Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 21 - Monday May 30th 2016 - Hanoi, Vietnam

Firstly, can I say how shocked I am that I am already writing up day twenty one’s events, I mean that’s three weeks gone already today……wow that clock really can tick fast. Well it certainly did last night anyway as we have a confession. Prepare to sigh with disgust, but we did not get up (out of bed) today until 1130am Hanoi time. Now Hanoi time is the significant part of that statement as you have to consider our massive change in tome zones and desperate lack of sleep and that Hanoi had gripped us by the dangling ones’ last night and spat us out again as it was such an onslaught on the senses.

We both woke up in a bit of shock actually (and guilt) as we really wanted to drink in all that Hanoi had to offer and feel that we had immersed ourselves in this full on city but half the day had already gone by. No time to mope about it though so it was through the bathroom we went and on with the day.

Our first job was a chore, we needed to get some washing done so it was down to the concierge to sort this out. They walked us across the road to some little back street laundrette advertising washing for 80,000.00 Dong per kg (about £3.00). The lady (we will call her a lady for politically correct reasons) did not speak a word of English, she had no teeth at all and the place she was operating from had not seen a cleaning cloth or any bleach for some considerable amount of time (this might not end well??). Trusting in the hotel we duly handed over our bags full of washing and walked away from the toothless fairy hoping that it would all be alright, tune in tomorrow to find out!

Washing over there was small matter of breakfast/lunch. The amazing thing was that neither of us was feeling particularly hungry. We saw a coffee shop sign across the road just opposite the hotel and headed that way. Outside on the street we saw very glamorous Vietnamese women sitting at tables playing on their iPhone and macs so thought this is the place for us so walked in and took a seat.

The menu was actually quite confusing, the coffees had jelly in them and all sorts of things we had never heard of and it took us quite a while to find just a normal latte and that’s what we ordered. The food on the menu was very much dinner to us (our constitution was not quite ready for beef and rice or egg beef or rice) so it was just a coffee for us. We waited, and then we waited some more and then some more…. unlike coffee shops across the rest of the world they don’t make the coffee on the counter here it’s all done discreetly in the back then it comes over to you on a tray. It did eventually arrive and very nice it was too but we were both underwhelmed by the experience so ended up crossing the road just by the Opera house and trying coffee shop number two where they sold different foodstuff to rice and eggs!

After a cold chocolate frappe with Tiramisu (for Jonathan, yes cake for breakfast) and a water and pork BBQ roll for Trev which he said was delicious due to all the fragrant Vietnamese salad and spices inside) it was finally time to get on with seeing a bit of Hanoi!

The hotel had given us a map so this was our navigational tool for the day and we headed of in the direction of the first stop of the day, The Temple of Literature. Now there is a real danger here of going on and on about all the different things we have seen and what they mean and how they fit into Hanoi’s history but I know what you don’t know at this point and that is that we have seen an awful lot to say and if I went on about absolutely everything that we have seen in detail this blog would start turning into War and Peace so instead I will make broad brushstrokes about each of our stops but hopefully give you the reader enough to get an idea.

So back to the Temple of Literature. Essentially this was a school set up by ancient dignitaries to teach learning to the young Vietnamese. There wishes for education and trains of thought are carved into what look like headstones and placed on top of turtles as these are seen as one of the good luck non mythical creatures to the people of Vietnam. The Place does not feel like a school at all, you enter through a highly ornate gateway, very Asian in type but like a tiny version of the Arc De’ Triumph in Paris that leads to a symmetrical garden with many bonsai and huge ponds on either side full of Lotus Lilly pads(unfortunately the lotus was not in bloom). Through another gateway toy come into a square with buildings on three sides. To the side the buildings house the tombstone scriptures, a historic document that has really stood the test of time although all the stone carvings are now a little faded. To the bank of the courtyard stood the schoolhouse complete with temple and alter to the founders of the school and behind that yet another prayer space. As we went round more and more temples during that day it became clear that this was a common layout for Temples full stop. As for architecture, these Vietnamese temples are heavily influenced by the Chinese with ornate carvings, the use of bonsai and lots of gold and red lacquer abound, you would really think it was of Chinese descent but it’s not the case. China helped Vietnam for a number of years and that is why their influence is so strong, after all we are not a million miles from the Chinese border here at all.

This had been our longest walk from the hotel to get here and by now both the backs and fronts of our shorts were visibly soaked along with the waistband of of shorts. The humidity was stifling with beads of sweat dripping down every piece of flesh….. add on top of that the smells of this city and the relentless traffic and no pavements to walk on today was going to be hard work indeed.

Our next stop and thankfully not such a long walk was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. It is located in the center of Ba Dinh Square, which is the place where Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, Chairman of the Communist Party of Vietnam from 1951 until his death in 1969, read the Declaration of Independence on 2 September 1945, establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. You can actually go inside and take a look at his embalmed body but today it was shut (well ok this afternoon it was just as we had got up to late and missed the morning slot, not that we would have got in anyway as it is apparently so popular you have to book well in advance). I got told off for walking over a yellow painted line by one of the military guards, you must not get too close to the building apparently. You could tell that big parades obviously take place in front of this huge home for a body along with what might be the tallest flag pole in the whole of Vietnam displaying the country’s flag (red background with a big golden yellow star to the center). Just around the corner from this was the presidential palace, which was built between 1900 and 1906 to house the French Governor-General of Indochina. Mr. Ho Chi Minh refused to live here when he became the leader of Vietnam once it gained its independence and instead built a Vietnamese style house on stilts in the grounds of this vast French chateau looking grand house. See I told you that Vietnamese history was complicated, you have various Chinese dynasty’s getting involved then some French and they came back twice and then you have the various royal families for Vietnam itself……brrrr….brain freeze time, if you want to know more, google it.

So I said that I did not want this to turn into a history lesson so here goes the really potted version. We walked around the beautifully manicured gardens around the mausoleum and then headed down to a pagoda temple on an island in the middle of a lake, made some more Buddhist temple stops and called it a day. By now we had walked nearly eight miles in the stifling sweaty heat of Hanoi. We had become blasé about crossing the roads and not being able to walk on pavements and, well we had just given into it to be honest. Our tops were drenched, embarrassingly so but we managed to find the energy to get us back to the hotel and some much needed air conditioning and a shower.

Refreshed we headed down to the hotel reception and the travel desk to see what day tours were on offer. After the chaos of Hanoi today we fancied a day out, to get to see some of the wilderness of Vietnam that we had seen on google images. After perusing what was on offer we settled on a trip and parted with our dollars with a pick up planned for 09:00 tomorrow. We just had time to make it to the bar and ordered a much needed G&T before taking the short walk over to our restaurant reservation for this evening. Earlier today when we had stopped at Highland Coffee for breakfast we had made a reservation at the Nineteen 11 restaurant located in the vaults or catacombs of the Hanoi Opera house. Now this was not going to be a cheap meal (we had already looked at the menu) but it came so recommended that we just had to go and see what the fuss was all about.

Visually the restaurant was a complete delight but certainly cut from a more western cloth in terms of interior design. The walls were raw terracotta bricks with subdued lighting, the floor all gloss marble, the table linen all white and crisp, the waiting staff dressed in monochrome.

We chose the sampler menu of five courses along with a bottle of merlot and some fizzy water to top up all the sweat we had lost today whilst out walking.

The food was not necessarily what we were expecting to be honest in that like the décor it was actually very westerner influenced both in terms of its appearance and some of its taste. Don’t get us wrong it was incredible, delicious, a real fine dining gem but not what we were looking for. We lusted for full on eastern flavors and got eastern ingredients cooked and served a western way. Now I have said that it was expensive and what I really mean by that is that this is probably the most expensive place to eat in Hanoi but if you were to have the same quality of experience on any other city (especially western) it would probably be at least three times as much and we were not moaning at all about the coast, just a bit more Vietnam authenticity would have been really good, well for us anyway.

So what did we eat? Crab asparagus soup, green papaya salad with dried beef,

Fresh crab spring roll topped with shrimp roe, roasted seabass with spicy sautéed pumpkin and kumquat sauce…ok…. enough already you get the picture, fancy stuff indeed.

After our walking heroics of the day we w ere done, so we headed back to the hotel bar for another G&T before finally hitting the cotton sheets of our bed. It had ben such a long day, we had seen so much, experienced so much and worn ourselves out in the process. Goodnight Hanoi from the both of us…. tomorrow is another day!