Well we've safely arrived in Hanoi after 72 hours travelling, with only very short bursts of sleep! The flights and stopover in Abu Dhabi were fairly uneventful, but landing in Bangkok was not at all what we were expecting. On my last visit, I remember arriving to hoards of pushy taxi drivers all trying to take us into the city, so we came prepared with our best 'leave us alone, we are seasoned travellers and won't be ripped off' attitudes, to find only a very orderly queue of 'limosuines' waiting to take us into the city - for about $30 - and 'no discounts'. Well that completely threw us, but we managed to find some cheaper taxis on the next floor down, and headed towards the city. It was early on a Sunday morning, but the roads were deserted, the cars all looked very modern and the streets were clean - where had the old Bangkok that we knew and loved gone?! We later found out that the whole of October is a public holiday in Thailand, so all the locals had gone off to the islands, but it was a very surreal first Thai encounter!
We found our hotel on the Khao San Road, and then decided to get a tuk tuk to take us round some of the main tourist attractions of Bangkok - the giant buddha, golden temple and various other sights. Our tuk tuk driver - possibly called Jim, was very cheeky - and at one point stopped the bike in the middle of four lanes of traffic, grinned, shurgged and said 'no gas'! I think he was joking, as we seemed to drive off again, but the whole journey was quite amusing with him running away from the tuk tuk at one point and similar stunts! He also realised fairly soon that we were pretty relaxed and would just go wherever we were taken, so he proceeded to take us to every 'high fashion' establishment in the local area, where we had to pretend to be interested in having suits tailored for him to get paid.
Back to the Khao San Road and the Thailand we remember started to come back to life. Ping pong show touts, deep fried insects, live music and weird and wonderful food and toy stalls filled the streets. A few hours people watching, eating noodles and shopping and we were ready for bed.
We had a very early morning flight to Hanoi booked so headed back to the airport. All the time zone changing and jet lag had left us very confused as to when meal times were - and we managed to eat breakfast and lunch both before 7am!
At Hanoi airport we decided we should try and get to grips with the currency, the Vietnamese Dong, before trying to get a taxi. We were stumped by the number of zeros it seemed were necessary to buy anything. The taxi cost us half a million Dong, and we had to count the zeros on every bank note to check we weren't getting ripped off by a factor of ten for most of the couple of days! Vietnam seems to be a beautiful country so far - the drive into the city was past rice paddy fields, with Vietnamese rice workers wearing the traditional conical hats. It was all very iconic and amazing to see, and the coolness was a welcome relief after the sticky humidity of Bangkok. We arrived at our pre booked hotel, but unfortunately we (Caz!) had booked it in a state of complete lack of sleep, and turned up to find that we had managed to book it for the wrong date and were 24 hours too late to check in! Typical!
We spent the rest of the first day in Hanoi booking tours to Sapa and a cruise around Halong Bay (weather permitting - apparently there's a typhoon brewing!)and then had a wander around the streets of Hanoi. A wander makes it sound like a gentle stroll, with no risk to life inferred - this wound be inaccurate. There are thousands of motorbikes, scooters and pushbikes all over the streets, all driving in absolute chaos, and the pavements are a bike park. Crossroads are just a case of whoever drives fastest has right of way, and pedestrians seem to be dispensible. Trying to cross the roads, or even walk along the pavement was a terrifying experience that neither of us have ever quite encountered before, despite our fairly extensive travel around Asia.
We soon learnt that the best way to get about is to just keep walking - you have to hold your nerve - most of them are fairly slow moving - and just hope they drive around you. It's working so far!
After a dinner of rice paper rolls and noodles, we took a trip in a 'cyclo' - the preferred public transport in Hanoi. Basically a man on a bike, pedalling us in a small wheeled sofa into oncoming traffic! Again, a new experience, which made for a lot of screaming and clutching each other until we got used to it! Our destination was the Water Puppet Theatre - where we were treated to an hour of Vietnamese music, singing and weird little ceramic puppets dancing around in a tank of water, with fireworks and UV effects!
After a good night's sleep, we headed out to explore Hanoi a bit more - the walk to the tour office with our backpacks was even more nerveracking, as we could no longer hop nimbly in and our of traffic with bulky backpacks on our back and front! We spent the rest of the day taking in the hustle and bustle and the various sights of Hanoi - the tortoise lake, the temple of literature, the mausoleum and a market. The tour took us through various street markets, which all seemed to sell the same thing in a certain area e.g. 19 shoe shops in a row, bike helmets for a mile, DIY shops along an entire street! We were approached by a couple of particularly note worthy characters - me, by a Ukrainian (who said he was from Oz??!) who felt the need to tell me that 'he liked how I looked, with my black top, yellow backpack straps and my 'tie' (scarf!!), and Caz by a chinese man, who wanted a picture (we suspect to pretend she was his wife!). The market took us to a new level of road crossing chaos - with us not only having to dodge bikes and scooters, but also jumping over fruit, meat and the freshest fish we've ever seen (taking its last breaths!).
Now in an internet cafe, just waiting for our night train up to Sapa so will blog again when we can.
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