Take Me to the Place I Love, Take Me All the Way

I often wonder how my experiences on this journey so far would differ if my life up to this point had been any different.

In a blog the other day I covered how I feel like things would potentially have been different if I was travelling with another person rather than alone for most of the journey, but I was considering earlier whilst buried in the noise and the busyness of Hanoi how this might have worked out differently if I was maybe from a different part of England, hadn't visited Asia before or if I had decided to complete this trip for my 20th birthday celebrations instead of a decade later.

Coming from a different part of England might have altered this because, as my mum suggested in our conversation about this, if we were used to the noise of a city like London or Manchester then perhaps constantly hearing the hum of Hanoi might not be such a big deal to us. Having lived in London myself, I have a reasonable experience of the constant racket of traffic, but that was only really during the day, and I don't think I've ever really experienced sounds like this 24/7.

I feel like if I hadn't visited Asia before then I would perhaps be experiencing much more of a culture shock than I have in certain places. A city like Manila or Jakarta was definitely something which took time for me to take in, but having previously had experiences in cities like Seoul before I feel like I was more able to cope with what was going on around me, and it's made it much less difficult to be able to cope with being immersed in a totally different world for the last couple of months.

The age thing also relates to my experience I feel, and I think I have written before about how a lot of the travellers who I have come across has been in significant groups, either much younger - around 18-20 or much older - 40+; then there's me right in the middle!
I don't know if at 20, I'd have had the confidence to go off by myself and travel. I definitely would have felt like it would be an interesting adventure, but I physically don't know how I'd have coped being away from home for so long or being on a continent where things are so vastly different to my own.
In so many ways it's far better that I have been away to Asia before, and therefore have some semblance of what I am going to expect. Even though things are totally different I have the experiences in Korea to fall back upon, and just generally having more life experience in dealing with people and potentially difficult situations I feel like I'm in a much better place to handle it all as a 30-year-old than I would have been on a year out after sixth form for example.

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Today was our last full day in Hanoi, and my mum's last full day in Vietnam before she returns to England late tomorrow night.

It's been great to have her company here for just under a week, and as I figured it would do, the time has completely flown by. I really hope that she has enjoyed her stay here, and that it has been worth her while (and the travelling distance) to spend some time together. We probably don't spend as much time together as we should do back in England, and I really appreciate her coming out her to help me feel much less lonely at the mid-point of my journey.

As we had done in Ho Chi Minh City we'd spent large portions of our first day walking around, meaning that we were searching for activities to do today having surprisingly completed everything we'd set out to do much quicker than we expected.
Hanoi has two famous skyscrapers that we'd thought about going to visit, but asking the lady in reception at our hotel this morning she said that one of them is just a shopping centre and doesn't have an observation deck, and the other is about 20kms outside of the city and can only be reached by a taxi. We figured there were better uses of our time to travel all the way there for a brief visit so looking at the map we put on our walking shoes again so that we could explore more of the Old Quarter this afternoon.

Although it's hard to tell from our room itself as it has no windows, the middle of the hotel itself gives a good impression of what the weather is doing depending on how much sunlight is shining through the skylights. It looked pretty grim this morning and when we got outside there was some very fine rain coming down.
Having seen in Indonesia and Thailand how Asian people react to rain, they didn't seem to be too bothered by it so I figured they either knew it was going to stop soon or that it wasn't going to affect their lives too much. Had it been about to pour it down there would have been frenetic scenes of people moving parked mopeds off the street and vendors collecting in plastic chairs from out in front of their shops and restaurants - I feel like they have a sense for these things!

It was still really humid outside and the rain wasn't even settling on the ground before disappearing so we set about walking in the direction of our first destination for the day which is right on the eastern border of the Old Quarter.
The Red River runs through the middle of Hanoi and to get across it the Vietnamese built an iron bridge called Long Bien which isn't far from our hotel. It was designed incredibly enough by Gustav Eiffel (of tower fame) and is 2.4km long connecting Hanoi to Hai Phong Port. It was used as a point of attack by the US in the Vietnam War, but was rebuilt in 1975 and has a rich history having been constructed in the late 1890's.
It's perhaps not the most exciting thing to see in the city, but we figured it'd be worth a walk there first off, and if nothing else it would probably provide us with some unique views out over the city which we haven't been able to gain on our journey so far.

We headed out in the same direction as we had done to get to the pagoda yesterday, but turned left following a railway track above us which also goes across the bridge. Heading down a very small and cramped street there were lots of people sitting out in front of shops, and some absolute chaos at the end as four vans simultaneously tried to make deliveries to shops whilst another one turned round and looked to head back in the direction it came from. I honestly wish I'd got a picture of this as it was a very good summation of things in this country when it comes to transportation.
Walking a little further down this road we crossed a road and went up a little ramp until we were on Long Bien bridge which even in the miserable conditions seemed to stretch out as far as we could see:

You actually had to walk out on it a bit to see the river, and although I wouldn't say it was the most pedestrianised structure in the world, at least we weren't sharing a space with the mopeds who were doing their thing and weaving between each other, even on a single lane road. Neither my mum or I are big fans of heights so it was rather daunting that on a bridge suspended at least fifteen metres off the ground there were some paving stones which moved when you stepped on them. I tried to keep facing forward and not worry too much, and that wasn't too difficult considering the views we were seeing on both sides

It was quite hazy and the clouds seemed to hover directly above the city, but we crossed what looked like a slum which had lots of houses in, all tightly packed together, which were not at all very spacious. From there it looked as though there were just empty fields for miles around, and this was all up against a background of two very tall buildings which towered above everything around them. I guess this truly shows the development of Vietnam and how it has gone from being very rural to extremely urban in about forty or so years:

We kept walking to the mid-point of the bridge and reached the part where it started to go over the river. It was strange to look out and see there were boats sailing down it, but now looking in either direction you couldn't see where the bridge started / ended. It looked like it was just hovering in mid-air due to the weather.

Heading back in the opposite direction we now walked with the traffic facing towards us and walked back along the main road we'd come down in order to head to the next thing we'd circled on our map which was a little closer to the centre of the Old Quarter.
Unfortunately due to the fact that many of them decide to close in the middle of the day we'd missed out on actually going into a lot of the museums yesterday, but today we were going to make an attempt to visit something known as the Temple of Literature and National University which was highlighted on the map the hotel gave us, but didn't give any description of what it was, or what we were going to see there.

Once we started to get close to the museum I had a bad feeling that it might be locked due to the fact it was around 1pm which is when attractions here in Vietnam are usually closed, but as we walked around the corner to the entrance we saw that this might be the one thing that actually stays open throughout the duration of the day.

It's incredible that after being here five days that despite all the crazy driving we hadn't seen any accidents....Yet. And sure enough on our walk to the temple we saw two motorcyclists collide with one man gesticulating towards a lady after them bumping into each other made him drop his keys out of his pocket. Entertaining because he was the one that actually was in the wrong you know with being on the wrong side of the road and all.
Just as we were about to walk into the temple we heard a loud crash and saw two motorcycles lying strune on the floor with two people thankfully walking to the side of the road checking their injuries. It looked like one guy had bashed his shins in a bit and the other was checking out his ankle for damage, though the good news was that they both had a smile on their face and seemed to walk away largely unscathed.

After all that drama we were all ready to head into the temple and spent about an hour or so learning about one of the first spaces for learning in Hanoi. It was interesting to learn about the history and traditions of the temple where only the most gifted of students were allowed to study for a period of around three hundred years before the city's first university complex was eventually built.

The temple itself was quite large and had four courtyards, and then one more hidden away at the back. Despite the miserable weather it was good to walk around and look at the architecture if nothing else as it was all done in the traditional style with some very fine details that you wouldn't notice unless you looked careful:

We browsed until we'd seen everything that there was and then set out to try and find another place which was marked on the map as Lenin Park. We'd seen a statue of Lenin yesterday when walking near the Old Citadel building, and presumed there was quite an impressive park named after him. When we got there we'd discovered that part of it had actually been transferred into a rather underwhelming looking market, and even though there was some green space to walk around you had to pay to get in which neither of us was fussed about doing.

Heading back in the direction of the hotel, we walked for about thirty minutes before completing our loop and returning to the room via KFC where we picked up an ice cream.

Although I've mentioned a couple of times that there are a significant number of restaurants near our hotel we haven't really explored any of them - particularly the hawker ones out on the street, and so set about finding some dinner later on pretty close to where we are staying. We came across one which advertised the fact that they taught Vietnamese cooking classes on the premises during the week, and it was actually quite a large restaurant with plenty of seats inside.
We ordered some stir fried rice each and also got some chicken spring rolls which were served to us on sticks poking out of a pineapple (shame I forgot my camera). After the meal the main person who'd been serving us gave us some complimentary deserts which was very generous, and we decided to finish off the evening by walking around the lake one last time.

I hope that I've demonstrated with some of my pictures that Hoem Kiem Lake is a pretty impressive sight during the day, and at night it seems to get even better as light from all around the place reflects off the water. The Ngoc Son Temple in the middle of the water is also a sight to behold as orange lights reflect off its ancient stone. The bridge leading to the temple is a striking red colour, the same as it's paint, and overall it sets a generally beautiful picture which I'm not sure that the camera does a good enough job of demonstrating.

Even though the weather was a little cooler tonight, the lake was still pretty busy with people sitting around it, and there were even some exercise classes going on with groups of women hoarded together around loud speakers following instructions which were bizarrely being given out in English.

Having circulated the lake one last time we walked back down towards our hotel. Tonight there was no market, and the main road was once again filled with mopeds which were taking up the space where stalls are found at the weekend. Although it was crazily busy with people both yesterday and when we arrived on Saturday, it pails in comparison to how the street was with queues of taxis and mopeds fighting their way to individual destinations whilst trying to co-exist on the same street.

So tonight is our last in the hotel in Hanoi which is a real shame as it has been an enjoyable experience and an absolutely pleasure to stay here. The hotel itself has been lovely, and is in the perfect location for exploring the Old Quarter.
I really have enjoyed my trip to the Vietnamese capital, and although it has been nothing like what I expected it to be, I feel like this is a part of my journey which will stay with me, and will have fond memories about well into the future.

Tomorrow we return to Ho Chi Minh City for my final night in the country when I will also be returning to life as a solo traveller once again.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Under the Bridge (1992)