Ha Noi

The Hindu festival of Deepavali takes place in the fall and is one of the public holidays in Singapore. It presents a great opportunity to do some regional travel; last year we made a trip to Hong Kong. This time, we decided to go to one of the places we really wanted to visit - Vietnam.

For a long weekend, you pretty much have to pick between the south (Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon), the middle (Da Nang) and the north (Ha Noi). We picked Ha Noi because, well, it is the capital and was the capital of North Vietnam during the war. It's a destination that would have been the last place on earth you wanted to be back when we were in high school and college.

What a difference nearly 40 years makes. In many ways, it reminded me of my first visits to Germany and Japan in the 1990s. In the foreground was the energy and focus of the present, intertwined with the backdrop of history. And that history is much older and deeper than period of conflict in which our nations were engaged. But still I caught myself thinking, "we used to be at war."

We took the easy way out with travel planning. Raye arranged our trip through the same company that arranged our trip to Cambodia last year. They arrange transport, a guide, and a few meals, leaving sufficient time to do your own exploring as you like. We stayed in the Old Quarter, a historic and scenic area with many side streets to go explore.

Our guide taught us the unusual technique for crossing the street in Ha Noi (note: not our video). You line up in a row parallel to the flow of traffic, and just start slowly walking across the street. The traffic, mostly consisting of motorcycles, just steers around you like a rock in a stream. The key is to walk steadily and slowing so the drivers can judge where to drive. Suddenly stopping or running increases your risk of an unsuccessful crossing. It's really, really unnerving the first time you do this, but it works in Hanoi. (another video)

We made the 3 hour trip over to Halong Bay to spend the night on a remarkable overnight cruise around the bay. It gave us a chance to see smaller towns and villages and get a sense of the life of most of the country. It was rice harvest time, and we could see the cutting, threshing, and drying of the rice (everywhere there was pavement that wasn't being driven on). And it seems like anything can be transported on a motorcycle: we saw chickens, baskets, furniture, pigs -- even a cow.

The cruise on Halong Bay is best appreciated by the photos. It was beautiful and serene, despite the large number of boats doing the same thing. No wonder it's one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Back in Hanoi we visited the infamous Hanoi Hilton (Ho Lo Prison), toured a Confucian Temple, ate at Cha Ca La Vong, the oldest restaurant in Hanoi (only one item on the menu!), and visited the Ho Chi Minh memorial area.

We also got a wonderful street-level tour on a bicycle rickshaw (called a "cyclo") - see the video below. We attended a performance at the Water Puppet Theater, a performance art unique to the north of Vietnam. Of course we visited a local wet market, Raye did some shopping, and I bought some Vietnamese grown and roasted coffee.

It would have been easy to spend much more time in Hanoi and would cheerfully recommend the destination for visitors to SE Asia.

The Shopping Sisters & Accessible Singapore

Back in January, my sister Kay placed a successful bid on Sky Auction for 3 tickets to Singapore. After months of anticipation and planning, the "shopping sisters", my mom, my aunt Pat, and Kay arrived for their 11 day adventure in the wee hours of September 30. They handled the 3-leg, 25 hour trip from Atlanta remarkably well.

Mom is legally blind, wear hearing aids, and has difficulty walking for long distances. So to help make the exploring a bit easier on her, Kay scored a titanium folding wheelchair from where she works. And as a result, we all got to experience and appreciate just how mobility-accessible Singapore really is. It's quite good, particularly in the tourist and shopping areas; less so out in the neighborhoods and some of the ethnic enclaves.

The mass transit system is particularly good, with elevators at every stop we used and with raised markings in the floors to help you navigate. People were also kinder than perhaps I'd expected from earlier "kiasu" experiences. They made space for the chair and gave us room to get over the well-advertised "gap" between station and train. ("Please mind the gap.") The only friendly competition we had was with the baby buggies for the lifts. Many buses are also accessible, although we stayed with the trains, walking, and the car.

Singapore can seem like one great big shopping mall, so the "shopping sisters" felt right at home. Chinatown with it's charm, hidden treasures, and bargains was a regular destination during the visit. And not just for shopping: we enjoyed the hand-made noodles at Lan Zhou La Mian and the snow ice at Mei Heong Yuen.

It was my sister's opportunity to dare the durian, and she did quite well. However, since durian can "be the taste that keeps on tasting", it will not likely be a repeat experience. Aunt Pat liked the green tea, but Mango remains the undisputed champion snow ice flavor. We toured one of the wet markets, smelling and seeing the endless variety of animals, minerals and vegetables available, with black skinned chickens, eels, and live frogs being among the more unusual items.

We enjoyed a boat tour on the Singapore river, a relaxing way to see the city, the many restaurants along Clarke and Boat Quays ("keys"). My aunt had been to Singapore a few years back and recognized that the Merlion, the statue of the city-state's mascot, had been relocated from where she thought it should be. According to feng-shui, the Chinese beliefs about the correct relative placements of things, the additional reclaimed land had made the old location no longer auspicious. We've heard that the Merlion is going to be moved again, sometime after the "Integrated Resorts" (casinos) have been completed at the new mouth of the Singapore river in 2010.

The Night Safari, the zoo that opens as the sun is setting, is a must-see activity. Mom opted out (dark plus a lot of walking didn't seem like much fun). To our surprise, there was a major Halloween fest going on. In additional to roving costumed characters, several of the trails were specially marked and set up like haunted houses with people jumping out of the jungle to scare you. And this being Asia, Dracula was nowhere to be found. Instead, we encountered a "Jiang Shi", the hopping Chinese undead that is a blend between a vampire and a zombie. We also enjoyed the surprise dish served up at the "little dim sum cart of horrors."

We packed a lot in during the visit. There was high tea at the stately Raffles Hotel, tours of multiple Hindu and Buddhist temples, a visit to the "Fountain of Wealth" (listed in the Guinness 1998 Book of Records as the largest fountain in the world), shopping on Arab Street, and the requisite meal in Little India. Little India, with it's narrow streets and frenetic activity spilling out onto the sidewalks, was a particular challenge to navigate with a wheelchair. In contrast, Citylink Mall, an underground shopping complex that spreads out from the City Hall MRT stop, was particularly accommodating. (Mom drew quite the crowd as she demonstrated the wheelchair lift in order to navigate a set of stairs.)

Both Kay and Raye went to Ohio State, and the scenes of Singapore provided a spectacular setting in which to pose for some "O H I O" human letter photos. Apparently the alumni magazine has a running contest for the most original / interesting entries. Perhaps one of their entries will win, and if not they had a lot of fun (and drew a few curious stares) making them.
Everyone had a great adventure. And it wouldn't surprise us if the Shopping Sisters decide that they ended up buying something they don't need or doesn't fit. That's all the excuse they'd need for a "return" trip.

Whiskey St. John's & the Chandelles

It was only the second time the opportunity presented itself. Kay would have an opportunity to go flying with me and my instructor. The first time was 4 years ago when I was still earning my private license. She & my dad were our passengers as my instructor and I flew them on a sight seeing trip around north Texas, landing in Denton and then back to McKinney.


This time, Kay was visiting me in Singapore and was going to ride back seat as I continued my orientation lessons in Singapore airspace. The weather was dicey in the morning so I told her to expect nothing but pattern work, a series of take-offs and landings.

But the weather turned perfect as flight time approached. After we took off, instructor Raman asked me if I wanted to take advantage of the clear weather. Of course I said yes, so he instructed me to radio Paya Labar Approach as ask for "clearance Whiskey St. Johns one thousand five hundred". It took me a couple of tries to get it right. Turn out that Whiskey is an airspace reference point and St. John is an island at the edge of Changi's airspace. Approach thought about it a while, but gave us a special aircraft identification (transponder) code and the clearance we'd requested.


Singapore airspace is tightly confined, and what we'd been given was permission to fly pretty much down the middle of Singapore at 1,500 ft above the ground. We'd pass the southern shore, then turn east to a specific island that serves as reference point for the Paya Labar airforce base. No wonder special clearance was needed!

We then got the required clearance to reverse course and enjoyed the views on the way back to the practice area over the center of the island. Then Raman asked if I wanted to do some commercial maneuvers as a demonstration. Kay was OK with this so we cleared the airspace and proceeded to do a chandelle followed by some lazy 8's. My instructor did the flying.

These two maneuvers can seem like aerobatic maneuvers, but they are basic airmanship skills required for commercial pilots. The lazy 8 is pretty amazing and I'm sure we looked like an airplane in trouble to anyone hiking around the Macritchie Reservoir. Inside the plane, you're alternately looking a sky and ground, pulling a lot of "Gs" at the bottom and feeling pretty light at the top.

When we were done with these, he headed back to Seletar where I did some pattern work to finish up the lesson. The pattern at Seletar airport is pretty and interesting, you can see Malaysia on the other side of the straits. You have to pay attention to tall ships which may be navigating the channel. That's something I never had to contend with back in Dallas!

It was a great flight and a memorable addition to Kay's visit.