Hanoi - Motorbikes, Mayhem and Moist Marionettes

Our first glimpse of Hanoi was as our plane circled over a flat and rural landscape. I thought we must have been in the wrong place when I looked out at the insular clusters of habitation spread out across the farmland. It took a while to get the visas sorted out, the guys in the kiosk being far too busy playing an advanced level of "Plants vs Zombies" to deal with us, then a man at passport control took an immense dislike to my face and became convinced that (due to a slight haircut) I was in fact not me. It felt like we were back in Bangkok as we bombed down the highway to the city. The road was dead straight and lined with billboards and there were lights everywhere. The first thing that really strikes you is the traffic, we leaned over the front seats of the taxi to watch as we got further into the city. At big junctions cars and motorbikes all cut across each other in different directions. One taxi even realised he'd taken the wrong exit and slammed into reverse, backing out into the chaotic junction. Watching the traffic is endlessly entertaining. It's as if everyone is involved in some kind of chaotic dance. It looks crazy and like it should end in disaster but due to years of practice they somehow simply glide past each other. Near misses make you wince every few minutes. Oh an I've discovered there's nothing you can't get on a motorbike; plants, air-con units, massive panes of glass and whole families.

A typical Hanoi street

Dodging Holes and Doggy-Do

The next morning, in the daylight my brain was scrambled. We stepped outside our high class hotel (Theo had just remarked what a great hotel we'd booked when part of the stairs fell off as we strolled down them) and stood vaguely in the street. "What is happening? What's all this noise, this madness? Oh that's right, I'm in Hanoi." There are no pavements in Hanoi, well there are but they're used as motorbike parks so you have to walk in the road. Making your way down the street is a massive achievement. You have to avoid walking into the parked motorcycles, or burning your bare legs on their still boiling hot exhaust pipes while dodging the moving bikes, bicycles, other pedestrians and ladies balancing baskets across their shoulders. You have to watch your feet, dodging poo and huge unexplained holes in the ground and the locals outside their shops. Everybody sits outside on tiny plastic stools cooking food and watching the world go by. Ladies sell things out of huge baskets in the streets or from the back of bikes. As a rule the buildings are a mess, as if there were some that made sense once upon a time but now too many people have crammed their own houses in between. There used to be a tax on how wide your house was so most of the buildings are shaped like tunnels, no wider than a few doors but long enough for numerous rooms. Shops are one room at the front of someone's house, piled floor to ceiling with biscuits and crisps. There is luxury here too, it's a big city after all complete with posh hotels, beauty spas and flashy phone shops.

The Old Quarter

Our walking tour led us through all this chaos first to a welcome oasis of calm in the form of a small temple straight out of China. A quiet courtyard led through to two small ornate rooms which are said to be the oldest in Hanoi. The shrines inside were piled high with money, food and even cans of beer for the spirits of dead ancestors. Back out on the street we stumbled across an art exhibition of traditionally made conical hats. The entrance was flanked with rows of hats on small haystacks so it looked as if dozens of villagers knelt with their heads bowed and their backs toward us. Next we went to a traditional house preserved in the style of the old quarter at the end of the 19th century. It was a beautiful place, all dark wood with an open courtyard and a small terrace. Folding doors let light flood the whole house and once inside even the noise of the street seemed far away.

The hat exhibition

South of the old quarter likes the Hoan Kiem lake at the centre of which is Ngoc Son temple. The temple is reached by a bright red bridge and is surrounded by pretty stone walls with gnarled trees stretching out towards the lake. The temple itself feels very oriental with red double doors thrown open and a vast dragon guarded vase of incense outside. In the centre of the lake stands the tall, ornate turtle tower, an unreachable shrine that honours the massive turtle that resides in the waters beneath.

Uncle Ho

Of course we couldn't visit Hanoi without taking a trip to see Ho Chi Minh, bringing my pickled communist spotting quota to two! After a serious queue around the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex, and a lot of security, the towering mausoleum finally came into view. Looming over an open area and flanked by some smart gardens, where nationalistic music echoed out, the huge hunk of stone is a pretty horrible sight. White-uniformed guards with guns and bayonets flanked the red carpet that leads inside, where it is absolutely freezing, presumably to preserve the body. It was literally like walking into a tomb. Like Lenin, Uncle Ho lies in his glass case illuminated by a strange yellowish glow. His body is a shrunken husk, reduced by the pickling process while his head and hands remain as they were. Inside it is gloomy and eerily silent, it is forbidden to stop and guards nudge you on if you loiter for too long while filing through. Further attractions in the complex include ''Ho Chi Minh's Used Cars'' (a pretty unprofitable business seemingly) and the sparsely furnished stilt house where he lived for a time. The museum was a disappointing experience, jumbled and surreal with very little by way of explanation.

The water puppet show

Strings and Surround Sound

One thing that is absolutely not to be missed in Hanoi is the legendary water puppet show. Originating from peasant performances in flooded paddy fields the water puppet show is a part of North Vietnamese culture that has been lovingly preserved and perfected in Hanoi. Settling down in the theatre we were faced with a stage with an oriental house backdrop (a bamboo screen at the bottom like a door for the puppets) and a large square pool in front. The musicians emerged and played some enchanting traditional music to start and we listened to a solo on a peculiar one-stringed instrument. The puppets were fairly simple, people and animals mounted on platforms and controlled by underwater mechanisms by puppeteers in galoshes. Only the arms really moved, but they are very colourful cleverly made, if occasionally a little battered. The water corrodes the puppets quickly and every few months they have to be replaced. First there were drummers, crashing around in the water, then dragons, then an elegant phoenix dance where long-necked bird puppets dipped in and out of the water. Singers accompanied the musicians in creating hauntingly beautiful songs. A lot of the stories reflected peasant life, we saw scenes of fishing, frog catching, hilarious coconut picking and farm work. Rigid cows and stooped women with baskets marched through the water in orderly rows. There were also stranger scenes, like dancing traditional hats and puppets with flaming torches accompanied by songs and shouting in Vietnamese, but it was still entertaining to watch. It was an odd show, some of the puppets were a little wooden (excuse the pun), but the frogs and the fish were incredible, leaping about so realistically you almost forgot they were puppets. The final piece showed the transformation of a carp into a dragon, part of the legend of Emperor Ly Thai To, the founder of Hanoi. A brightly coloured fish danced with his friends then thrashed around, water bubbled, lights flashed and 'poof!' a dragon reared his vast head out of the water, spraying the crowd. All then went black as a puppeteer came out, wielding a glow-in-the-dark dragon that spiraled around the pool before being taken up by someone else and dancing around the house above. Finally he shot straight up from the house into the sky. A masterful and ingenious end to a wonderful show.
Our final piece of entertainment in Hanoi was distinctly more modern. With time to kill before our sleeper train south we delved into the wealthier side of Hanoi wandering around a vast shopping centre in search of a cinema. It was strange to be back somewhere so blank and generic, shopping centres look the same in every country and I felt strangely out of place in my beat up shorts and 'Laos' t-shirt.

Vivacious Vietnamese

The main reason I would say to visit Hanoi is to soak up the frenetic Asia atmosphere, specifically the people. We'd heard some bad stories from travelers in Laos who had already been this way and I was pretty nervous about interacting with people when we arrived but those fears were totally unfounded. The locals shout and wade into each other's dramas head on, but they're quick to laugh and to yell and interactions with them can often feel like getting hit by a small, intense cyclone (the women who we booked our Ha Long Bay tour with being a perfect example). Everyone we met was eager to help. They're kind to their children and respectful to their elderly and they're very hands on. At one point we were accosted by three ladies selling bananas from the baskets that hang from longs bars over their shoulders. They dumped their baskets on us and put their hats on our heads before going on to discuss whether or not I was pregnant, but they did say Theo was very handsome. We've seen that at least two-thirds of the old french saying is true- The Vietnamese plant rice, the Cambodians watch it grow while the Laos simply listen to it grow.

I Miss the Point of a Sleeper Train

We left Hanoi on my first ever sleeper train, having wrestled with the semi-ordered (take a numbered ticket) semi-chaotic (then just push in regardless) system of buying a ticket a few days before. Theo winched me up on to the bunk with much shoving before the nice Vietnamese lady and her son who were sharing our cabin pointed out that there were some convenient fold-down footholds. The train was nice enough, the bunks were fairly comfortable and we had all sorts of shelves and hooks and cubbyholes for our stuff, plus a handy bedside light. The only problem with the train was that it was impossible to sleep. It was pretty hot and sticky due to some asthmatic excuse for an air-con unit and the carriage shook and rattled. It tossed us about so much and I built up such a rhythm I was afraid I would jump free of the bar on my bunk. Passing lights danced through the chinks in the curtain and at the foot of my bed a bottle of water shook in our cubbyhole, like some enormous beast smacking its lips in the dark. Every time we slowed to a stop the carriages crashed into each other sending reverberation the length of the train. And that is how, for more than 11 ours, we lurched southwards to Hue.

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