There's summit about Hanoi

Prior to arriving in Phong Nha, we hadn't realised there was an overnight bus and so had booked a room in a hostel for that night. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it meant we could get a couple of extra hours' sleep when we arrived in Hanoi and some breakfast when we woke up.

We spent the morning sorting out our onward plans to Halong Bay and Sa Pa. Our hostel, Little Charm Hanoi, offered a range of trips, so we decided to book through them, although in hindsight it would appear that they were not particularly good deals money wise.

To avoid the surcharge of paying by card (which would have been quite significant for the amount we were paying), we went on somewhat of a wild goose chase trying to find a Saigon Commercial Bank ATM that we knew wouldn’t charge us to take money out (the only one we’ve found in Vietnam). Despite going to the bank itself, this proved to be a real struggle as Google maps was not correct and the staff didn’t know where the ATMs were either! However, eventually after looking on the bank’s website, we were able to locate one.

On the plus side, this did give us a chance to wander around Hanoi’s Old Quarter and look at all the tiny shop fronts and little alleyways between the buildings. We were also pleasantly surprised to see that there is a distinct space left on pavements by scooters for pedestrians to walk down - something we haven’t seen anywhere else.

Hanoi is very different to Saigon. It feels a lot more traditional, authentic and more enclosed, particularly in this part of the city. There are a number of streets that are dedicated to selling just one type of product, for example the embroidery street right by our hotel, or the funeral wreath street by the railway. I don’t know whether this would have a more positive or negative effect on business, with everyone selling the same thing in the same place, but it stems from different cultures historically focusing on one trade and clustering together in individual streets.

The hostel had shown us places to go for coffee and lunch so we wandered over to Tong Duy Tan street, passing the railway on the way. Clearly there can’t be many trains as the railway is used just like a street, with scooters driving up the side and locals sitting on stools in the middle of the tracks. It was quite odd to see!

After a very tasty lunch of Bun Cha Hanoi and a ridiculously tall coconut coffee for James (they should definitely have put it in a bigger glass!), we headed to the War Museum, which is opposite a statue of Lenin. At lunchtime in the heat of the day, this area is deserted, however when we returned about five hours later, it was rammed with children playing football and badminton.

Many of the museums in Hanoi are not open on Mondays and Fridays so we had to fit as much as we could into our Thursday afternoon. As such, we didn’t get to see all of the war museum, but most of it was similar to things we’d seen elsewhere. The only real difference was the constant reference to the patriotic efforts of the Vietnamese people, which is to be expected, particularly in the North of the country.

The next stop was the area dedicated to Ho Chi Minh. Unfortunately the mausoleum was already closed as it is only open in the mornings, however we were able to get into the Presidential Palace complex and see where Ho Chi Minh lived and worked. The complex is situated round a lovely lake and seemed like a nice place to live!

Our final stop was the Ho Chi Minh museum, which was a fascinating combination of museum and modern art gallery. Unfortunately we only had half an hour to look around but luckily it was open on Friday mornings so we vowed to come back the next day to finish it off.

We wandered back to the hostel to take advantage of the free beer being served between 5:30 and 6pm and spent a couple of hours blogging and speaking to a nice German couple in the hostel’s chill out area. After a pizza dinner in the hostel, we continued our tour of Veitnamese Pasteur Street brew pubs. This was the perfect place to get our chores done, like booking our flights to Myanmar, while drinking some tasty beer.

On the way back, we walked past St Joseph’s Cathedral and the Ho Hoan Kiem lake, both of which were nicely lit up and surprisingly busy. We also stopped for a cheeky slice of chocolate cake!

The next morning we woke up to a significant temperature drop, only 19 degrees! So while the UK was basking in similar temperatures and proclaiming how warm it was, we were wrapped up warm in our down jackets and raincoats!

We headed back to the Ho Chi Minh complex, looking in at a temple on the way back to the museum. This was the most crowded temple I’d seen, with so many trinkets it would have been impossible to move inside!

The Ho Chi Minh museum was a fascinating exhibition all about the life of Ho Chi Minh and how he came to be leader of North Vietnam during their independence struggles, firstly with the French and then latterly the Americans. The main thing that seemed to make Ho Chi Minh successful was his ability to instill a belief in the Vietnamese people that if they just kept fighting for their country, they would win. The museum was well laid out with interesting displays.

After a quick look at the massive Hanoi train station, our next stop was the Maison Centrale, an old prison which was initially built by the French to keep Vietnamese prisoners in some horrendous conditions, but was later used by the Vietnamese to keep US prisoners in apparently much better conditions. The late Senator John McCain was one of these prisoners. Most of the complex was pulled down in the 1990s to build a Hilton Hotel, which is ironic as the US prisoners used to refer to the prison as the Hanoi Hilton during their time there.

I found this place particularly interesting, more so than James who finished looking round about an hour before I did! So at 1:30 we hurriedly looked for a lunch stop before the hanger set in! We found a nice little cafe next to a street that appeared to be dedicated solely to books.

Refreshed from our lunch, we continued along to the Vietnamese Women’s museum, a museum dedicated to the impact that women have had on Vietnam throughout the ages. It has three floors, the first focused on marriage and children, the second on the war effort and the third on fashion. We got the audio tour here to make sure I didn’t spend too long looking at everything! Again, it was a brilliant museum where we learned a lot about the different cultures in Vietnam and more about the war.

Exhausted from everything we’d learned, we decided to walk back to the hostel via the lake. As we approached, we saw a big crowd of people and lots of scooters beeping their horns (more so than usual in Vietnam!). Upon closer inspection, we realised it was because of two lookalikes promoting the summit between North Korea and the US which was happening in a few days time. The lookalikes weren’t particularly good, but that didn’t stop the crowds!

Once the lookalikes had moved on and the crowds had dispersed, we crossed over the bridge to the temple in the middle of the lake, mainly to see the tortoise which had been discovered in the lake in 1965 and was displayed there.

That evening we went for dinner at the night market, which is open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. There weren’t too many food options but we had some deep fried things on sticks which is always a winner! We visited a couple more pubs before getting a relatively early night ahead of our trip to Ha Long Bay the following day.

Our time in Hanoi felt more rushed than other places, maybe because we had less time and more to squeeze in. I also found I really couldn’t get my head around where we were as there are so many similar little streets in the Old Quarter that it gets confusing. That said, it’s a really interesting city with a lot of history and a fast paced way of life. We’ll be back a couple more times before we leave Vietnam.