Despite the wild night Kuniko and I slept pretty well. We slept until about eight in the morning, and then got up and opened the window to check out the city.
Hanoi is quite a large city. Our hotel was located in the northern part of town, in an area called the “Old Quarter”. From the hotel window we could see a lot of old buildings. The architecture was interesting – kind of a jury-rigged French style. After getting dressed I went out the door to go see about the hotel room we had been promised. In the darkness of our arrival I hadn’t noticed that our room was surrounded by other rooms that looked like temporary structures that had become permanent. Judging by their condition, we had gotten the guy’s best room.
Luckily our room was ready early, and we moved our stuff in, climbing up five stories (no elevator) to get there. The room was much nicer with a bathtub and shower, running hot water and much cleaner. At first we couldn’t figure out the cold water – the housekeeper had turned it off for some reason. Once we got it figured out we both took a nice hot shower and then relaxed for a little while. With the sun out and the streets relatively quiet it felt like a completely different city that we saw last night. We took a short walk outside to kill some time, and it was culture shock time again.
The old quarter of Hanoi is full of narrow streets, and each street was made up of shops that sell a particular type of goods. A street would be lined with merchants selling just flowers, or another street would be just silk. On our short walk that morning we went through several streets that specialized in shoes, car parts, candy, and coffee. One thing about walking the streets is that the merchants everywhere in the old quarter were so tightly packed on the street that they also frequently appropriated the sidewalk in front of their shop. That meant that we had to walk in the street with everyone else.
The streets were full of scooters – I’ve never seen so many scooters. They were everywhere, zooming around and honking to warn other scooters or people walking. For every hundred scooters there would be a car, but vehicles had to move slowly through these streets because of the congestion, and I could see why scooters were so popular. Crossing a street at first seemed impossible – there were very few signals and almost no crosswalks, and even if there were signals cars and scooters tended to ignore them. The only way to cross was to just walk out there, watch the scooters and cars to make sure they had seen you, and move across at a slow consistent speed. The first time was pretty scary, walking through streets thick with scooters zooming past in front and behind you as you walked. By the end of the trip we were boasting of our skills in the “Hanoi cross” and didn’t think at all while plunging right into the middle of roads regardless of signals and traffic. The first day was pretty slow going – it took a really long time to cross a relatively narrow street.
Around noon we met up in the hotel lobby with Kuniko’s ex-student, Hain (pronounced Ha-ee-n). She is a Vietnamese girl that had come to Japan on an exchange program, and went back last year. This was my first time meeting her, and pretty much for the whole trip we all just spoke Japanese. Although she is studying English in school her real interest is in Japan and Japanese, and so this was a big opportunity for her to use Japan on a day to day basis. We decided to go catch up over some lunch, and Hain took us to a restaurant specializing in noodles. Once we started traveling with Hain things were completely different. She handled the communication so we could order things without a menu, she helped with the money, identified mysterious ingredients, and led us to local places that otherwise we’d never think of visiting.
The noodle place was good – I had two bowls of noodles with a spicy sauce, vegetables and pork. Kuniko had a soup version of the same thing, and we watched Hain to figure out the right table manners. It was an awesome lunch – I knew it was going to be a good trip when I tried authentic Vietnamese food.
We spent the rest of the day sightseeing and running errands. We changed some yen into dong, and got a really good exchange rate from an old lady working in a jewelry shop near our hotel. Hain took care of the negotiations so I think we got a much better deal than if we tried to go in there and do it ourselves.
One of the big geographical features in the area is Hoan Kiem Lake. The lake is good sized, taking about thirty minutes to walk around. Hain took us across a bright to a temple, and we took a look around the exhibits inside. One exhibit was a giant turtle that is said to be native to the lake. They had preserved one that had died, and it was pretty damn big. They are only rarely observed at the lake – it is said to be a blessing to be able to see one. No sightings for me this trip, though.
After seeing plenty of sights we sent Hain back home in a taxi, and then decided to go out on our own for some street food for dinner. Walking around the old quarter you can’t help but notice that people are always eating. Besides the restaurants that are housed inside buildings, people would set up their own restaurants right on the street, using portable burners and tables. They were everywhere, and despite the fact that Hain wasn’t around we thought we should go try one out. We picked one that had a few customers already on the principal that a busy stall was a safe one. It was a pho noodle place, and the old lady gave us the hint of a smile while we ordered by pointing at the other customer’s orders. We got two steaming bowls of noodles with chicken, and then a steamed rice dish that had some fried eggs cut up on top with some spicy sauce. Somehow we figured out how much to pay for the bill, and then we spent the rest of evening walking around and taking in the busy streets of the old quarter. We walked through a street market, which was pretty much the same goods as were available from the sidewalk, just without cars and scooters.
Walking around Hanoi you couldn’t help but feel just how foreign everything felt. The sights and smells were so different from what Kuniko and I have experienced in the past. We wanted to try all the foods, poke around in the shops and drink all the beers, and it was just a matter of pacing ourselves. Of course we weren’t the only foreigners around – often we would see groups of westerners clutching their copy of Lonely Planet and trying to navigate the streets. Kuniko did most of the guiding on this trip – and she did a damn good job of it. We never got lost, and the Japanese guidebook was surprisingly good.
After a while we went on back to the hotel, and called it a night. We already felt 100% better about the trip and walking around, largely thanks to Hain. Around then, however, some more hotel problems started to crop up.
