A Last Few Days in Hanoi

Old Town Hanoi...Oh How I Missed You

Even though I’d only spent a few hours wandering the Old Quarter in Hanoi when we’d first arrived (six days previous), I had instantly loved it, and I was delighted we were back. The old quarter is a complete hodgepodge of narrow street and alleys, crammed full of shops, hotels, and restaurants. Due to the French occupation a century ago, many of the buildings have French architecture and you get the feel of being in a super crowded New Orleans. 

When we got back from Ha Long Bay, it was too late to visit any museums or pagodas, so we just got lost in the twisting streets and eventually ended up at a Harry Potter themed cafe. The cafe was decked out in all things Potter, including letting you wear your house’s colors if you wanted. So donning blue and silver, I enjoyed a nice alcoholic butterbeer and Em enjoyed a potion in red and yellow.

We finished our evening off with a show at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater. Water puppetry has roots dating back to the 11th century. It stems from a time when the rice paddy fields were flooded and villagers would make entertainment by standing in the waist-deep water with the puppets performing over the water.

The puppeteers stand hidden behind a large screen and control their puppets via large rods. This creates the effect that the puppets are moving across the water on their own. The stories the puppets tell are about the people and the myths of the area. The stories are told through the puppets and the accompanying music and song. We didn’t opt for the headphones and therefore just enjoyed the show without knowing more than the gist of what was occurring. The experience is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s cheap enough, that’s it’s worth the admission to check out and experience once; if for no other reason than to hear beautiful music and see a traditional art that is not practiced anywhere else in the world.

Only Full Day in HaNoi...Better Make the Most of It

We spent the majority of our only full day in Hanoi on a day tour that hit up most of the crucial tourist attractions within the city. A mini bus picked up us and about 15 other people and commenced to take us to many of the highlights of Hanoi. We started with a visit to the Ho Chi Minh Complex, which hosts the former president’s residence and place of work from 1958 until 1969, and his mausoleum (which is opened to visitors on the weekends, but entails standing in line for hours to see). Ho Chi Minh was a politician, writer, journalist, poet, and polyglot who loved his country and his people very much; and from what I’ve seen here, most of the people loved him as well. Minh never married and considered all of the Vietnamese as his children. Therefore, most of the Vietnamese call him Uncle.

After walking the ground of Minh’s complex and seeing how simply he lived in contrast to his status, we ventured to the One Pillar Pagoda. The One Pillar Pagoda was built by Emperor Ly Thái Tong between 1028 and 1054, after he had a dream in which the enlightened being Avalokiteshvara gave him a baby son resting on a lotus flower (at the time of the dream, the Emperor was childless). Emperor Ly Thai Tong commissioned the pagoda to be created in resemblance of this lotus flower which is also the Buddhist symbol of enlightenment. The Emperor remained in gratitude to the bodhisattva and subsequently to Quan Am, the Goddess of Mercy following the birth of his son. Inside the temple a richly gilded statue of Quan Am takes centre place at the main altar. The image of the pagoda is often used as a symbol for Hanoi.

The next stop on our tour was the mandatory sales pitch that seems to be built in to every tour we take. This time we visited a lacquer workshop where we got to see all the work that goes into making art from lacquer trees, other types of wood, and egg shells. The process was actually kind of fascinating and the end products beautiful, but I still hate that every tour has one of these “culture village” add-ones slotted into a tour. If you got to go to an actual village instead of a sales shop geared towards mass production for tourism, I might not be so against these detours.

Luckily, our detour was only 30 minutes and soon we were at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. The museum showcases the traditional ways of life for the 54 different ethnic groups that reside in Vietnam. There are displays with translations in various languages and examples of real clothing, tools, everyday items, outside, houses. We ditched our group and tour leader to run around and see as much as possible in the short time we had there. If you’re nerdy or at all interested in learning about the diverse array of people that call a Vietnam home, I suggest you stop by for a visit.

After a scrumptious lunch at a local restaurant in the Old Quarter, we visited our last two stops for the day: the Temple of Literature and Tran Quoc Pagoda. The Temple of Literature is also known as the Temple of Culture or as a Temple of Confucius. The Temple was built in 1070 at the time of Emperor Ly Thanh Tong and contained Vietnam’s first national university, the Imperial Academy. The Academy was built to educate Vietnam’s bureaucrats, nobles, royalty, and other members of the elite. The best pupils had their names carved into stelae on the shells of stone tortoises. 

Our last destination on the tour was the Tran Quoc Pagoda in the West Lake. The west lake is the largest of Hanoi’s 30 or so lakes at around 12 miles in circumference. The Pagoda is the oldest Buddhist temple in Hanoi. You get to cross a small causeway to access the temple. In the front part, there is the tall pagoda that houses the remains of important monks. This pagoda was the tallest one at one point and is now surrounded by many smaller shrines. 

My favorite thing about this pagoda and the One Pillar Pagoda is that there are these cartoon panels that depict the karmic consequences of various actions. Some of the panels made perfect sense with sayings such as: “Protect innocent people from being bullied; get a safe life”, but then there are others such as: “Live without loving others; No Longer live with people” or “Waste time in playing games: hardly reborn into human life” that make me think many of these are propaganda and not original teachings. The fact that a Buddhist in our tour group also disagreed with many of the sentiments helps support my theory. Either way, the wacky illustrations and the outcomes for actions makes them fun to read (and just my writing this probably means I’m doomed to some terrible karmic fate).

Our city tour may have wound down, but not our day. The receptionist at our hotel told us about a cultural show called My Village (Lang To), that was a must see. We purchased a set of tickets and headed for a night at the theater. 

The show immerses the audience in the life of a Vietnamese village through a combination of acrobatics, contortion, music, and singing. Everything revolves around bamboo, with large pieces use to create different props, sets, and structures throughout the performance. The show is preformed in low light and drab colors that add a great atmosphere to the production. I immensely enjoyed this show and was happy I got to see it.

After the show, we wandered the night market a bit and looked at all the products for sale. It was a good end to a long day.

There’s a Prison; Let’s Go Visit

In keeping with our tradition of seeking out and visiting the macabre, Em and I went to visit the “Hanoi Hilton” or as most people know it, the Hoa Lo Prison. The prison was built by the French to house political prisoners during the French Indochina War and then later used by the North Vietnamese to house US prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Most of the prison was demolished in the 1990s, but the gatehouse remains as a museum. 

Most of the museum is slanted from the perspective of the Vietnamese (history is always written by the victors), but it’s still an interesting place to visit. If all the propaganda within the museum is to be believed, while the French were in charge, the Vietnamese political prisoners lived very difficult lives. They lived in terrible conditions and many were tortured. Even so, different secret communist party cells sprung up inside the prison and continued the teachings that landed them there in the first place.

In direct contrast to the way the French treated their prisoners, the Vietnamese treated the captured Americans soldiers (many were pilots shot down, including Senator John McCain) so well that the soldiers nicknamed the prison the “Hanoi Hilton”. When the soldiers were released back to America at the end of the war, many were friends with their captures and received souvenirs as they headed home.

On our way to visit the prison, we stumbled upon Hanoi’s famous Train Street. Train street is a section of the city were the train track cuts through the middle of a residential neighborhood. On either side, mere feet from the track itself, are shops, homes, and cafes. The residents in this area conduct there lives on and around the track and move whenever the train comes speeding by (there are two trains a day). 

Due to the increasing popularity of the street based on quirkiness and quaintness and the stupidity of Instagrammers attempting to get perfect shots of them with the train in the background (thus causing almost collisions), the street is technically now closed to the public. 

While walking to the Prison, Em and I just happened to come across one of the entrances to the street and wandered over. There are guards manning the entrances to the street and they blow their whistles and yell at you if you attempt to wander onto the tracks to take photos. You can get around this by accepting the offer of any of the various cafe owners with shops that line the picturesque street to sit down and have a cup of joe. The train guard will still glare at you, but depending on how out of the line of sight the cafe you go to is versus the guard’s post, you can still manage to snap a few shots in between enjoying sips of egg coffee. We did just this.

Our last little bits of adventure in Hanoi consisted of food, as is only fitting for some foodies. On the recommendation of a good friend, Pam, we headed for lunch at Koto Training Restaurant. KOTO stands for Know One, Teach One and is a one of a series of restaurants dedicated to teaching at risk and under-privileged youth life skills that will help them to lead better lives. They have a great philosophy and some tasty food (although I’d suggest picking a la carte and not the set menu (we did that and decided it wasn’t the best way to go).

Our final port of call was Loading T, a quant coffee shop hidden in a converted room of a dilapidated French colonial house on the edge of Old Town. From the outside, the building looks like it should be condemned, but on the inside, there various rooms which have been converted into different little shops. The house was built in 1932 for one family, but divided into 16 different homes/businesses in the 1950s. The architecture has remained the same and this provides as rustic and authentic atmosphere in which to enjoy a cinnamon coffee or fresh fruit smoothie.

Hong Kong Airport Sucks for Long Layovers

Em and my’s returning flight home (sniffle sniffle) came with a 14 hour layover in Hong Kong. If this layover occurred during daylight hours, then it would have been amazing, as the city is a quick 30 minute express bus ride away. Unfortunately, the layover for us started at 11 pm and ended at 1 pm the following day. Even so, we thought we could find some lounge chairs in a  corner to nap for a few hours before catching the first, 6 am, shuttle to town and tooling around for a little bit. While this idea seemed easy enough in theory after reading multiple articles online, it was a complete failure in reality. 

Our first mistake is that we crossed through the security point after arriving from Vietnam. According to the help desk, once you’ve passed through security, you’re no longer allowed to leave and then come back in. I’ve done it at other airports before, so I don’t think that’s true, but we didn’t want to get in trouble and decided we’d just stay. The second issue we ran into, is that many of the airport lounges that we’d previously been able to gain access to had changed their policies and we no longer could get in with our Priority Pass. 

Looking online, there are articles that tell of numerous areas throughout this gigantic airport that have lounge type chairs or seats without armrests where passengers can sleep. We couldn’t find any of them. There was lots of construction going on and I think the areas where the lounge chairs used to be where now areas where construction was. Additionally, all the seats had arm rests on them so the most space you could carve out was two seats next to each other. 

Giving up on finding a comfy spot to sleep, we settled on sets of two seats and tried to get some shut eye. It was hard going as the construction decided 2 am was the best time for power tools and jack hammers, the AC was cranked at night to freezing temperatures, and the airport runs 24/7 so there were always lights and announcements going on. I never thought the idea of getting on the plane to grab some shut eye would be the best alternative.

And so with a sleepless night in the airport and a 12 hr flight home, this adventure of The Scholarly Professor and The Raunchy Truck Driver comes to a close.

Visiting a Natural Wonder - Ha Long Bay

Our night train from Sa Pa to Hanoi arrived in that magical time of morning (4:30am) when the streets are quiet and mostly empty. The only people awake are delivery people or those opening shops to prepare for the morning breakfast rush. Since our hotel was only a little more than a mile away from the train station, we decided to walk back and admire the empty streets and silence of the pre-dawn hour.

At the hotel, we woke the night guards, found a couch and conked out for another hour before the hotel guests started coming down from their rooms and breakfast commenced. Around 8am we got herded onto a small tour bus and began our 3.5 hr drive to Ha Long Bay.

Ha Long Bay (Descending Dragon Bay) is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of The World’s New Seven Great Wonders of Nature. The Bay is about 600 sq. mi. and contains thousands of limestone karats and isles in a variety of shapes and sizes. The monolithic islands jut up from the Bay everywhere and are covered in a dense jungle. On sunny days (which we unfortunately didn’t get) the azure water coupled with the lush green islets make Ha Long Bay appear as if you dropped into paradise (you just have to ignore the few hundred other tours boats surrounding you).

The area is a huge tourist destination where visitors sign up to take 1, 2, and 3 day cruises on Junk Boats. The junk boats are small cruise ships that house 15-50 passengers, transport you to different caves, beaches, and islands to explore; provide meals and entertainment, and make the trip the perfect little getaway.

Em and I decided that the idea of a floating tour around this beautiful place was a great way to end our trip and to spend New Year’s Eve. Our boat was called Lavender Cruise and is only one of hundreds of junk boats and mini cruise ships that are scattered around the bay. Most of the boats only go to the same locations, so, while it is peaceful, it’s still congested with traffic and tourists from all over.

We arrived at the boat around noon, dropped our bags in our room, and headed to lunch to meet the rest of our shipmates. Our boat contained us, a set of siblings from Spain, three friends from India, and a group of 15 Korean tourists that are all part of the same church group and arrived in identical t-shirts (one shirt for the men, and one for the women). Everyone was nice enough, but most stuck to their own groups.

After lunch, we boarded a small boat and motored over to Ti-Top Island. This island was a named after Russian cosmonaut Gherman Stepanovich Titov, after he visited it with Ho Chi Minh in 1962. When Ti-Top died, the Vietnamese erected a stature of him on the island. Nowadays, tourists can climb the 400 stairs to a nice lookout point or go swimming in the small beach. Since we arrived there around the time every other ship was getting there, it was a little crowded and our trip up the stairs to the viewpoint was slow going. Even though there was no sun and the Bay was cloaked in a layer of grey, it was still amazing to see the different islands dappled all over. 

With just enough time to climb to the top, elbow a space at the edges of the overlook station for a few photographs, and then maneuver our way back down to the beach, and subsequently, the boat; we headed for a small enclave accessible by kayak or coconut boat. Em and I opted for a kayak and enjoyed the freedom to go at our own pace. Inside the ring of small jungle mountains was Monkey Island. We were able to watch the monkeys scaling the limestone cliffs and nibbling on food tourists had tossed to them. They were adorable, but Em didn’t like that I kept steering us closer and closer. I think she was afraid the monkeys would try to hitch a ride on our kayak.

Back on the Lavender, we learned how to make traditional egg rolls, had a scrumptious dinner, and retired to our rooms until 10pm when the boat hosted a mini New Year’s Eve celebration. Somewhere here, they teach all the chefs how to make amazing designs with fruits and vegetables. There were flowers made from cucumbers, carrots, and radishes. Flower designs and Happy New Year’s carved elegantly into watermelons, and somewhere, someone bought or made a cake. The presentation was excellent and everyone took turns photographing the display.

We pretended that 10:30pm was Midnight because everyone said they’d be too tired at true midnight to celebrate, but after some wine and cake, the dancing began and we were all awake for the “ball drop” (which on Ha Long Bay meant all the boats tooted their horns and some flashed their lights on and off). It was a fun and low key evening.

Splitting From the Herd

Except for Em and I, everyone else on our boat had only purchased a 2 day, 1 night package on the Bay, so at 7:30 we said goodbye to them and hopped on a small ferry for a day trip deeper into the Bay, while everyone else had a different itinerary. We ended up on a small day trip both with about 12 other people, two of which were a British couple (Daniel and Becky) we’d meet while kayaking the evening before. The four of us instantly got along and stayed a posse for the day.

Our day tour took us to another cave and then kayaking to a hidden beach (you kayak to the front and then walk through a cave to get to the beach). We all had the option to swim, but the sun never materialized and the wind was blowing with bite. We decided not to venture into the waves.

The cave and beach were fun and it was great that there were a lot less tourists, but that’s where our 2nd day activities kind of ended, which was super depressing. We had lunch on the day boat, were dragged to an Oyster Farm where they wanted us to buy jewelry, and then returned to our big Lavender Cruise boat. We had been told that there would be some hiking or a chance to ride a bike through one of the villages on one of the bigger islands. When I asked the tour guide about those activities, he told me that I’d picked the wrong trip for those. I never received a choice so I didn’t know there were two itineraries. 

The other problem was that all the people staying on the boat today are different than those from yesterday, but they’re repeating the itinerary from yesterday. That meant that we first had to chill on the boat for hours while they went to Ti-Top island and then kayaking, and then we repeated the dinner egg roll making, and had the same meal for dinner. If we’d of known that the second day would be almost a complete repeat of the first day, we wouldn’t have booked the second night and instead either stayed in town, stayed in Hanoi longer, or tried to visit one other location. I guess you live and you learn and next time we’ll hopefully know better. On the upside, the passengers on the second night turned out to all be very friendly and so we had a pleasant evening chatting with a British couple, some siblings from India, two friends from Kazakhstan, a girl from Greece, and a foursome from German.

Surprise Cave

Our third morning on the boat started with a trip to Surprise Cave. The cave  was a lot bigger than any of the other caves we’d seen so far on the Bay. It had three chambers and and the tour companies created a one way path to walk tourists through. Unfortunately, like a lot of things in Ha Long Bay, it was super packed. We either needed to have arrive at 7am or after 8 (we were there around 7:30, with everyone else) as this is an activity the majority of the boats take their passengers to on their last day at sea.

After returning from Surprise Cave, we checked out of our room and spent the two hour boat trip back to shore admiring the views from the top deck. We never saw sun on our trip, but the grey overcast added a mysterious component to all the mini islands and had a beauty of its own.