Hanoi

2011-07-31

I really hated Hanoi. It was so cramped, dirty, smelly and hot. So hot in fact that Tom and I even came back to the hotel for the middle of the day to get out of the heat.

Unlike the other cities we visited, we spent ages on the first day trying to find a cheap place to find some descent food. We expected it to be much like Saigon, but prices were a lot higher here. We had also planned to do our souvineer shopping in Hanoi so we didn't have to lug our stuff around the country, but were dissapointed to find that there was a much smaller range of things for sale and people weren't as eager to barter.

We went exploring and visited the Temple of Literature which was a university dedicated to the teachings of Confucius.

After that we went to see the Ho Chi Min Mausoleum. Apparently he was mummified (against his wishes) and you can go see the body. Only on certain days though, and when we visited it was closed up with some very serious security patrolling the building ensuring nobody got close.

Near the mauseleum is the Ho Chi Mihn Museum, which is a really bizarre museum that didn't make much sense. We had no idea what most of the displays were meant to represent, but it was good to be inside the air con. Outside the museum was the one-pillar pagolla, which was pretty awesome but bizarelly had some trippy rave lights inside which I thought cheapened it a bit but also made it awesome.

So after our big day in the heat, we headed back to hotel to find out that we had a missed call from Travel Indochina to say that there was a cyclone coming and so our trip to Halong Bay had been cancelled. Needless to say, we were pretty bummed. We were offered an alternative trip to Sapa, but neither of us were keen for a massive train ride and the potential of catching malaria. We organised to stay another night in Hanoi, and hope that the weather cleared up enough that we could still at least see Halong Bay, even if the bay itself was closed to boats.

I was not looking forward to another day in Hanoi, but that night it rained and it became a whole new city for me. The air was fresher, the streets cleaner and most the pollution and smell washed away. We went to some markets and otherwise just walked around the city and it was a huge improvement on the day before.