Hanoi

The flight from Cochi to Kuala Lampur was horrible. First off, between walking into the airport and getting on the plane, we had to show our passport and boarding pass a minimum of 6 times; it might have been 7, we lost count! Then there was so much turbulence and it lasted for so long. We were really starting to get worried. I later heard that it was probably some winds associated with Typhoon Sarika. I was never so glad to get off an airplane. And on the second flight there was a group of either high school seniors or early college students and their chaperones from India on their way to Malaysia. Somehow we got stuck in the middle of the kids so we asked to be moved. Turns out the chaperones moved too..right next to and in front of us. We have never seen such horrible behavior on a plane: they were loud and moving around and during turbulence they were trying to go to the bathroom. The flight attendants were yelling at them. It was insanity.

We had gotten our “letter of approval” from Vietnam, the first step for Visa approval, a couple of months ago. You then had to go to get the actual Visa at the airport and it costs $25 per person for a single entry 30 day visa. So we get to the airport and give them our forms then have to wait until they put your name and picture up on the screen for your turn. When we got up to the desk, he told us it cost $270 US. We were incredulous and figured we were being ripped off somehow but we had no choice. Fortunately I had some US currency with us. We could have paid in Vietnamese dongs but that would have been $6,021,885.24!

So we get to our home stay in Hanoi and one of the house residents is Australian. We told her about the $270 and she said that it had changed at the end of August to a year Visa with multiple entries and that was the correct price. She said she was going to email us to tell us but then she looked at our home address and it said we were from The Netherlands so she figured we didn’t need to know. We looked at her for a minute, then started laughing and said no, we lived in Nederland, Colorado, not the Netherlands!

Hanoi is a really nice city. Compared to New Delhi and Mumbai, it is clean and modern and clean and pretty and clean! We spent our first day in Hanoi walking all around the French Quarter and the Old Quarter and searching for the Com, a green rice cake which is a Vietnamese specialty and only made in the fall. (It must be an acquired taste!) We had drinks on a rooftop bar, dinner lakeside, and attended a water puppet show which only exist in Vietnam. It was kind of like Creegan and Crow meet Sea World (our Wheeling WVA friends will understand this reference) but it was pretty neat and very different from anything we have ever seen before.

People here actually obey stop lights, mostly. There are pedestrian crossing lights which ware nonexistent in India. You still have to be careful because the millions of scooters on the roads don’t really pay attention to the crosswalk lights. Our Australian hostess said scooters will veer around you, cars maybe, and buses never! We have gotten pretty good at jut walking out into traffic and weaving our way through but there was one street that was so busy we were a little tentative. A young Vietnamese man came up to us and said, “you cross with me” so he helped us crossover. We thanked him and he turned and went back across the street! So very kind of him to help the old people cross the street!

We also stopped at the Cambodia Embassy to get our Visas. When we got there it was $30 for a 2 day turnaround but they don’t work on weekends (even though that would have been day 3 and 4) so we could not get it for 5 days. We will be long gone from Hanoi by then. So we paid $50 for same day service and we will get them tomorrow…….????

We toured the Ngoc Son Temple which is in the middle of a Hoan Kiem Lake which is in the middle of the Old Quarter and very beautiful. There is a whole legend about an emperor and a turtle and a sword that created the lake. But as Buzz quotes Monty Python, “Strange turtles lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”

We found out this morning that Cambodia uses US currency. So we wanted to trade in some Dong for US currency. Since our Australian hostess knew of a reputable money trader, we took her advice and hiked it over to this jewelry store that when we walked in had piles, literally piles, of money on the glass display cases. When we told them we wanted US dollars, we were told to go in the back. We ended up in someone’s dining room! Women were eating at the table and watching TV and along one wall were bill counting machines. They asked us how much we wanted and they charged us a whopping $1000VND for the service…that is $.04! But it was one of the strangest experiences we have ever had.

We figured since we were here, we needed to visit the Hanoi Hilton or Hoa Lo Prison, where POW’s include John McCain were imprisoned. It was very interesting to hear the story from “the other side.” The “American” War was not the focus here; the focus was the time when the French ruled Vietnam and how horrible they treated the Vietnamese people.

French pastries were lunch but these had vegetables and meat in them!!

You may be wondering why I am spelling Viet Nam this way. We learned today that there are no words that have more than one syllable in Vietnamese!!! They actually spell Hanoi as Ha Noi. We also did not realize that Vietnamese is a tonal language. No chance we are going to be able to learn that. The advice is to stick to English because trying to speak Vietnamese, you are probably going to end up pissing someone off by using the wrong tone. Our food tour guide’s name is Hung.  (story in next Hanoi installment) With the rising tone it means bravery; with the falling tone it refers to a vegetable. The world is such an interesting place!