Wanderlust around the world: the journeys of JAsh: Takin' it to the streets... Day 3: Hanoi, Vietnam

Rising at the rarely seen time of 530AM this morning, we enjoyed the first few hours of our day lounging and finalizing other travel plans for the rest of the trip. By 1100AM, we headed back across the street to Tamarind for breakfast one more time and plotted the day.

Once back out on the streets, we took a moment to discuss the plan, and were approached by a few vendors selling guide books, pastries, and fruit. One of the women was kind enough to share her load – those carrying baskets are so much heavier than they look!

After a few photos, and purchasing a facemask to use during heavy exposure to traffic (the smog from the motorbikes can be a bit overwhelming), we haggled with a tuk tuk driver who wanted too much money for his efforts. He was relentless and eventually, we had to alter our course to get away! So we started off on foot, visiting the meditation island on Hoan Kiem Lake, which hosted a building called the Ngoc Son Temple.

This temple is dedicated to telling the ancient story of the lake and how a resident turtle returned a powerful sword back to the spirit world after an important leader had used it to his benefit. The island had a beautiful pagoda and some interesting foliage. There was a fee to get on the island proper and we debated not going, but when we discovered it was just 10,000 dong per person ($.50 / each), we laughed and bought tickets. There is also a small pagoda in the middle of the lake that commemorates the great turtle spirit, which you can view from nearly every angle around the lake.

Wanting to make our way over to a different neighborhood, we then hired a tuk tuk driver to get us over to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.

The thirty-minute trip took us through the north end of the Old Quarter, eventually leading to bigger streets, government buildings and embassies housed in beautiful French colonial-era buildings.

Tree-lined streets and all kinds of vegetation throughout the city were the norm surrounding all of the crazy traffic. We arrived at the Ho Chi Minh complex and were immediately struck by its size. Deciding to just tour the grounds (we hear HCM’s preserved remains, usually stored here, take a vacation to Russia every winter for “cleaning”), we walked around the outside of the museum building and through the gardens. The civic grounds were groomed and quiet; here we visited the One Pillar Pagoda and we witnessed some military exercises happening as we walked by (you can see them marching in the background of the photo).

We learned a bit about Ho Chi Minh and how he defended the Vietnamese cause on many fronts, defeating interests against the Chinese, the colonialist French, and eventually, the United States. The Ho Chi Minh complex is a center of national pride while also being a stop for many international visitors.

After taking a lot of photos, we leave the grounds in search of food, and make our way past more embassies in search of the Com Chi food stalls.

Unfortunately, mid-afternoon does not seem to be the ideal time to find many of them open, so we continued up Hang Bong and did some shopping, experienced more hilarious scooter traffic without regulation, and had a quick bite amongst all of the action at the somewhat unmemorable but favorably located Little Hanoi Cafe.

At this point, we looked for scooters with 2 or more people and saw a few with 3, and even one with a family of 4 squeezed onto the seat. Sometimes it really is hard to tell which way everyone is trying to go!

We finished our afternoon jaunt by shopping for some jewelry on Hang Bac, the main jewelry street. Whether it's silk, jewelry, scooter repair, bamboo or cheap toys, every product seems to have its own localized neighborhood in Hanoi, where 25 shops on a block all sell the same thing.

We returned to our old hotel, and made the walk to our new hotel, which was in fact, brand new.

We stayed on the 6th floor (no elevator) of this impossibly width-challenged building and enjoyed a hard drive system that had dozens of movies available. Hot Tub Time Machine proved to be funny and original. Post-movie, we headed out to find local late night fare and found Half Man 1/2 Noodle, a Western-inspired bar/grill and enjoyed a salad, some veggie rolls and two Halida beers at a table on the street for a mere $.75 each.