than in the rest of the world, as they seem to be built with a force-field around them, to prevent collisions….
We got back to the very nice Gondola Hotel (now covered in Christmas decorations) and were greeted by the staff as if we were old friends; they did make us feel special. Breakfast the next day was later than we intended because a stupid migraine hit me in the middle of the night, but we still managed to spend the rest of the day ambling around the streets of Hanoi. We walked out of the Old Quarter and found our way to Ho Chi Minh’s old house, the Ho Chi Minh Museum, Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum and the One Pillar Pagoda. The last one on that list, I do believe, had nothing to do with Ho Chi Minh. While walking through one of the parks we heard a song playing over a tannoy. Rodney thought it was a football chant and wondered where the match was; it certainly sounded like one, initially…… ” ho, ho, ho, ho, ho chi minh…..” We moved on…..
Roaming around Bach Thao Park, Hanoi’s Botanical Gardens, we hardly found a flower in bloom, but there were plenty of lovely trees and it was nice to be away from playing chicken with the traffic for a while. On West Lake we walked out to the Tran Quoc Pagoda. Every opening, all the way up to the top, contains a white stone Buddha, each one in a different style. I do like wandering around Asian temples, the colours, the gold leaf, the little piles of offerings and flowers, the chanting, the heady smells of the burning incense and the inevitable rows of shoes outside each door. And they are always a little haven of peace from the buzz and noise outside.
The lake was covered in an eerie mist, which hung there heavily all day and the floating pedalo-swans huddled together in a corner with no takers today. From the lake we zigzagged back towards the Old Quarter and the massive Dong Xuan Market. Here you can buy all sorts of ‘stuff’, things you would probably never need in your life; so much of it in plastic. Though upstairs there was a jungle of fabric stalls. Neither of us has ever seen so many bales of so many different types of fabric and all in the one place. It was wonderful; I thought I’d found heaven, but when you only have a suitcase and the airplanes have limits, I had to pull myself away empty handed.
On the way back to our hotel I did buy a very colourful, partly embroidered, Flower Hmong style rucksack; look I can put my shopping in it…. As we entered our hotel the cheery bellboy asked me what we had done today and then asked to see my purchase. He asked how much I had paid for it and then pronounced “you pay too much, only copy Hmong” ! I’ve seen many a copy Prada, Dior and Gucci in the shops in Asia, but I didn’t realise there are copies of the local tribe handicrafts too!!! With every purchase in this country you always wonder if you paid a fair price, but as the rules of bartering say, if you’re happy with the price you finally agreed on, then that’s ok and I was very happy with what I had paid for my lovely rucksack.
After spending all day dicing with death crossing roads, declining taxis, cyclos, motorbikes, fruit, doughnuts, t shirts (actually no, Rodney did buy one of those), postcards, Zippo lighters and all the other continuous stream of vendors desperately trying to make you buy, we decided this had been more exhausting that the actual walking! It was still too early for dinner, so after a quick shower, the hotel organised a free lift to a local spa. We were given cups of green tea and then taken to a lovely room together where our feet were washed and then lying on beds next to each other, we were massaged for a full hour. This was now my fifth massage in our three weeks in Vietnam and it certainly cleared the remains of last night’s migraine. We declined a lift back to the hotel and tottered slowly through the still busy streets seeking out a place for our last local meal in Vietnam.
Having organised a late check out, we wandered down to the Hanoi Opera House after breakfast. It’s a very grand building styled on one of the opera houses in Paris. We then promenaded through Hoan Kiem, the French Quarter where the buildings are much bigger and smarter and the roads are more like boulevards. In fact it’s very different to the Old Quarter, especially when you find a game of badminton in full swing in the middle of one of the pavements.
I know it’s silly having Santa Claus dressed in a red fur-trimmed suit in an Australian summer, but seeing so many Christmas decorations in Vietnam, a predominantly Buddhist and Communist country, does seem even more weird. I guess the commercial side of Christmas has hit countries throughout the whole world nowadays. Rodney just wishes that the shops, hotels and restaurants didn’t play such awful Christmas songs in awful squeaky American voices…..
We’ve had fun spotting whacky spelling errors in the ‘soovenir’ shops and ‘restaurats’. We really weren’t sure about eating ‘fried squish’ and I will always call squid ‘squish’ from now on. Some of the names of the businesses are brilliant: The Polite Pub, Nice Silk, Hanoi Posh Hotel, Feeling Tea (feeling???), Super Place, Happy Hotel, Dung Palace Hotel (glad we didn’t stay there!), Phuc Mi (it was a clothing store…), Turkey Fashion (I didn’t know turkeys wore clothes), Nice Dreams (they sold rolls of lino….?), and then there was IKEA Home Furnishing, which looked like a genuine sign, but it turned out to be a flower shop…..?
The compulsory wearing of helmets for adults only, is still amazing me. Watching helmeted adults carrying toddlers and babies between their arms as they drive, with up to three more children sat on the back of the scooters and motorbikes, just looks so scary. I was relieved to never see one drop off; the children must learn to hang on from a very early age. Stalls selling the helmets are everywhere and there is the most incredible range of colours and styles; they seem to have become a fashion statement. Some people pop a wide-brimmed hat underneath, presumably for sun shade. Some pop a hat on top, maybe to fool the police, and the ladies can even buy one with a slit in the back for a ponytail to stick out…brilliant!
To end our Vietnamese shopping experience on an incongruous note, after all the constant hassling and staff following you around shops, at the very last one, before dashing to the airport, I couldn’t find a shop assistant. It was a picture shop and the front of the shop was wide open. I chose five greeting cards that I liked and, after waiting ages for someone to appear, I called very loudly up the stairs at the back of the shop. A very sleepy lady, still wearing pyjamas, came down the stairs apologising profusely for being asleep. I handed her some money, she asked for more and then instantly gave up on bartering, handed me the cards and returned up the stairs…… I wondered if I was still in Vietnam!
We both love the little shrines that are placed everywhere, not just in temples, but inside and outside of homes, hotels, shops, etc. There are apparently various gods that need to be kept happy, even one in the kitchen. We strolled down one street in Hanoi, where most of the shops (in the old tradition) were selling the small carved wooden platforms that form the base of the shrines. But it’s what people place on them that makes us chuckle a little. On the one in the hotel foyer there were, amongst other things, a couple of cans of coke, some fake money, incense, a packet of Pringles, some nice fruit and even a large box of Choco Pies (not sure what they are, but I hope the ‘Foyer God’ likes them). We never actually found out how long the items are left there, or how often they are replaced. At Rick and Lan’s home we always wondered if the yummy pomelo we had just eaten, was the one ripening on their shrine the day before….?
When we were checking out of the lovely Gondola Hotel we were asked if we would like help with our suitcase because “it would be an honour for the hotel to take your bags to our reception”. We’ve never been told that in a hotel before and I don’t think anything was lost in translation; the people there seemed to genuinely want to please and to help you. When we finally left the hotel, the staff were all standing up, waving goodbye and shaking our hands – it was quite a sending off party !!!
At the airport our last 40,000 dong was spent on a can of iced tea and a packet of minty Mentos. I can’t wait to get back to using a currency without the excessive number of noughts on the end. My brain can’t cope with buying things that cost half a million ………..! And so ends our trip around Vietnam. Our next and last stop for the year will be Singapore…………..
