Arriving into the hustling, bustling city of Hanoi you suddenly feel the need to have your wits about you and have eyes on all 360 degrees. The scooters zip by, BMW's honking, walkers telling you to hurry up and enter into the traffic jammed crossroads while cyclo drivers trying to bargain a ride with you whilst watching out your legs don't get burnt by the gas cyclinders on the pavement cooking up the families hot lunch. Yep, we're back in the big city again!
What I notice about Hanoi are the cafes and all the locals sitting in low chairs enjoying their Vietnamese iced coffee (with condensed milk) or egg coffee. I became a lover of the former. Long (our tour overseer invited us for coffee/beer) and talked of his 25 years as a tour guide, the customer service over here is amazing we really are treated like first class citizens, both great when they organise drivers for Marvin to the hospital and the boss-man himself is with him on every visit. Our flights get cancelled due to bad weather and the whole itinerary is changed within 15 mins to fly into a new city and the driver/tour guide travel overnight to meet us the next morning. However I find it hard when they take us to lunch spots and the guides sit out back in 3rd class sipping on their cup of tea whilst we have a feast, any time we offer them food or invite them to share our lunch with us, they respectfully decline and I can tell they are uncomfortable with the invitation. In NZ many a time I have sat next to the bus driver and shared a good yarn over our lunch break and we are absolute equals on all fronts.
On our Hanoi city tour we visit Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, his personal house and where he worked when running the Communist party. Vietnam has gone through many transitions in history, just in the last 100 years they have had five wars with the French, Japanese, American, Chinese and Cambodians to maintain their country. The admiration for Ho Chi Minh amongst the North Vietnamese is immense as he bought about independence and unity of their country, I hadn't realised that the poor farmers son had spent 30 years abroad learning his craft and developing his beliefs and vision before re-entering Vietnam at age 51. In modern times there is always the imposing threat on the horizon from their northerly neighbours and the ambitious young have a yearning for western shores, yet there has been gigantic growth in all fields of the economy over the past two decades, the young are getting well educated, the average age in Vietnam is 28. The future direction will be interesting.
We enjoy an afternoon at the Ethnology museum, learn the basics learning of Confucius at their temple and what was previously the first University of Hanoi, which was later bombed by the French. We then get amongst the chaos sitting on the front of cyclo's around the old quarter district. A well needed break is in order before the water puppet show in the evening.
The nights light up with lanterns and fluro lighting, shops all open till 11pm, food smells waft around and many beers and cocktails are drunk.
