Giving Vietnam Another Chance

OK, so maybe we got off on the wrong foot with Hanoi, Vietnam. Maybe it's the multiple scams we've run into, the most recent one being a woman carrying two baskets of bananas hanging from a wooden pole walks up to you, then very quickly puts the pole onto your shoulder, firmly "encourages" you to take a picture and then won't go away until you pay her for the photo. After being cornered by her and her other banana toting friends, we got away with 3 bananas and a photo for the equivalent of $3 USD. Considering a taxi ride across the city costs less than $2, that's not exactly a good deal..... or the fact that the air is so polluted that you can literally feel it every time you take a breath, or the constant beeping of horns at every hour of the day, or the fact that there are zero, count them zero, public trash cans and everyone throws their trash into the gutters where it eventually gets swept into little piles and then picked up hours later by the public works dept.

However, once you start to embrace all of this craziness, life gets a little bit easier. After a little while you learn how to cross the street while motorbikes whizz around you from all directions, and cleverly avoid the banana ladies that seem to appear out of nowhere, and politely turn down the many offers for cyclo rides, photocopied travel books, and the same t-shirt lady that seems to find us where ever we are in the city and ask us to buy her shirts.

There are 3.5 million people in the city of Hanoi, and 3 million motorbikes. There are wonderfully wide sidewalks on all of the streets, but they're actually used primarily for motorbike parking, their secondary use is for impromptu little cafes set up with squat stools and a can of hot coals where mysterious meat dishes are quickly cooked for all the people taking a break from riding their motorbikes. Mostly you just walk down the middle of the street, staring down the few cars and motorbikes that you're sharing the road with to avoid getting hit (although people drive really slow, because of all the crowds, so it wouldn't be catastrophic if you did get hit!)

We did just return from a trip to Halong Bay, which is a World Heritage Site known for its giant limestone karsts. We boarded a chinese junk along with 12 other people, where we spent the day cruising through brilliant green water and looking at all the different limestone formations- they basically look like hundreds of really tall/steep rocky islands with bright green vegetation. Vietnam is currently lobbying for this to be named one of the seven most beautiful areas in the world, and it really was amazing. Over the next couple of days we got to swim in the beautiful waters, eat amazing Vietnamese food that our crew prepared for us, and go kayaking. Kayaking was our favorite. At one point we had to paddle/walk our kayaks through a 200 meter long cave (only about 5-6 feet tall), which was pitch black except for our flashlights, and on the other side we arrived in this beautiful lagoon that had blue, purple, and green coral in the water as well as giant sea urchins and other marine life we hadn't seen before. We were trying to spot a langur- an endangered species of monkey that lives in the area, although we didn't have any luck the effort was still worth it. We made some great friends, and although they didn't speak English very well the Italians in our group (5 of them total) kept us laughing all day long with their laid-back no worries attitude.

So now we're back in Hanoi. Last night we had an AMAZING 3-course dinner at a restaurant operated by a school that trains street kids for the hospitality industry in hopes of helping them have a better life- the food was some of the best we've had on the trip, the waiters/students were very friendly and professional, and best of all the total bill was only $16 USD. Incredible. Tonight we're taking an overnight train to Sapa tonight, where we'll get to experience a local market where the indigenous tribes go to sell their various wares to other villagers and tourists (I think we could even buy a cow if we were feeling so motivated.) We'll also be trekking to some of the other villages to get an idea of what their lives are like on a day to day basis. It's a multi-night trip, and after that we'll return to Hanoi to do the sight-seeing we keep putting off, then we fly back to Bangkok for a couple of days.

Although we started off on the wrong foot, I think we're going to end up really loving the time we're spending in Vietnam.

Cheers,
Anna