Hanoi,Vietnam

This is sister’s and my 1st visit to a communist country. I picked Hanoi cos I thought it’d be less spoiled than Ho Chi Minh City. We’re still wondering what it means to be communist or socialist today.

Vietnam – facts
http://www.vietnamtourism.com/
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/vm.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam

This is the logo that you'll see on the street signs in the city. It's actually a stylised drawing of the entrance to the Temple of Literature.

Hanoi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanoi
http://www.vietscape.com/travel/hanoi/

Getting there
(1) Vietnam Airlines
Direct flights to & from Hanoi on Sun,Tues & Fri
Their “official office” in S’pore only handles ticketing for tour groups. To get a ticket on your own, contact Deksair http://www.deksair.com.sg/
$311 {$210 + $101 (fuel surcharge and airport tax)} per person for a round trip ticket – this is supposed to be a promotional fare.
I think they have daily flights : S’pore – HCMC – Hanoi and back to S’pore but the fares quoted were more expensive
The flight was ok. 3 hours. We flew an A320 – legroom was pretty spacious (much much much better than any of the United flights I took to the US)
You get a snack (nuts) and a hot meal.

A colourful sunset - from our seats in the plane

(2) Tiger Airways
Definitely cheaper than Vietnam Airlines but…
Flies to & from Hanoi only on Friday & Sunday evenings
Means you’ll have either too little time or a bit too much time on your hands (not to mention you’ll miss the weekend night market, which really is only of consequence if you’re into pasar malams where stuff like cheap clothes and accessories are sold – like in S’pore)

(3) Silk Air
Can’t remember the exact fare quoted but it was somewhere in the range of $400 (!)

The city is served by Noi Bai International Airport bout 45km away from the city centre (that’s a 40 min ride by car). Rather small but seems to have been recently upgraded? Looks better than the airport at Chiangmai.

We arrived at bout 6.20pm and left the airport at bout 7.30 or so. The first thing we notice bout the outside – it was HAZY. We got onto a highway and that’s when our driver started honking every few seconds (we think it might be just to warn the bigger buses that he was coming up from behind alongside them – not a good introduction to traffic).

There were billboards advertising Honda, Toyota, what–I-can-only-guess-is their local brand of milk etc. Nope no Golden Arches…Aside from those and the street lights, the rest of the place was pitch dark, left me wondering if we were in the middle of nowhere…But as I discovered on the trip to the airport, it was all farmland.

Practical matters
1) Time
· Time difference : 1 hour behind S’pore
· It gets light around 6 am and dark around 5-something pm

2) Climate
· Northern Vietnam supposedly gets cold in the winter months. Well, at the very beginning of October it was still hot & humid. Felt warmer than S’pore, probably because of the pollution.
· Practically all of the museums and shops aren’t air-conditioned. If you’re lucky, there might be a fan nearby to blow some of that stuffiness away…

3) Currency : Vietnamese Dong (watch those zeros!)
· SGD 1 = VND 10 000
· USD 1 = VND 16 000
· Both USD and VND are accepted though street food vendors and taxis tend to quote VND, shops selling handicrafts etc tend to quote prices in USD especially for more expensive items. Generally, it’s to a tourist’s advantage to negotiate prices in VND rather than USD.
· Practically all denominations of VND are in notes, although I did get a couple of 500, 1000 and 2000 VND coins
· The notes are available as the regular paper type (some of them can be really grubby – and I mean Grubby) or, the rage in many countries, plastic. Gotta be careful – a plastic 10,000 dong and a paper 10 000 dong look a tad different.
· They’re all graced by the bearded countenance of none other than Uncle Ho (he looks more benevolent on the plastic notes)

Plastic 500K dong note

Paper 10K dong note

· Sister and I changed USD 100 to VND at the airport and , much to the money changer’s amusement, we took quite some time counting the dong. (that’s about 1,600,000 dong)

4) Electricity
· 220V (like in S’pore) but …
· 2 flat pins (like the ones that’s used in the US)
· The sockets in our hotel rooms looked like they could also take the 2 round pin type (like in Europe).
· Most of the guidebooks and websites recommend using a surge protector.

5) Language
· Vietnamese, Vietnamese and Vietnamese
· Most of the people we spoke with did not speak much English except for some of the hotel staff. I was surprised that they did not respond to “hello”, “thank you” and “bye”. Hmmm. Should have learnt a couple of Vietnamese phrases before I went…
· Spoken : sounds a little sing-song and seems to have many tones – bit like Cantonese(?)
· Written : Latin alphabets with little squiggles and ticks and tildes etc attached to some of the alphabets – somewhat like hanyu pinyin but definitely more markings involved. Means that whatever’s written isn’t necessarily the way we’d pronounce in English. Nevertheless, it’s still relatively easy to find things - if you know the words you’re looking for you can find the street names, write your hotel’s address for the taxi driver or whatever you want to order at whichever eatery.

We were a little apprehensive on hearing that Typhoon Xangsane was headed for Vietnam. A quick Internet search on the PCs in Changi Airport told us that it was, thankfully (in our case) headed for central Vietnam. Phew!Typhoon Xangsane hit central Vietnam (Danang and Hoi An) on 1 Oct. We did get some rain on 1 and 2 Oct but not sure if it was due to the typhoon

Hotel

• There are lots of budget hotels in the Old Quarter (cost bout USD15-30 per room per night); the (much) more expensive hotels like the Hilton and the Sofitel Metropole aren’t within the Old Quarter but they’re not that far away.
• We stayed at the Camellia 4 (aka Phan Thai Hotel)at 44 Hang Giay
• www.camellia-hotels.com
• We opted for the Deluxe room at USD 26 per night. Not sure if the room was really worth the price cos the view of the Old Quarter wasn’t fantastic (think we weren’t high up enough).
• However, it was spacious and clean and the service was good enough (the bell boys/porters carried our bags without us asking for help). The hotel’s also in a pretty good location – relatively quiet but still pretty much right smack in the centre of the Old Quarter. I say “relatively quiet” cos I really don’t think there’s anywhere in the Old Quarter that’s actually quiet!
• They’ve also got lots of maps of the Old Quarter at the front desk, if you need them. It’s a good idea to take one of those maps or any card with the hotel name & address since the natives don’t speak English.
• The 1st night we arrived, we had to be transferred to one of their sister hotels (Anh Dao, at Ma May). We didn’t like this one cos the room was rather narrow, there wasn’t a lift, and to make things worse, it was just opposite from a pub!!! As if the traffic wasn’t already noisy enough!
• The price of the room includes breakfast which was, well, edible and uninteresting. They’ve also got 2 PCs in the lobby with Internet access – slow but well, better than nothing , I guess.
  Some odditites
• The lift stops in between floors and is an odd shape (prob cos the building is sorta squeezed in between 2 other buildings)
• The TV is at the side of the bed, making it a really strange angle to watch from.

Getting around Hanoi

• The surest way to look like a tourist in the Old Quarter is to hop on one of the cyclos (“SEEkh-LOW” not sye-klow) – which really is just a trishaw with the bicycle behind the passenger. They’re s-l-o-w and for the same distance, I was told that the fare costs as much as a taxi’s.
• We took the taxis to get to the HCM Mausoleum Complex, Hoa Sua School and to the Ethnology Museum.
• Beware of rogue taxi drivers – we were cheated by one – his meter was not enclosed in a clear plastic box and didn’t have have seals (the trip to HCM Mausoleum Complex cost 40K dong but the trip back cost us 100K dong!!!!
• Our hotel receptionist told us that we should call for taxis instead of hailing them from the roads. She also gave us the names of a couple of reliable taxi companies – I can’t remember the others but following our bad experience , we stuck to Hanoi Tourist Taxi. I don’t have a photo of this taxi but their cars are white Toyotas (most of the other companies use this make too) and the company name & tel no are printed on the doors.
• You can get the locals at the shops, museums, eateries (even those by the roads) to call a taxi for you. They’re really accommodating – they’ll do it for no extra fee (no extra fee for the cabby too). Try doing this in S’pore – see the kind of reaction you get!!
• Be prepared to get accosted by xe om operators – they’re practically at every street corner. We didn’t take one – the prospect of having to literally hug someone you don’t know and whose biking skills & traffic safety awareness you know zilch about really didn’t appeal to us.
• Walking – the cheapest way of getting around but be prepared for a Harrowing Experience. It’s not as simple as it sounds cos the pavements are narrow and usually cluttered (human and inanimate clutter), the ground is uneven in many places, traffic is unpredictable…Be prepared to be honked at for no apparent reason and as, sister’s guide book advises, “bring a sense of humour”.
• Crossing the roads - the 1st time you do it, it’s as if you have a death wish. But don’t wait for the traffic to stop because it simply won’t. You literally have to “close one eye”, and walk across the road like it’s your grandfather’s. By the way, there are zebra crossings but they’re pretty much just white stripes on the road since nobody pays any attention to them

PLACES WE VISITED

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex : contains the mausoleum, Ho Chi Minh Museum, One Pillar Pagoda and the Stilt House

HCM Mausoleum

• A whole list of do’s and don’t’s (see photo) (I'm sure there's an "or else....!" in a hidden clause somewhere)

• We didn’t get to see Uncle Ho in all his preserved glory cos the Mausoleum was apparently closed from 25 Sept.
• The notice board didn’t help at all : see the photo and you’ll know what I mean. We were there at 7.15am and our “conversation” with one of the guards told us we were in for a disappointment so we actually walked to the Temple of Literature before returning to see the rest of the complex.
• Anyway, Wikipedia has a not-very-clear photo of HCM in his mausoleum (wonder how they got that photo!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh
• Taxi from Old Quarter to HCM Mausoleum Complex – about 40K dong

HCM Museum

• 3-storey building, hard to miss
• Admission 10K dong
• You’ll have to get your bags X-rayed and leave larger parcels/bags at the entrance
• Start at the 3rd floor. When you reach the 3rd floor, you’ll be greeted by a larger than life statue of HCM waving at you with the sun coming up behind him .

• Head for the doorway on the right and move clockwise. This floor contains many exhibits of objects HCM used, lotsa newspaper cuttings, photos and the occasional odd exhibit or two (see the photo with the fruits – this is from the Net, I was too amused and too bothered by the heat to shoot it myself). Very spacious and the layout of many of the exhibits are quite arty-farty.

Would someone like to explain this???

• Sister & I agree that they could have done a better job of presenting Uncle Ho’s life. A lot of information was presented on flipcharts – the stuffy environment and having to look for English translations (which are often limited to a couple of sentences) didn’t help.
• The 2nd floor. I think this is where they have semi-permanent exhibitions. This time it was a photo exhibition of HCM’s various visits to China. He sure was photographed many times. They had quotations from HCM in Vietnamese with English translations (I wonder if he translated them himself). See the photos. Am sure it’s profound and brimming with wisdom in Vietnamese but it somehow got profound-er in English.

Are you lost yet?

One Pillar Pagoda

• Lotsa Caucasian tourists here
• Sister and I didn’t think it was that impressive. Anyway we couldn’t get into the teensy-weensy place since everybody else was scrambling to get in.

HCM Mausoleum

• This is as close as we got to Uncle Ho.
• Didn’t get to see the changing of the guard (which supposedly takes place every hour on the hour) and we weren’t about to hang around to wait for that cos it was HOT

Stilt House

• Nothing much to see here. This stilt house is supposed to show how simply HCM lived.

Temple of Literature (aka Van Mieu)

• Where : Van Mieu Street, 2km west of Hoan Kiem Lake (the entrance is on Quoc Tu Giam St)
• Admission : xxx dong, an additional 3000 dong if you want a simple but colourful leaflet that has a little map of the place and tells you what is where (briefly) and in English too.
• A surprisingly peaceful contrast to the hustle & bustle of the streets so nearby.
• Move over NUS & NTU!

“Van Mieu - Quoc Tu Giam is a famous historical and cultural relic consisting of the Temple of Literature and Vietnam’s first university. The Temple of Literature was built in 1070 in honour of Confucius, his followers and Chu Van An, a moral figure in Vietnamese education.Quoc Tu Giam, or Vietnam's first university, was built in 1076. Throughout its hundreds of years of activity in the feudal, thousands of Vietnamese scholars graduated from this university.In 1483 Quoc Tu Giam was changed into Thai Hoc Vien (Higher Educational Institute). After decades of war and natural disasters, the former construction was completely destroyed. In preparation for the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of Thang Long (present day Hanoi) another construction has been built following the model of the previous Thai Hoc Vien on the same ground. The work includes the front hall, the back sanctuary, lean-tos on the left and on the right, the courtyard, and subsidiary structures.This site preserves historical vestiges of a 1,000-year-old civilization such as statues of Confucius and his disciples (Yan Hui, Zengshen, Zisi, Mencius), and ancient constructions such as Khue Van Cac (Pavilion of the Constellation of Literature) and the Worshipping Hall. "

• The Ministry of Education is on Chu Van An (Road) which is just north of the Temple of Literature
• The “logo” of Hanoi is actually a stylized drawing of one of the gates/courtyard entrances of the Temple of Literature. You can see this logo on every street sign.

• There are explanations/descriptions in English at the entrance of every courtyard. A tad wordy but better than what I had expected (which is no description at all!).

• In one of the courtyards, there are stone tortoises to both sides. They bear large stone tablets called “stelae” (singular – stele; a slab with names of people to commemorate something)

Recognise any names?

• Ponds with lotuses.

• In the building right at the very end, a “concert hall” – guess they have “live” performances of traditional music. Many of the instruments look like those in a Chinese orchestra.

• Display of water puppets

The large white puppet on the left is the narrator in the water puppet show (see later post on the water puppet show) - his name is Chu Teu. A merry fella with ponytails.

• Good ol’ Confucius