Hanoi Day 2: The City

The city wakes very early.

While the others dozed, I was on the balcony watching the traffic. Very few cars. A lot of motorbikes. A lot of bicycles. And no fat people!

Vietnam Observation #1:
I didn't see a single fat Vietnamese in Hanoi in the first few days there. All the men are wiry and fit. All the women are slim and fair.

Eventually everybody got up. Had breakfast. And talked with the hotelier about arranging a trip to Ha Long Bay. He offered 3 different 2D1N packages, for USD29, 35 & 45 per pax.

The USD45 package has "Big Lunch! Big Dinner! Big Breakfast!"

We told them we'ld think on it...

Our first destination was the lake (Ho Hoan Kiem, Lake of the Restored Sword). It's a well developed spot, with gardens all around it, a temple in the middle of the lake, and a toll-booth on the bridge leading to the temple.

This was when I felt that I was leading an outing of the photography club. Two Olympuses and a Canon were whipped out and started clicking away.

But clicking alongside them, I saw an unexpectedly high camera per pax ratio amongst the locals too... Seems that every second Hanoi-ite was sporting an old Nikon or Pentax SLR, those old metal affairs... For a while I was thinking that they were a press crew there waiting for some news-worthy event. Later I figured out that they're professional photographers, taking pics for those visitors who are without cameras, and then they'll run off to the nearest photo shop, develop that square of film, then re-use the remaining roll of film with the next customer. Quite a lot of effort just to make a buck.


Right after our first destination, we immediately met our first crisis. Wee's camera ran out of juice. But our photography club has an excellent support system and we helped him weather out the crisis.


Next on our journey was the St. Joseph Cathedral.

Then Pho for second breakfast.

Went and found the train station, and bought soft sleeper tickets to go to Lao Cai for the day that we get back from Ha Long Bay.

Got double charged for using the toilet at the train station. Locals pay D500, but I didn't get change for D1000.

The Temple of Literature.

Ho Chih Minh Museum. Closed.

Ho Chih Minh Musoleum. Closed for the day.

Lunch.

Military Museum. Charges extra for bringing in cameras.

Afternoon tea at cafe under the flag tower.

Walked about Old Quarter. Saw the Opera House and the Hanoi Hilton at night. Bought hats. Ate Vietnamese prepared western food for dinner.


Noteworthy events for the day...

We had an interesting lunch. Somewhere near the HCM Museum, we found a secreted restaurant (no sign boards) doing bustling business, mostly local patrons. We thought it would bea good place to sample genuine local cuisine, and quickly found ourselves a table.

Wee Loong proceeded to order us four glasses of fresh beer... by accident... before we were even seated. But it was a serendipitous accident, as we will later find. It was more beer than I had ever consumed in my lifetime prior to this day. Tasted better than the tapped stuff I had to sip socially before.

The menu was in Vietnamese. The waitresses didn't speak a word of English. But the menu had caricatures of animals on each page, so we thought we could handle it alright. We ordered a vegetable dish by pointing at a neighbouring table. So that's one down.

I managed to challenge everyone to try dog meat. And with some few phrases from a guide book, I managed to decode the alphabets for "grilled". I thought it was safest to order grilled dog, since all satay taste the same irregardless of the meat used.

Then we ordered a random (close eyes and point) pork, and a random chicken. The chicken was significantly pricier than the other meats, so we kinda looked forward to something special.

First came the boiled cold cuts of dog. Oops! The waitress took the wrong order. It looked like boiled pork, but with leaner, browner meat, and a thin darkish brown skin. Came with sliced ginger, a few segments of 'sausages', and some lime. This was more adventure than we bargained for.

First, the denial, we wanted to believe that this was the pork dish we ordered at random. But a taste removed all doubts. I guess I would describe the taste as... tastes like dog. It wasn't disgusting or anything. It just tasted like a different kind of meat. The texture was rather chewey... Like beef tongue. A little alien. A little funny.

Ravi tried a few slices. Wee spat out his first piece after chewing on it for a few minutes. Not entirely sure if Ben ate any, only remembered him poking it with his chopsticks. Had maybe about 8 pieces. Didn't mind the taste, but didn't like it too much either. I was the only one who tried the suspicious sausage segment. And, disappointing to some, it was not canine penis. Just some nutty or chestnutty stuffing in an intestine, I think...

This is where the serendipitous beer came in very helpful.

The other dishes came... But the dog-meat has already turned a few appetites. We were served boiled pork. And boiled chicken. It seemed rather suspicious that we somehow randomly picked 3 dishes of boiled meat. Especially the chicken dish, which had a very wordy name on the menu, but it only came out boiled??

Ah well... We're ignorant tourists. We suffered our lot silently.


The military museum was also a good visit. It was just a bunch of old photos, old war paraphrenalia (ie old flags, news clippings, chairs that some general sat on, different uniforms their armies wore, a clay bowl that some hero drank his own piss out of, etc), a bunch of trophies they collected from their enemies (ie a giant Howitzer, a few planes, the wreckage of a bomber brought down by their AAA [anti-aircraft artillery], a tank, a few vehicles etc), and diaromas of their victory in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and the taking of Saigon.

Almost missed the Dien Bien Phu diaroma, as it was almost hidden off in a different part of the building, accessible through a door that looked like a service door. Maybe it's so that the exhibit can be diplomatically closed away when French diplomats visit, so they won't get offended by the gloating displays. But you would think that a people who devised the ingenious Maginot Line would be 'impenetrable' to ridicule already, where their military history is concerned.

Didn't really appreciate the military manuevers that brought them their victories. But through the theme of all the exhibits, one can come to appreciate that these are a people that has gone through a lot of shit, and had prevailed against everyone of them. Their nationalistic pride is well earned. They have the right to be a proud people. They have weathered numerous storms, and are fully capable of surviving many more.


Next to the military museum was a flag tower. No big deal really. You climb to the summit (29m above sea level), and get a little view around the city. But strangely, at the top of the tower, there are two stairways going down. When we got back down to the base of the tower, I can't find the doorway to the alternate stairs to the top.

I couldn't leave with this mystery haunting me. So I climbed all the way back up, and down the mystery stair. This one came to a dead-end halfway down the tower. And at the dead-end, which was just a narrow enclosed space with light coming in through a port-hole, there's a mysterious little shrine, with an urn for joss-sticks. No idea what it was for. Now that explained why a young Vietnamese couple was down here when my photography club was clicking pictures at the summit.


One of the better sights seen today was at the rail tracks. At a barrier, we decided to walk along the tracks after a train had just passed. The track runs behind the backs of a lot of houses. And most residences keep their back-door wide open. From this vantage, we got to take a peek at how the locals live, how they furnish their houses, what TV they own etc. It was cool just to wander off the beaten path for a short while.


Vietnam Observation #2 & #3
Where are the cats? Did not see a single stray cat the whole day. Except for a few kittens in cages at a market. And we've not seen cats on menus either. Curious...

Another thing... I did not hear a single dog bark. All of them are subdued, with sad soulless eyes. Like they're just waiting for the shoe to drop.