Frogger Anyone?
Remember the Atari game back a couple decades called Frogger? Walking in the streets of Hanoi is pretty much like a video game. One walks forward, 10 scooters come zooming by. But you can't walk too quickly or too slowly because the oncoming traffic from either direction needs to gauge your walking speed and swerve to your left or right.
What about driving? Or trying to be like the locals and riding a scooter. When's the last time you played chicken? Never tried it? Come to the streets of Vietnam and it'll seem like a fight for survival. What am I talking about? Well, Amy and I got tired of walking around so we rented a little scooter to ride around town. Imagine a world without traffic laws. None. (I'm sure there are rules, we just could identify any of them). Now imagine two schools of fish swimming full speed at one another. Then they cross. Miraculously, everyone makes it to the other side all in one piece, but not without any harrowing experiences in the intersection. Now, take that and multiple by 150. That was our day today.
Though our butts are a little sore, and our alertness heightened a fewfold, I think it would have been very difficult to see Hanoi without our scooter. $5 and and a little more for gas found ourselves riding a cheap 50 cc Honda scooter. Unfortunately, it had a manual transmission, and I haven't ridden a motobike in a while. So that took a little getting used to.
Our first destination was to the train station to buy some soft sleeper berths for transportation out of Hanoi to Hue. Either all the streets in Hanoi sound exactly the same or my 3rd world navigation skills are a little rusty. Probably the latter. I think we could have walked to the train station in 30 minutes, but we must have ridden an hour to find the place. Along the way, we picked up a couple of nice bowls of pho for breakfast. Tasty. Hard to gauge how sanitary all this stuff is. I'm sure everyone in this country has some form of Hepatitis. Hey, we got our shots, so why like. When in Rome, eat a hot bowl of rice noodles for breakfast.
By the time we got to the train station, we had started to get the hang of driving around town. Sometimes though, in order to make a left turn, we had to take a couple of right turns. Unfortunately, the train station was all sold out on soft sleeper berths and I wasn't all that interested in seats or a hard sleeper. Hue was 12 hours away by train, and sitting with the locals on hard seats or sleepers was not my cup of tea. Granted, one of the trains leaves at 11PM and we would be sleeping the entire way, no point unnecessarily roughing it. I had a feeling though, that there were plenty of tickets to be had; we just had to pay up a little bit. Back on the scooter towards the backpacker section we went.
What do you know, after a few phone calls, the local travel operator, Vega Travel (formerly known as Fanispan...they changed their name because too many people were copying it), got us our soft sleeper tickets for Wednesday night out to Hue. I have no idea what the premium was, but the hard sleeper would have cost us around $25 and we paid $32 for the soft sleeper. The difference between the two is that the hard sleeper sleeps 6 per berth and the soft sleeper sleeps 4. All nice and air conditioned. I'm looking forward to it. We also booked our trip to Halong Bay for $35 per person. That gets us 4 meals and a night on a little boat. The cabins look way better than the tiny rooms we got on our Turkish gullet cruise, but holding my breath on my $35. Actually, it's supposed to be pretty pleasant.
We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon riding around town. Hanoi doesn't have THAT many touristy sites to visit and we weren't all that interested in local museums. We stopped by the Temple of Literature, a very Chinese-looking temple. Don't know much about its history, but I think it has a lot to do with Confucius and imperial examinations. I've been to Confucius' hometown in Qufu in Shandong province so I wasn't all impressed. The steeles weren't very well taken care of and any small Chinese writings were all worn away.
Lunch was spent at KOTO, a very nice restaurant that is a culinary training ground for street kids. It's a non-profit organization run by some Ozzies, I think. Food was delicous, wasn't too expensive either. We spent the rest of the afternoon dogging oncoming traffic and getting lost in Central Hanoi. We were surprised at the lack of uniformed police or military personnel given the Communist nature of the country. Unfortunatley, Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum wasn't open on Mondays. Would have been interesting to see.
I found my walking scandals that I've been searching for. They have a little identy crisis. It has a Nike swoosh, a Teva label on the bottom, and Ucci (whatever that is) in the inside sole. Of course, it's made in Italy. LOL!! Amy bought herself a nice pair of fake Birckenstocks. They were the only ones were could find. I think our haggling skills are a little rusty. I only took my sandals down 20% and we couldn't even get the lady to budge on Amy's shoes.
Dinner was a disaster. I don't know if being dependent on a traveler's guidebook for dining options is a good thing, but it is virtually impossible to distinguish between one restaurant and other. We ended up trying some French food in the Old Quarter. With Vietnam being an old French colony, French food shouldn't be that difficult to get, right? Wrong. Amy ordered the set menu and I chose a couple of dishes. After downing $50 USD, we were thoroughly unsatisfied. We're done having foreigner food in Vietnam. Going to stick to Vietnamese food no matter how sketchy the place looks.
Our after dinner ride around Hanoi on our scooter was extremely pleasant. The temperature cooled down slighty, but the humidity was almost all gone. Most importantly, Hanoi pretty much shuts down after 10PM, so there's ZERO traffic on the road. All the old colonial style hotels like the Sofitel Metropole and government buildings are all lit up. Too bad the city doesn't look nor feel like this during the day.
We leave for Halong Bay tomorrow morning. Should be a nice little boat trip. Won't have internet access for a couple of days.
What about driving? Or trying to be like the locals and riding a scooter. When's the last time you played chicken? Never tried it? Come to the streets of Vietnam and it'll seem like a fight for survival. What am I talking about? Well, Amy and I got tired of walking around so we rented a little scooter to ride around town. Imagine a world without traffic laws. None. (I'm sure there are rules, we just could identify any of them). Now imagine two schools of fish swimming full speed at one another. Then they cross. Miraculously, everyone makes it to the other side all in one piece, but not without any harrowing experiences in the intersection. Now, take that and multiple by 150. That was our day today.
Though our butts are a little sore, and our alertness heightened a fewfold, I think it would have been very difficult to see Hanoi without our scooter. $5 and and a little more for gas found ourselves riding a cheap 50 cc Honda scooter. Unfortunately, it had a manual transmission, and I haven't ridden a motobike in a while. So that took a little getting used to.
Our first destination was to the train station to buy some soft sleeper berths for transportation out of Hanoi to Hue. Either all the streets in Hanoi sound exactly the same or my 3rd world navigation skills are a little rusty. Probably the latter. I think we could have walked to the train station in 30 minutes, but we must have ridden an hour to find the place. Along the way, we picked up a couple of nice bowls of pho for breakfast. Tasty. Hard to gauge how sanitary all this stuff is. I'm sure everyone in this country has some form of Hepatitis. Hey, we got our shots, so why like. When in Rome, eat a hot bowl of rice noodles for breakfast.
By the time we got to the train station, we had started to get the hang of driving around town. Sometimes though, in order to make a left turn, we had to take a couple of right turns. Unfortunately, the train station was all sold out on soft sleeper berths and I wasn't all that interested in seats or a hard sleeper. Hue was 12 hours away by train, and sitting with the locals on hard seats or sleepers was not my cup of tea. Granted, one of the trains leaves at 11PM and we would be sleeping the entire way, no point unnecessarily roughing it. I had a feeling though, that there were plenty of tickets to be had; we just had to pay up a little bit. Back on the scooter towards the backpacker section we went.
What do you know, after a few phone calls, the local travel operator, Vega Travel (formerly known as Fanispan...they changed their name because too many people were copying it), got us our soft sleeper tickets for Wednesday night out to Hue. I have no idea what the premium was, but the hard sleeper would have cost us around $25 and we paid $32 for the soft sleeper. The difference between the two is that the hard sleeper sleeps 6 per berth and the soft sleeper sleeps 4. All nice and air conditioned. I'm looking forward to it. We also booked our trip to Halong Bay for $35 per person. That gets us 4 meals and a night on a little boat. The cabins look way better than the tiny rooms we got on our Turkish gullet cruise, but holding my breath on my $35. Actually, it's supposed to be pretty pleasant.
We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon riding around town. Hanoi doesn't have THAT many touristy sites to visit and we weren't all that interested in local museums. We stopped by the Temple of Literature, a very Chinese-looking temple. Don't know much about its history, but I think it has a lot to do with Confucius and imperial examinations. I've been to Confucius' hometown in Qufu in Shandong province so I wasn't all impressed. The steeles weren't very well taken care of and any small Chinese writings were all worn away.
Lunch was spent at KOTO, a very nice restaurant that is a culinary training ground for street kids. It's a non-profit organization run by some Ozzies, I think. Food was delicous, wasn't too expensive either. We spent the rest of the afternoon dogging oncoming traffic and getting lost in Central Hanoi. We were surprised at the lack of uniformed police or military personnel given the Communist nature of the country. Unfortunatley, Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum wasn't open on Mondays. Would have been interesting to see.
I found my walking scandals that I've been searching for. They have a little identy crisis. It has a Nike swoosh, a Teva label on the bottom, and Ucci (whatever that is) in the inside sole. Of course, it's made in Italy. LOL!! Amy bought herself a nice pair of fake Birckenstocks. They were the only ones were could find. I think our haggling skills are a little rusty. I only took my sandals down 20% and we couldn't even get the lady to budge on Amy's shoes.
Dinner was a disaster. I don't know if being dependent on a traveler's guidebook for dining options is a good thing, but it is virtually impossible to distinguish between one restaurant and other. We ended up trying some French food in the Old Quarter. With Vietnam being an old French colony, French food shouldn't be that difficult to get, right? Wrong. Amy ordered the set menu and I chose a couple of dishes. After downing $50 USD, we were thoroughly unsatisfied. We're done having foreigner food in Vietnam. Going to stick to Vietnamese food no matter how sketchy the place looks.
Our after dinner ride around Hanoi on our scooter was extremely pleasant. The temperature cooled down slighty, but the humidity was almost all gone. Most importantly, Hanoi pretty much shuts down after 10PM, so there's ZERO traffic on the road. All the old colonial style hotels like the Sofitel Metropole and government buildings are all lit up. Too bad the city doesn't look nor feel like this during the day.
We leave for Halong Bay tomorrow morning. Should be a nice little boat trip. Won't have internet access for a couple of days.
posted by amy & albert at 6:42 AM
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