October Vacation, Part 3: Do You Know The Way to Hoan Kiem Lake?

Hanoi, Vietnam

Celebrating a millennium of Hanoi.

10 p.m., our very first night in Vietnam. Our taxi driver has stopped the car about six kilometers from our hostel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. "No! No!" is all he can explain to us in English, as he tosses our backpacks out of the van and impatiently waits for us to get out too. Another recently-ejected passenger begins to argue violently with the driver on the sidewalk, while yet another gestures towards the throng of people marching through the nearby streets and shakes his head at us: "Cars won't go there tonight."

Great.

Exhausted from a long day of travel, mapless, and with only "Hello" psuedo-memorized in Vietnamese, we began to feel helpless. The area we were standing in was near the highway, with no hotels or tourist offices in sight. We'd landed in Hanoi right in the middle of its weeklong 1000th Anniversary celebration, for which hoards of Vietnamese had flocked to the capital city. The crowds and huge military parades made the streets so people-thick that we couldn't even walk down most of them.

A few minutes later, two elderly Vietnamese women dressed in pajama pants approached us from the crowd and asked us something in Vietnamese. We shook our heads I don't understand, but hoping they'd be able to give us some directions, mentioned the name Hoan Kiem, the large lake inside the Old Quarter of Hanoi. The shorter one shook her head back at us, then yelled excitedly "Hoan Kiem! Hoan Kiem!", grabbed my and Nicole's hands, and took off with us. 

Half an hour later, we were still handholding with the Vietnamese grandmothers - crossing streets and weaving in and out of the crowd without ever letting go of their hands. We realized at that point that we had walked great big circle around the parades, and were not actually getting any closer to one particular destination. Several times, the women would stop to talk to one of the many police officers on the street corners, who were usually slouched over on a plastic chair smoking a cigarette. The police officers' responses to their questions were always the same: they eyeballed us, laughed, shook their heads, and pointed in some other direction. Clearly, the Old Quarter was not gonna happen for us this night. 

Just when we were ready to bail on the old ladies, they led us down a series of dark quiet side alleys away from the crowd. One of the women stopped at a gate, pulled out her keys, and a moment later we were standing in her living room with her daughter, Ha, who had evidently been woken up just for the occasion. We explained our situation to Ha and her extremely outgoing 3-year-old daughter (who "looks like a boy because she is lazy about eating"), and she told us we would have to wait until morning to get to the Old Quarter, but that she would help us out tonight. She took us into the kitchen and had her sister make us noodles. While we slurped them and watched a Vietnamese soap opera with the rest of the family, Ha and her mother went out on their motorbikes looking for hotels in the neighborhood that would accept foreigners (many are not licensed to host non-Vietnamese guests).

By the time we'd finished dinner, Ha was ready to take us. I said goodbye to my new 3-year-old bestie and the grandmothers, and we walked a few blocks to the hotel. Ha purchased us water bottles and bananas, and arranged with the hotel owner a one night stay and a taxi ride in the morning to the Old Quarter. She even left us her number in case of emergency. It was the most incredibly kind "Welcome to Vietnam" gesture we could have asked for.

In the Old Quarter, we stayed at a dormitory-style hostel run by a friendly Vietnamese guy named Mike. It was probably the cleanest place we stayed on the whole trip, and cost all of $5/night (which included free breakfast and free pre-dinner beer). Mike talked with us in the lobby every morning and evening, and gave us recommendations things to do in the city. Our room had a total of six beds, three of which Anna, Nicole and I occupied, and three of which were empty our first night there. The second night, we came home from dinner to find that a young Vietnamese mother had taken a fourth bed, along with her one-year-old baby. I was worried for my sleep that night, but it turned out that the baby made far less noise than the mother, who answered her cell phone every hour at a wholly unnecessary voice volume.

Hoan Kiem Lake by night.

Hanoi was full of incredible sight-seeing. We visited ancient pagodas, preserved traditional Vietnamese homes, museums, monuments temples, water puppet theater; we spent most afternoons sitting by the lake and resting our feet (Hanoi is a fairly huge city, but taxis were usually out of our budget, and the bus system was terribly confusing). At night, the 1000th Anniversary celebrations began. Around 5pm, the inner city was closed entirely to car traffic, and tourists and locals alike would poor into the streets, waving red banners, wearing head bandanas and stickers, carrying sparklers, balloons, anything. It was fascinating to watch, and impossible to avoid. The area Hoan Kiem Lake hosted a huge parade each night, with elaborately-costumed dancers surrounding pink floats and tossing out goods to the crowds.

Everybody and their Vietnamese mother in town.

One night after dinner, we went for ice cream by the lake and then sat on a stoop to people watch. It wasn't long before a couple asked to take their picture with us (a pretty standard foreigner request in Asia). Two minutes later, another family. Then a pack of teenagers. Then a mother wanted us to pose with her baby. Then a group of young guys just wanted our picture on their cell phone camera. Then another group of kids. And so on and so forth for about forty minutes, while we just sat on the sidewalk. My cheeks began to hurt from smiling. We contemplated making a sign: 1 Photo 10,000 dong.

PHOOO

Hanoi granted us our first authentic taste of pho, a Vietnamese noodle dish that I could probably live solely on if I had to. To save money, we decided we'd do as locals do and only eat at street stands our whole stay in Hanoi. This worked fabulously, except for one night when we had trouble finding a "table" at the stand we wanted to eat at - "table" meaning a set of Kindergarten furniture: for some reason Vietnamese like to sit on chairs and at tables that require bringing your face to your knees to eat. After getting no recognition whatsoever from the servers at the stand for a good 10 minutes, we gave up and walked across the street to another noodle stand. About 5 seconds before we were going to be served at that stand, Nicole made a crucial observation: the pile of pig tongues, hearts, and noses resting on the chef's table. ...Our search for dinner continued.

Next on the Vietnam tour: a cruise around Halong Bay.