Vietnam Journal — Finally!
Saturday
11:10am – SFO
We just finished our first flight leg and are waiting to head to Seoul, the longest flight on the way there (14-15 hours). The first flight was an interesting experience. Since we had to leave my house by 3:30am, we only had about 90 minutes for a power nap. We were, and are, completely exhausted. The plane ride itself was uneventful, but I had a strange thought while en route. As I lean back trying to sleep and staring at a large projected screen without headphones, I hear people opening bags, sipping drinks, and the occasional cough. This is when I realized this is what it must have been like when silent movies first began playing in theaters. I ran with that thought and looked over the audience for that sense of wonderment as the pictures came to life in front of their eyes. The pilot interuppted my fantasy with an announcement and I snapped back to reality. It was 5am. I didn’t have any sleep. I closed my eyes.
We arrived in Hanoi at around 11pm Saturday. The driver was waiting for us and had a sign with my name on it and the hotel name. I pointed at him and he gestured for us to wait while he literally ran to get his car. During the drive, everything was pitch black most of the way so we had no idea what was in store for us. The occasional building came and went out of the shadows. The drive was about 45 minutes, including a stop for gas. We check in and Jaime’s parents welcomed us. We were exhausted from all of the travel time so we promptly went to bed, after walking up four flights of stairs.
Sunday
Jaime’s parents had booked a city tour that was privately guided by Son. This was our first experience with Hanoi city traffic. It was organized chaos. There were no lights, no traffic signals of any type. There was an abundance of motorbikes that went anywhere and everywhere they could fit, at any speed. Cars were no different and even oncoming “lanes” were fair game. The one prevailing rule was to just avoid hitting others. Someone cut you off? It’s your job to adjust to not hit them, and following distance is nonexistent. We made several u-turns on our trip and there was no waiting and no hesitation; just do it and people have a responsibility to not hit you in the process. This all made for one hell of an experience, and I haven’t even mentioned walking in this traffic. One FAQ I found online had the best advice: walk with a purpose. If you walk/cross with confidence and determination, the traffic can predict your movements and swerve around you. This doesn’t just apply to crossing the street. A vast majority of sidewalk space is filled with motorbikes and/or shops with the occasional impromtu food stand. The sidewalks that did exist would be full of people trying to sell you their wares. Because of all this, you end up walking in the street, with those motorbikes and cars whizzing all around you. After one day of getting used to the chaos, I came to appreciate the simple beauty of it all. Hanoi was a living, breathing organism.
Back to the tour. It started with a visit to Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum. This exemplified what I thought all of Vietnam would look like. It was a large Communist-style blocky building with two very large Vietnamese signs on both sides of it. There were police everywhere and checkpoints to gain access to each area. Since it was a weekend, there were thousands upon thousands of locals paying their respects. Surrounding the mausoleum, there is a large area with several other attractions, including a botanical garden, a one-pillared pagoda, a museum, and Ho Chi Minh’s small humble home, all of which we visited. Next, we went to a very large school complex that is no longer used but is well preserved. We ate lunch, a traditional pho ga (chicken and noodles), at Vietnam’s version of a chain restaurant. We finished the day with a visit to the Museum of Ethnology where they presented all of the different cultures and heritages of the Vietnamese people, including a well-done outdoor exhibit displaying various house styles and the tools used in rural life. Lastly we walked around part of the famous Hoem Kiem lake and across the red bridge into what’s left of an old prison.
We ate dinner at a place down the street from our hotel called Fives. To finish off the night we went to a 5-6 block long street market that runs from 8pm to 11pm, three days a week. At the cross streets, there would be three or four police officers sitting around with their shirts untucked. This is when it really hit me that Vietnam is not the Communist police-state I was expecting. These police were the first I’d seen since the mausoleum 12 hours earlier, and I’d continue to see very few over the next several days.