Hanoi - the capital11 Apr 2006
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Me in the cyclo
Marie
The water puppets show
After a 4 hour minibus journey we arrived in Hanoi. This city is mad! I have never seen so many motorbikes in my life and constant tooting of horns! The population of this city is 4 million and is the most densely populated city in the world! Crossing roads here was very interesting to say the least! There aren't many cars or buses and you just kind of have to walk out across the road and keep walking and the bikes go around you! Sounds stupid, but that's how it works or you'd be stood on the pavement for ever! There are very few pedestrian crossings too, and when there are some they don't seem to mean much!
We took a Cyclo tour (a man riding a pedal bike with a single seat infront of him that you sit in) at rush hour around the city! We felt surprisingly safe, even when we crossed lines on on-coming traffic and everyone around you beeping their horns! It was a great way to see the city. In the old quarter, called "36 streets" each street seemed to have a theme! One street would sell nothing but towels and the next was all steelwork, and another bras!
We safely arrived at the theatre to watch The Water Puppets show, which was really good. It was all in Vietnamese, but the puppets were fantastic and all were controlled in the water by puppeteers behind a curtain also stood in the water! After the show we had one of our best meals yet at a Vietnamese restaurant and after went to a café, looking over the busy streets, for desert!
Wednesday morning we went to a restaurant called "KOTO" (Know One Teach One). They take about 30 kids off the streets every year and train them up to a high standard
So that they then go to work in top hotels such as The Hilton as chefs or front of house. We had the most fantastic buffet breakfast and all felt incredibly stuffed after it!
We waddled our way along the streets to the Mausoleum where the body of "Uncle Ho" (The old president Ho Chi Min) who died in 1969 and has been for the public to view since the late 70s. We had to leave all our bags outside with one of the leaders and walk in a line without talking, laughing or smiling! It was really cold in the room (to stop the body rotting no doubt!) and it was very much like looking at a wax work rather than a dead body! He is sent away for 6 weeks of the year to be 're-preserved' to keep him looking so good! Afterwards we had a tour of the government grounds in which he lived.
We were then left to do our own thing and most of us went to the 'Hoa Lo Prison', nick-named the 'Hanoi Hilton' by the American POWs in the 1960s. When Americans were rescued by the locals after their planes came down during the American War they were taken to the prison, yet despite bombing the country were treated extremely well by the prison, hence the nickname 'Hanoi Hilton'. After having visited Alcatraz it wasn't a patch on this but very interesting all the same. We saw the torture chambers and all the torture equipment that they used.
We chilled out by the lake in the centre of the city for a while and in the evening we boarded our overnight train to Hue, in the South of Vietnam.
