Vietnam '08 - Hanoi

Hello fellow Dgrinners!

Here are some more photos of our trip to Vietnam:

Our trip to Vietnam started in Hanoi, the capital of former north vietnam and clearly the seat of the communist government. compared to it's brother in the south, the liberal financial capital city saigon, this city is much more conservative. You will find more communist propaganda, loudspeakers in the street waking the population and telling them it's another wonderfull day to go to work and not to have more then 2 babies etc. there is no nightlife and more bored policemen leaning against their motor and swinging their wooden batons :huh. The city is also much more gritty, featuring more 'french custard yellow' buildings and small alleys.

The moment we arrived from bangkok at the airport of Hanoi we could see we were in a whole other country with a whole other government. The airport was poorly designed (no signs telling you where to go) and poorly maintained with huge tiles falling off the wall. The eeriest thing though was the silence. Comming from thailand where everybody is all smiles and noisy, the rows of silent people lining up for customs check looked surreal. It was as if noone dared to say anything because it would make them look suspicious and you would be picked out of the line. It was the first in a line of interactions with government officials wich were all grumpy authorative figures seemingly ready to pick a fight. Luckily i was able to keep my talkative self together and keep my flap tight so we came through costoms unharmed

Hanoi is a very crowdy place full of motors whizzing by and people talking to you, trying to persuade you into some sort of deal. Unfortunatly as a tourist, you are unprepared for this mental attack, knowing nothing of the city, being drained from your energy by your recent flight and having the disadvantage that the vietnameze team up in their effort to break your spirit and get you to book that expensive hotel. It was in this situation we landed immediatly when our taxi drove into Hanoi. The taxi driver took us to a hotel we didnt want to go to (far from the city center and expensive) and while we were trying to look up a good hotel in our lonely planet the taxi driver casually flipped the trunk open and some hotel staff started to get our bags from the trunk as if we had no saying in the matter. Luckily (being blessed by my dutchiness) i, a short man compared to my friends, was still a fair head taller than the tiny vietnamese that tried to get away with my bag and was able to 'persuade' him to put it back in the trunk and leave us the **** alone. :rolleyes courtly manners disapear like snow in the sun if you are under that kind of mental presure in a hot, sweaty, smoggy city 10.000 km from home :rofl

luckily we met up with some students that lived in hanoi who volunteered to show us around town. They were great company and could speak english perfectly. If your ever in Hanoi, hook up with the hanoikids (google them). :thumb

First stop was the palace of ho chi minh, the father of vietnam. Showing his followers his true socialist style, he decided the 400 room palace was too big and too far away from the reality in which most vietnamese lived and went to live in the small electricity house just beside the palace. This electricity house boasted a whoping 2 rooms and 1 garage in which he kept his peugeot, a gift from the vietnamese citizens. Later on the govenment decided a electricity house was no place to live for the father of vietnam so they build him a 2 room stilt house in the garden . Although i admire his values, i dont know if i would pass up this house.. :rolleyes

on our way to our next destination we saw a lot of walls like the one below. Luckily we had our guides to explain to us what they were. As it turns out they were adverts for concrete manufacturers! :rofl They slap their phonenumber on any free space they can find. one of our tourguides once painted his house in order to get rid of them only to find new ones on the next day. :huh

Among other things he also told me his dogs had been stolen 4 times so now he didnt own any dogs anymore. Dog is a local delicacy and worth big $$ on the local market so they roam the street on motorbikes with lassos looking for owner walking their pets. in cowboy style they leesh the dogs and take them with them on their bikes. That made me decide not to eat dog this holiday. :rolleyes

The temple of literature is the first university of vietnam and rebuild after 'accidentaly' (?) being bombed by the french in the french war. Students still go there to pray for good luck in their exams.