16.5. –19.5.2023
We had booked a ride to Hanoi from the same company that had taken us from the airport to Ha Long earlier. At eleven o’clock, our driver called Marko and told that he was waiting for us in front of our apartment building. This was somewhat confusing information, as we were also waiting in front of the apartment building, but there was no sign of the driver. Marko walked around the building complex to check if the driver had accidentally gone in front of a wrong tower block to wait. There was no sign of the driver there either, so we called him again. One of the residents of our apartment building took over and explained in Vietnamese to the driver where he was supposed to be. It turned out that the driver had the wrong address for some reason, but once he had the right address, he turned up within minutes.
We had booked ourselves a two-bedroom apartment in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. As the apartment was on a very small and narrow street, it was very quiet, even though it was right in the centre. The first thing we had to do after checking in was to… surprise, surprise… find a place to eat. Since no one was interested in venturing out into the city in the terrible heat, we ended up eating at McDonald’s as we hadn’t been in one for quite a while. It was a very good choice, as the place was efficiently air-conditioned. The air conditioning was more than welcome, as the temperature was +36C, and “feels like” +43C.
After a quick lunch, we set off for a walk around Hoan Kiem lake, because there was a water puppet theatre on its shore that we wanted to visit. We did, however, make a quick stop at the Ngoc Son temple first. Apparently it was a Confucian and Taoist temple. In a small side building we found two stuffed Hoan Kiem turtles. One of them was found dead on the shore of the lake in 2016. The first one had already died in 1967. According to the information board at the temple, there are only six of this species left. Where these six turtles are now, is another story. Certainly not in the pond surrounding the temple, as the water did not seem to be very clean. At least some of the fish we saw seemed to be swimming on their backs…
After the temple visit, we went to the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. We were lucky as the first show of the day was about to start. We managed to get ourselves front row seats for 200 000VND/person (8€), on top of which we paid a total of 200 000VND for an English audio guide for each of us. The Water Puppet Theatre is a rather strange concept. The performance is accompanied by traditional instruments and singing. The puppets moving on the water are guided from behind curtains with long wooden sticks. The audience can only see the puppets. The people moving the puppets stand waist-deep in the water throughout the performance, hidden behind the curtains. The hour long show was very interesting. The performance doesn’t have an actual plot, instead it consisted of several separate short scenes from well known folklore stories.
One of the scenes was about Hoan Kiem lake, on the shores of which we had just been walking. The story goes that in the 15th century, the Vietnamese ruler Le Loi was given a magic sword by the gods to expel the invading Chinese. Later, while Le Loi was rowing on the lake, the turtle god Kim Qui appeared to reclaim the sword. The name of the lake, Hoan Kiem, means ‘the lake of the returned sword’.
From the theatre, we walked back towards the hotel along the opposite shore of the lake. There was a proper grocery store along the way, so we popped in there to get our evening snack needs for a couple of days. Although it wasn’t a long walk, we were all sweaty by the time we got to the apartment. We spent the rest of the evening in our wonderfully cool air-conditioned apartment.
Hanoi’s scorching heat hadn’t exactly eased when we stepped out of our apartment onto the streets of the old city. The temperature was +39 degrees and “feels like” +44C. But with water bottles and fans in hand, we kept walking along the shady side of the street. We followed a route that had been marked on our map we had picked up at the hotel reception. Very quickly we discovered that this route went along different merchandise streets, each selling a particular product. We walked along streets selling clothes, paper lanterns, health products and decorative items, among others. As all the small shops on the streets were often spread out onto the non-existent narrow pavement, we often had to walk on the side of the road among cars and scooters. You had to be very careful not to get hit by a scooter.
Traffic in Hanoi is chaotic. We thought Malaysian traffic was bad, but the traffic here is insane. There are traffic lights at intersections, but nobody obeys them. Everyone drives ahead and honks the horn to signal that they are coming. Here, especially at crossings, you have to pay attention and move quite fast if you want to make it to the other side of the street alive. When crossing the road, it is not a good idea to stop, but to keep moving forward, counting on scooters and cars to give way on either side. The scooter is by far the most popular mode of transport here. Naturally, most people ride their scooters without helmets. You can load an incredible amount of stuff or people on a scooter. The record we saw was two adults, two children and a dog. Unfortunately, they went by so quickly that we didn’t get a picture of them.
After a short walk, we ended up at the local market hall. This place had three floors selling jewellery, watches, hats, fabrics and clothes among other things. Marko bought himself a new pair of shorts from there, as the previous ones had been washed so many times during the trip that the colours had faded badly. We didn’t stay very long in the market hall, because although it was technically indoors, there was no air conditioning. The fans whirring in the little stalls didn’t cool us down effectively enough.
Next we returned to the lakeside where we had been the day before. The hot day called for a cool down, so we entered Häagen Dazs ice cream store and ordered ourselves ice cream and sodas. They were worth every penny! (Or Vietnamese Dong in this case.)
We went back to the apartment for a while to cool off. In the evening, we went out again as it was a bit cooler. Well, in reality the temperature was well over +30C, but with the sun no longer scorching, walking the streets was more bearable. Fortunately, we didn’t have to walk far, as the local “train street” was right next to our hotel.
The “train street” is a narrow street with railway tracks running down in the middle. They are not there for decoration, but every day a passenger train is passing along the street. On a weekend, there are apparently several trains passing. The street is so narrow that standing on the side of the road you could easily touch the passing train. The train does indeed speed past. It doesn’t bother to slow down much. It just honks its horn to let people know it’s arriving. Of course, just before the train arrives, some men use megaphones to announce that it’s time to move off the tracks and onto the terraces of cafés and restaurants.
We arrived on the street sometime around 7.30pm, because we weren’t quite sure what time the train would pass by. The street had already been cut off, and it was no longer possible to walk there on your own. Instead, we had to follow the restaurant owners patrolling at the crossing. They seated their customers in their own little restaurants along the track. This ensured that the street would not be crowded when the train arrived, and everyone would have a seat. At the same time, of course, the restaurant owners also benefit from the arrangement.
A restaurant is perhaps a little too fancy name for the small cafés that lined the roadside. Our stall looked rather ascetic, but the food we ordered was actually very good. We had deep-fried chicken, crab cakes, chips, spring rolls, cheese sticks, pho soup and fried rice. We also had a few juices and ciders to go with the food. The whole thing cost 790 000VND, about 30€. And when you get a nice train experience on top of the meal, I would call it a very successful evening. Sweaty and with our stomachs full, we started walking towards the hotel.
On the way back, Risto wanted to try push ups on the rail tracks and was soon surrounded by a large crowd of supporters. Our little man was quite proud of himself, when at the end of the push-ups, some of the grown men wanted to shake Risto’s hand for a successful performance. Quite a powerhouse, this seven-year-old of ours!
On Thursday we left our backpacks at the hotel, and went to see the Temple of Literature. Because the place was only a couple of kilometres away, we decided to walk there despite the heat. It was +38 degrees by this point, so it was another sweaty walk. We first ended up in an area with several embassies. Next to the embassies was a park where locals were passing the time playing various card and board games. In the square next to the park, there was a statue of Lenin. The last time we saw statues of Lenin was more than ten years ago on our Trans-Mongolian trip.
From the park it was only a short walk to the temple. Temple of Literature was founded in 1070 by Emperor Ly Thanh Tong as a temple to worship the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Every year the names of the graduates were carved on stone plates that were on the backs of the stone turtles. These stone turtles are on the third courtyard of the temple. It was a great honour to have your name carved, so the students worked hard. Even today, students still come to the temple to celebrate their graduation. We happened to see a group of students who had come to the temple to celebrate what was probably some sort of end-of-semester party. First, the students were lined up behind some kind of priest who was giving a speech facing the altar. After that the students sang a song. After the song one of the students gave a speech. At that point we started to move on, as the temple had no air conditioning and it was getting too hot for us. Only inside the main temple, there were huge fans cooling the statues of Confucius. That’s why we spent a little longer there than in the other parts of the temple.
We had first thought of taking the Hop On Hop Off bus, but after the visit to the temple there wasn’t enough time for it. So we walked back to Hoan Kiem lake for a late lunch and then headed back to the hotel. From there we took a taxi to Hanoi train station.
We had booked tickets for an overnight train to Da Nang city. We had been instructed to arrive at the train station at least an hour before the train was due to leave. So we waited at the station for over an hour before boarding the train. And no, there was no air-conditioning what so ever!
Fortunately the train was air-conditioned, maybe even little bit too well. Apparently we had bought our tickets so late that we didn’t get one sleeping compartment for our family, but were put in the upper beds of two separate compartments. We tried to ask the train staff if it would be possible for us to share a compartment, but they said it was not possible. Jaana and Ronja soon got company from an older local man from Hanoi station, but Marko and Risto travelled by themselves the first couple of hours. A couple of stops later Jaana and Ronja got more company. Now there were two Vietnamese men in their compartment. At the same stop, Marko and Risto also got company from two Western men on their way to Hue.
The train ride was not quite as smooth or fast as the bullet trains in Japan and Korea. The distance between Hanoi and Da Nang is almost 800km and the train journey takes just over 15 hours, so the average speed was not great. The train rocked and swayed from side to side and rattled along the way.
Jaana and Ronja kept waking up several times during the night, as most of the passengers did not go to bed at the same time as us. They shouted and rattled around in the corridors really late. In addition, the train stopped at a couple of stations during the night, where passengers boarded and some disembarked. So there was a lot of traffic. In addition to the passengers making noises, there were also various vendors walking around in the carriages with their trolleys full of stuff to sell. One was selling everything from noodles to mangoes, another was selling soup, a third was shouting that he had coffee and beer and a fourth was knocking on doors and selling some kind of thin stuffed baguettes. We bought a few of these baguettes, as we didn’t really have anything else for breakfast, apart from a couple of apples and Oreo cookies.
We arrived at Da Nang station only about ten minutes late. From there we took a taxi to our hotel and after a short wait we got our air-conditioned hotel rooms. This time we had booked a hotel with a swimming pool, as the weather forecast for the whole week is still promising almost +40C heat for the whole of Vietnam. It’s all relative here: on our walk to dinner in the evening after the sun had set, +30 already felt really cool.
