Hanoi

Stopped by the tourist desk to ask about transportation to the city, and the beautiful Vietnamese woman speaking good English with a heavy accent, helped us book a wonderful hotel, a three day tour to Halong Bay, and a flight down to Danang. Life has just found some order after Bangkok chaos, and with the rainy foggy weather that welcomed us out side, we were very happy to have a nice comfy start. The taxi made its way to the French quarter, finding its’ way through the rain and the early darkness that fell on the city.

Super friendly staff, a beautiful room, a shower, some laundry, hand washed and a walk about town to get some food. After a lovely dinner of lots of veggies, the best variety on our trip so far, and some fish we strolled towards the night market. At least that’s what I thought, as it seemed that we were never getting there. Asked for help, but the man just offered to take us on his bicycle rickshaw. I felt bad having him drive us, yet I knew that if I walk away, I actually took an income away from him, so we sat on the nice slightly reclining metal framed seat, plastic covered silver cushions, facing the street in front of us. Imagine one of those royal seats, mounted on the front of the bike, covered on top, with the handle bar behind us, and the bike driver looking over our heads through our opened cage. He drove us about one hundred meters, to where we saw the night market bustle begin, hopped off and paid him for what should have been ten times longer of a ride. The market was not so amazing, but I really enjoyed it being a true locals market, a place where mostly locals walk around and get their clothes, accessories or imitations of Dolce Gabana shoes. A local artist was stringing wooden pieces, embedded with copper or aluminum designs, to a necklace. He was truly cute, with a charming smile. I could not resist but buy a whole bunch of necklaces from him.

A day of wondering through the streets; A local food market where fish, meat eggs, vegetables, fruit are all sold right on the street, barely even stands, in whatever way it works, just piled up on the side walk or from a basket. Beautiful produce, beautiful people. They just don’t want their photo taken, mostly that is. I think it was in China, back in the day where they thought that by taking their photo you are actually stealing their spirit. Is it true?

We walked along busy streets, scooters more than in Bangkok, like a swarm of bees, buzzing to find honey due, beeping, carrying another person or a whole family, a bicycle holding a fruit shop or flower shop, a delivery of Heineken beer, covering the scooter with the green boxes all around, and even with all the beeping and honking, it all seemed very calm and patient. The beeping was to notify the other person of their existence, or to tell them to move aside, but there was no angry tone. We walk down a French colonial street, facing a lake dotted with large swan shaped pedal boats, white and accents of pastel blue and pink contrasting the hazy day, we turn left as we see a huge lake across the street and enter a small temple with dragons, pass through a pretty gate, to see the courtyard dotted with teen age girls dressed in a white and blue uniform, the colors of the Israeli flag, the blue was a long blouse, going down all the way to the white pant length, but with a slit coming up above the hip bone, like two stripes of blue on the white flag. Down the street we pass the enormous French style president house, behind it humbly exists the stilt house, where Ho Chi Min used to reside, and further down the street, we enter a vast road closed to traffic, a grand grass square on one side and the HCM mausoleum on the other. We arrived right on time for the guard change. The white pressed uniforms, the exaggerated march and the peacock feeling of it all.

A pagoda, a museum, the temple of literature from 1070AD and the first university behind it established in 1076, with it’s five courts and some old decorations of dragons and flowers with very large bonsai like pots in the court, and a tea break; Lots of cafés everywhere, wonderful city really, even if a bit chaotic in the old quarter.