Hanoi! What a city….it will be almost impossible to put our impressions of this place into words or even pictures. There are so many contrasts: fast and loud and bustling (frenetic would describe it better) one minute; the next minute you can be in a mid-city park where people are doing Tai Chi, or playing badminton on the many courts painted everywhere all over town, and everything is relatively peaceful. Then back into the maelstrom of traffic again as you set forth to cross the street.

Traffic is an entire blog entry on its own – watch this space! – but suffice to say we very quickly adjusted to the techniques, and not only have we mastered crossing the road despite the never ending stream of motorbikes, taxis, rickshaws, buses, cars coming at you from both directions (and on any side of the street!), I’d almost venture to suggest that in a perverse sort of way, you are actually LESS likely to get run over here, than you would be at home!

We have really enjoyed our stay here in the north of Vietnam – we’re off the Ho Chi Minh City today to sample the southern version. Hanoi is truly interesting, right from the moment we arrived at the airport on Monday morning and I realised as we went through the seemingly inefficient process of collecting our “Visa on Arrival” which we’d pre-purchased, that Soviet-style bureaucracy is still alive and well in this country. Contrast that, however, with the absolutely outstanding and friendly service from the staff at our hotel, on our Halong Bay overnight cruise, at restaurants etc., and there’s another enigma about Vietnam. They are so willing to please it becomes a little bit embarrassing when you consider the pittance (by our standards) that they must get paid. For example: when we booked our cruise at the front desk of the first hotel, they let us know that whilst it was no problem to leave our main luggage with them whilst we were away overnight, unfortunately they were full when we got back. However, they booked us in at a sister hotel not far away, took our bags there while we were away, got us the best rooms in the new hotel at the same price as theirs would have been, walked us around to the new hotel when we got back, and then ordered us a taxi to go to the airport today….free of charge! The kindnesses just didn’t stop – so needless to say, there will be 5-star ratings going on TripAdvisor.com and a decent tip heading the way of those staff members. And that’s another thing: tipping is not expected, yet the level of service is exemplary regardless…..yet when I think of some of the surly assistance we’ve been grudgingly given by people in other countries all the while with their hands out until you tip them what THEY consider they’re worth, I shake my head in wonder!

The next thing that makes us shake our heads in disbelief are the prices….it’s a bit hard to get used to at first as local prices are in Vietnamese Dong and there’s around 16750 of those to the NZ Dollar. Initially we were a bit taken aback with what seem to be high prices, but that’s just because we are so unused to working in thousands. A good early example was using a toilet near Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum (which eventually we didn’t see because they shut the line of visitors off at 10.30am instead of 11.00am as advertised…why?? Because they can) and seeing a sign in Vietnamese which indicated the cost to spend a penny was VND2000 – but the lady on the door who couldn’t speak English demanded VND5000. That could have been an argument anywhere else, but a quick bit of mental arithmetic revealed that we were talking the difference between around NZ$0.12 and NZ$0.30! She got her VD5000!

And we have to tell you about our meal the other night at Geckos Restaurant (which will also be getting a top rating on TripAdvisor) – we’re in Vietnam with our friends Jeannie and Jonathan Clough from the UK (the ones we met with the Hamills and the Fahys during the World Cup last year) so there were four of us for a meal. They had a special on cocktails so we had 3 of those each to accompany our main and our dessert: for 12 drinks, 4 really excellent Vietnamese mains, and 4 lots of crepes, the total cost was VND843000, or NZ$50.32 (a bit over $12 each!). And that’s probably expensive by Hanoi standards! I paid with a US$100 note so I could get some local cash….and I became an instant millionaire with the change which totalled around 1.17million Dong!

There are so many examples but I won’t go on forever. I will take a break now though and have a drink from my 500ml bottle of water (cost 30 cents) and publish this post then make sure our bags are packed for the leg south. Next up on the blog – what we’ve been doing here including a trip to Halong Bay and a tour through the Hoa Lo Prison (more commonly known to us who were on the side of the “American Imperialists” as the Hanoi Hilton), and perhaps a blog entitled Hanoi Road Rules. Arguably, that blog post could be a blank page!

By the way, there’s a few of our Vietnam photos on the web already although I haven’t finished putting captions on them yet – go to the link below to have a look:
https://picasaweb.google.com/117578732661704733104/Vietnam?authkey=Gv1sRgCOLC8J6HuoWVgQE

Cheers

Andrew