Leaving (Ha Noi) on a Jet Train

Or probably less of the 'jet' since it takes 14 hours to get there - but look up the distance from Ha Noi to Danang on googlemaps, it's a pretty long way there! Our train leaves Ha Noi at 11pm and arrives halfway down the country at about 1pm. From Danang we get a bus to Hoi An, which we are very much looking forward to, since it sounds lovely in the book and everyone we mention it to, who have already been there, smile and say "ahh, Hoi An...'. It'll certainly be good to get out of the city - unfortunately, Chiang Mai followed by Luang Prabang had rendered me extremely chilled-out and happy and relaxed; I say unfortunately, because that made it even more of a shock to be confronted with the buzzing, bustling reality of Ha Noi.

We've had a good time here, and (touch wood!) haven't been run over yet - crossing the road in Ha Noi requires a great deal of courage and faith - there are a million motorbikes, plus a good handful of cars/busses/bicycles thrown in for good measure - and there isn't any point waiting for a gap to cross because there is NEVER A GAP, just slightly lighter traffic so that the vehicles are able to go around you. And they do try very hard not to hit you, so what you do is that you firstly approach the road and try to work out which lane is which (although they can and do use any lane for any direction/turning), and see if anything is reversing in the middle of the road, and then you take a deep breath, and slowly start to cross. Best not to stop in the middle of the road. Just keep going, very slowly and very gradually, and you and the motorbikes judge each others' paths, and you go around each other. Every road crossing feels like a mini-victory! I think Vietnamese are much better drivers than Brits; some of the manoeuvres are just spectacular and seemingly death-defying.

Anyway, what have we been up to? Well, I've been trying to immerse myself in Vietnamese food with limited success - today I ordered some unknown Vietnamese food and it was literally hit and miss - 50% success rate. I stopped eating the 'miss', a lumpy white porridge dish (savoury) with bits of maybe-but-almost-definitely-not-chicken in it, when I noticed that there were jellyish chunks too. Probably an eye? They didn't taste good, anyway. We also went to a proper 'bia hoi' den, which is a little cafe-type thing on a street corner, but open to the elements, with tiny blue plastic stools, and I had a home-brewed beer which was surprisingly good. Ricky has managed some great Western meals too, although sadly the salad has to be removed because of threat of stomach problems. We've also been to a couple of museums - the National Museum was disappointing, but yesterday we visited the old Prison which was used to house, firstly the Communist revolutionaries during the first half of the 20th century, and latterly the U.S. pilots who got shot down during the Vietnam War, including the one and only John McCain. That was ABSOLUTELY fascinating and really quite harrowing too - the exhibits included a guillotine, and they'd kept the original cell blocks so you could peek inside. Funny how biased it was, too; according to the display, the Communist revolutionaries were tortured non-stop (I don't doubt that), while the POWs got to play netball etc and had a ball of a time. I'm not sure it was that cut-and-dried but anyway. We stayed in a proper backpacker hostel, in a dorm, with some Dutch people who were typical Dutch - excellent English-speakers but really weird. One of them was saying he sometimes crosses roads here just for the "FUN" of it!!

Ha Noi is a fascinating city; I don't think I would want to stay much longer though - the people range from ignoring us to being mildly rude - although a few have been quite sweet. I guess I've just been massively spoilt by the Northern Thais / Laotians. It's hilarious how many Japanese tourists there are too, all posing with their fingers in a V-sign and wearing those 'traditional' Vietnamese conical hats, which I reckon to be the equivalent of the tourists in Westminster wearing "I [heart] London" and "OXFORD UNIVERSITY" tshirts... I just got my nails painted with a very pretty and intricate flowery pattern, for just over 2pounds which is pretty wicked. While they were drying we were all watching telly, a TERRIBLE soap opera was on, it was dubbed so I guess it was Chinese originally? Anyway, I left before my nails were thoroughly dry because I couldn't take it any more. It's been interesting here though, especially it's been INCREDIBLE getting my favourite food (Pho) which costs over 8pounds on Kingsland Rd (so-called 'little Hanoi'), for 90p with a coke here. Might make me fancy Vietnamese food a bit less when I get home though! So highlights for both of us (we've discussed this..) have been:

- getting crayons at the restaurant last night and decorating the table cloth (it was paper and yes we did ask first..)
- the Prison museum
- walking around the lovely lovely lake in the middle of the Old Quarter, and the Pagoda/temple in the middle which you access by a bridge: it's just so peaceful round there and a very welcome respite from the bustle of the streets
- the ice-cream. There's a place called Fanny's, which seems to be the equivalent of Baskin Robbins. We are planning to hit it up for dessert later.
- seeing chickens in the road -- this was Ricky's; I wasn't fazed after the cows wandering the streets in India :P

So now we're off to catch a show, it's a Ha Noi speciality of water puppetry - I gather that it's in Vietnamese so we won't necessarily grasp the whole plot, but it's accompanied by traditional Vietnamese music and hey, we need a bit of culture! We didn't get to the Mausoleum to see Ho Chi Minh unfortunately [along with Lenin, Stalin and Mao, he's one of only four leaders to be embalmed], but I've tried to make up for it by learning all about him. Fact: it was his last wish to be cremated. Oops!

Looking forward to a rest on the train later, and catching up with some reading :)

Lots of love,

Louise (with Ricky) xxx