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.