Hello Hanoi

We're going to Vietnam. The last leg of our South-East Asia journey and time-bound by a flight for Hong Kong the 13th, we've been squeezing our Vietnam-trip shorter and shorter, and haven't really given it much thought or research (guidebook being lost and all). But we were wrong to underestimate this country - here is a (my apologies in advance) rather lenghty account of our meeting with Vietnam.

After being fried alive in 40-degree Central Laos, the cool mist shrouding the mountain border post of Cam Treu as we approached felt very out of place. Our last 100 meters of Laos were the coldest we had there, and as we stamped out and crossed in to No Man's Land, it just got colder, and the mist just got thicker. We really should have had pictures from this absurd scene: there was not a person in sight, we just kept walking deeper and deeper in to Vietnam with no passport stamp, no consent from anyone. We walked on to a long bridge whose end we couldn't see for all the mist, continued up a long hill, not meeting a soul. After a long while we started seeing spade-wielding ditch-diggers drenched from the relentless drizzle, and finally: a bleak concrete building with the word "Immigration" on it. Timidly we pushed the unlocked door open, and started poking around the narrow corridors of the building, seeing only empty concrete nooks and curtains fluttering over shattered windows. Deeming the building deserted and thoroughly creepy, we moved on.

A last look at impossibly rugged karst mountains and delightfully strong sun in Laos.

At the border crossing just a half hour later. Somewhere there in the gray lies Vietnam.

After more spooky walking past half-finished constuction work, we met three neatly uniformed guys along the road. They asked for our passports and looked at them for a while as if they'd never seen a passport before, flicking through the pages for our Vietnamese visas, which we didn't have, as Norway is one of few countries whose citizens Vietnam doesn't require visas for. But this was way more knowledge than we expected uniformed border guards to have, and we had no way of communicating it to them as their English was limited to three-or-so words. Luckily we had printed our plane ticket from Hanoi to Hong Kong, since a border guard who knew what he was doing probably would have liked to see our confirmed departure ticket from Vietnam. In this case, though, it served more as "some sort of official-looking document in a foreign language", and we had changed from our grubby traveling clothes to jeans and nice shirts just before the border, so we had accumulated enough authority to be waved along with a smile.

Still stamp-less and now even deeper in to Vietnam, roughly the same scene played out one or two more times - the officials still not speaking a word of English or telling us what to do, and the e-mail print-out working its magic repeatedly - before we finally got to a building with people in it. They gave us our stamps for a modest 1 USD, and sent us further down the road. This road was obviously one we were expecting to be crowded with taxis and buses taking us to Vinh, the nearest major town some 100 km away, but after a long time we found only one driver - albeit friendly - and in lack of other options, we let him take us to a town 30 km down the spectacular mountain road (hello Norwegian scenery), where we connected with a bus already departing for Vinh.

The countryside views of off-the-beaten-track Vietnam were a bit shocking. Nowhere on our travels have we seen so many people living so primitively. Rice fields are tended in the same postcard way that they have for hundreds of years, and farms are run completely engineless, all labour done by hand, in this strictly communist country which simply decided to ignore the technological advancements of the 1900s.

Arriving in rainy Vinh at dusk, we had only ten minutes again before the night bus for Hanoi left. Having been whisked continuosly along for the better part of the day, we spent those minutes frantically searching for a snack of any kind, and ended up champing down dry baguettes in our beds as the bus departed. The beds were delightful, and having caught a bit of a stomach bug somewhere in Laos, I feel in to an unnaturally deep sleep, expecting not to be woken before the next day. But Hanoi arrived just after 1 am, and before I knew it we were dropped off on a highway somewhere in Vietnam's multi-million capital, still recovering from sleep and without a clue as to where we were.

Very ready for a long night's sleep.

We let an annoying taxi driver take us to a part of town we'd never heard of. Unable to find us an open hotel, he left us in the hands of a hooker on a motorbike, who we paid out of the ears to find us an open hotel (and nothing else). Eventually she succeeded, and we conked out on mouldy beds.

Sorry for the rather lengthy story, but there was a lot that had to be said about our first meeting with Vietnam. I'll be briefer and more picturey for the actual Hanoi part.

A main Hanoi impression: Oceans of motorbikes.

It was past 2 pm the next day before we had summoned the energy to start exploring Hanoi. We had been taken straight to the old town surrounding the scenic Hoan Kiem lake, and enjoyed wandering the motorcycle-filled streets and browsing the fascinatingly varied handicrafts stores. We visited the Temple of Literature, the charming site of a 1000 year old Confuscian university, and went to a water-puppet show in the evening, for a mildly enjoyable hour of traditional Vietnamese culture. Our first impression of Hanoi is friendly and interesting, but the streets got deserted and chilly in the evening.

Every doctor graduate from the school has a stela carried on the back of the symbolic stone turtle.
Side by side are stones from the 1400s and 1700s.

The puppeteers receiving applause from the few of us in the audience who are still awake.

Hoan Kiem lake, the epicenter of Hanoi's tourist district and mild exercise area.

The next morning we got up early to see Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, the top attraction of the city. We joined a kilometer-long (but sufficiently fast-moving) queue winding its way around the imposing grounds, before being led, under strict supervision, in a procession around Uncle Ho's embalmed body. It was a fascinating experience, just for the intense devotion the Vietnamese still showed for their old hero, and we visited the ridiculously patriotic Ho Chi Minh museum afterwards. Our next stop was the Hoa Lo prison, a famously bleak place built by the French colonists, but later used by the Vietnamese during the "American War", as they call it, and now a museum. In both places we managed to tease out some interesting pieces of history from all the communist propaganda, but it wasn't always easy. If there's one thing Vietnam has taught us it is how incredibly biased history really is, and although we can ridicule their presentation of American prisoners receiving presents, playing volleyball and eating Christmas dinner (with the gruesome torture methods being passed elegantly by), they've opened our eyes to that the "version" of history we're used to isn't necessarily accurate either.

Imposingly housed and defying his own death wish, Ho's body is practically a religious artifact.

Because nothing says freedom like pictures of people carrying flowers.

A guard telling us where to walk and not to walk in the grounds of the mausoleum complex.

Exhausted from sightseeing and wandering streets, we get to a big mall with a movie theater and book tickets for The Book Thief. While passing time before the show we frolicked in an extravagant gaming arcade, just for the heck of it. And that's about all we got around to in Hanoi before leaving for the famous Ha Long Bay.