2013 Viet Nam – Hanoi
The airport in Luang Prabang was tiny with only three small planes taking off each day at around the same time but everything went smoothly. It was only a one-hour flight to Hanoi and although I was getting fed up with booking taxis and having them turn up late, I read that there were a lot of taxi scams in Viet Nam so I thought I would give it one more chance. This time the taxi didn’t turn up late… it didn’t turn up at all. After waiting half an hour we took an official airport taxi costing twice the price as the one I had booked but unlike the million unofficial taxis touting for business at least it took us to the hotel we wanted at the price quoted. On the plus side, the hotel only cost £45 a night and it was better than most of the five-star hotels we had stayed in.
I thought in Bangkok it was hard to cross the road but it was like a country village compared to Hanoi. The good news was unlike Bangkok, they had pedestrian crossings which even had a little green man saying it was safe to walk. The bad news was the crossings were completely ignored by everyone. If you really must cross the road you have to close your eyes and just keep walking. The main problem was motor scooters as they assumed you would keep on walking, so if you stop, there is more chance of them hitting you than if you take evasive action. 
There were pavements but they were taken over by the shops that filled them with merchandise and those not taken by shops had motor scooters parked on them. Worst of all was crossing a dual carriageway where you assume traffic will be moving in one direction but scooters came at you from both directions. Despite the insane amount of traffic on the roads and the anarchy, it all seemed to move freely and we never saw an accident or traffic jam while we were there. I had to laugh when I saw a T-shirt explaining how traffic lights worked in Viet Nam. 
Our first stop the next morning was the Temple of Literature & National University, better known as The Confucius Museum. Confucius said “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall” which goes to show that not only was he a great philosopher but a visionary as he was obviously referring to crossing the road in Hanoi.
We were a few yards outside the Confucius Centre when a man on a Cyclo insisted on us hiring him. This is a bicycle with a two-seater chair in front. We told him we were going for a coffee and would employ him afterwards expecting him to go away and look for business elsewhere. Despite being in the café for an hour the man was still waiting for us so we could hardly turn him down and as it turned out we were glad he waited. He took us to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Completely against his wishes, Ho Chi Minh was not cremated but embalmed and is now on public display where millions of people queue up to spend ten seconds walking past what is claimed to be his body. Rumour has it that Madam Tussauds did the embalming and his instructions were carried out after all. I had no idea why we were going to queue up to see something wrapped in bandages other than for the atmosphere but contrary to the tourist information, the mausoleum was closed so all we saw was the building from the outside. 
After lunch we hired a taxi for the afternoon to take us to the main part of town which was even more manic than around our hotel. After a few temples, we ended up at Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. Started in 1969, it was built on the edge of a lake which at night was lit up beautifully. For a stage, there was a large tank of water in front of a screen where puppet masters stood unseen. The puppets were very basic and unlike most puppets that were controlled from above or below, these were controlled by long sticks from the side. The entire show was on the water and consisted of many different scenes and although the dialogue was in Vietnamese, the actions were self-explanatory. Some were funny and some tragic and it was supported by haunting music which I particularly enjoyed despite being a little heavy on the echo. It must have been difficult controlling the puppets from behind the screen but they did a great job.
For dinner we went to a packed restaurant where there was a hot plate in the middle of our table. Someone put a heavy bowl containing hot water on the hotplate. Our waitress spent the next hour guiding us through the meal which involved us cooking a wide variety of vegetables in one part of the bowl and meat in the other. It seemed to be important to do everything in the right order and although it was still just meat and vegetables it was great fun.
When planning our trips we always felt a little guilty about our lack of adventurous spirit. Instead of romantic-sounding bus and boat journeys, we kept taking the easy option of flying but the more we heard of other traveller’s experiences the happier we were that we had done so. One couple we spoke to went on a 16-hour boat journey with passengers strapped into their seats and toilets so disgusting that people were relieving themselves over the side of the boat. Another girl told us it took 20 hours to get from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang, with the driver of the minibus playing loud music all the time to keep himself awake. By plane, the same journey took 50 minutes. We were determined to take a train to our next destination, Hue but after hearing it would take 12 hours on an uncomfortable train with tiny, dirty windows it didn’t take long to talk ourselves into a flying.
2013 South East Asia
