{"id":1420,"date":"2012-12-10T05:05:06","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T05:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=1420"},"modified":"2025-11-23T07:19:28","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T07:19:28","slug":"hanging-out-in-hanoi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2012\/12\/10\/hanging-out-in-hanoi\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanging Out In Hanoi"},"content":{"rendered":"

The flight to Hanoi was on a small 66-seater ATR72 plane with just two propellers.\u00a0 It always feels a bit unnerving when you\u2019re so used to flying everywhere on huge planes.\u00a0 With the little planes, you feel every bump and the right-hand propeller was right next to my window; it felt a little too close to my head!\u00a0 After landing safely, phew, it was a slightly more sober ride in a flashy car into Hanoi, although as soon as we hit the city our driver indulged in the Vietnamese style of zigzagging about through the heavy traffic.<\/p>\n

The Gondola Hotel turned about to be very nice; far nicer than the last place, thank goodness.\u00a0 When we stepped out of the hotel to stretch our legs, the staff were concerned that we weren’t wearing warm enough clothes.\u00a0 It is a lot cooler in Hanoi and we really could have done with a jumper when the sun went down, but it was still about 19\u00b0C or 20\u00b0C, and most westerners were still in shorts and t-shirts, despite some of the locals being in ski jackets!\u00a0 We ambled around the Old Quarter of Hanoi and tried to orientate ourselves.\u00a0 It is laid out in a fascinating way and is a hive of activity.\u00a0 The original lay-out consisted of all the shops in each street selling the same goods. So there was Bat Su selling china bowls, Cho Gao selling rice, Hang Non selling hats, Hang Quat selling fans, Hang Bac was for silversmiths and Hang Ruoi sold clam worms\u2026not sure what you do with them\u2026. and so the list goes on.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bit more muddled up now, but there are many streets that still sell mainly one item.\u00a0 We found one street that seemed to be mostly selling sunglasses, another was only shoes, another was bags and one that sold mainly just baby clothes.\u00a0 One shop was displaying dresses that would have been every transvestite\u2019s dream and it was quirkily situated next to a shop selling some sort of engines and motors; an interesting mix, obviously not along the lines of the original lay-out.\u00a0 All the traders are out on the street trying to sell you something or coax you into their shops.\u00a0 One old man who tried to sell Rodney something on the street, looked surprised when he received the very British answer \u201cnot today thank you\u201d, not sure where Rodney pulled that comment from\u2026..<\/p>\n

\"They
They Always Find Somewhere To Park….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mid-afternoon we decide to have a Thai meal, just for something different, and the meal was so big we couldn\u2019t eat anything else for the rest of the day. At 5pm we sat down in the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre opposite Hoan Kiem Lake.\u00a0 There were eight stories and we were given a programme written in English which explained what each story was about.\u00a0 The musicians were set to one side of the \u2018stage\u2019 and they played a mixed array of instruments, some of which we have never seen before, and the music was hauntingly lovely.\u00a0 It is a skill that originated in the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, but in the theatre the stage is a square pond of water, about 8 metres wide and about 0.75 metres deep. A bamboo screen was hung at the rear of the pond to hide the puppeteers.\u00a0 The puppets seemed to float on the water but were attached to a long bamboo pole which was operated from behind the screen.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Water Puppets Performing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first story involved a very colourful water dragon swooshing about in the pond.\u00a0 He met a fairy, which as Rodney said, looked more like a colourful swan.\u00a0 Apparently, they fell in love, got married, laid a big white egg which cracked open and gave birth to 100 Vietnamese children, the start of the Vietnamese race.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t actually 100 puppet children, more like 20, but they leapt about like fish in the water and two of them could actually do somersaults!\u00a0 It was all very sweet and the wooden puppets which averaged about 40cms high, looked lovely and colourful dancing around on the water.\u00a0 The whole show only lasted about 50 minutes and at the end all of the puppeteers appeared from behind the screen and that\u2019s how we knew how deep the water was.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Water Puppeteers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Still full from our large lunch we passed on dinner, wandered the streets a bit more and then opted for an early night before our next adventure tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\"Hoan
Hoan Kiem Lake<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The flight to Hanoi was on a small 66-seater ATR72 plane with just two propellers.\u00a0 It always feels a bit unnerving when you\u2019re so used to flying everywhere on huge planes.\u00a0 With the little planes, you feel every bump and the right-hand propeller was right next to my window; it felt a little too close […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8206,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions\/8206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}