To Hanoi

Our journey to Hanoi required two trains with a change in Nanning in the far south of China. There was an outside chance of getting straight on the second train but the Shanghai train seemed to be a bit tired and arrived 3 hours late. By the wonders of the internet we found an insanely posh hotel in Nanning which we booked online about 5 minutes before we walked into it. That meant paying 250rmb (£25) instead of the nominal rate of 600 rmb or so. Either way, massively cheaper than Shanghai.

We had time to explore Nanning. It seemed to exactly match the description Oliver and his friends have given of how Shanghai used to be 8 years ago or more - more bikes, less cars, more small shops, less malls, more low rise blocks, less skyscrapers. Also a nice Park that we walked in with more exotic plants than Shanghai, being now quite far south. It was quite warm, humid and smoggy and a brief rain shower was quite welcome.

The Nanning to Hanoi train was another overnight, only 12 hours but requiring 2 separate customs stops at the border in the middle of the night, where you have to take all your luggage out of the train and back again, and then arrive in Hanoi at 5am, so sleeping was quite a challenge.
We were booked in a very nice hotel, "Holiday Gold", recommended by our friends Lin and Steve where the staff are amazingly helpful. Always offering little extras, not least a room to borrow when we arrived early, to have a few more hours sleep.

Hanoi is justly famous for its traffic and noise. Contrary to what I said to my sister Catherine it is not quieter than Shanghai. There must have been a bit of a lull when we first ventured out! The streets are solid with motorbikes, all petrol powered and beeping at each other. There are less cars too so the motorbikes tend to drive faster. China have done themselves a big favour against noise pollution, as well as against emissions by converting their motorbikes to electric power in the big cities, although their growth in car ownership is worrying. It is also impossible to walk on the pavements in Hanoi because they are filled up with parked motorbikes. You just have to compete with the motorbikes in the road. Having said all that it is really quite safe. They all drive round you. It is just rather hard work and deafening.

In the older shopping streets there are countless little shops selling hand made goods, both ornamental and practical, often being made in the street - wooden, metal, cloth, and of course lots of food. The food seemed bland after China, but they seem to like making the food quite sweet and not too spicy hot, probably for the benefit of the tourists (not us - we're not tourists!) since we were mainly in the more touristy streets. Real Vietnam food should be more tasty but we need the English menus.

We visited the Temple of Literature which was founded 1000 years ago as a university. Now it is revered as a source of good luck for students taking exams. It turns out they also have their graduation ceremonies there and the temple courtyards were full of young people in their graduation outfits being photographed. It was interesting that the majority of them were women. We tried to find out whether this was a special day but could not get a very clear answer. We have noticed that Vietnamese people working with tourists often speak English very well but then cannot understand what you think is a simple question. It seems they learn to speak perfectly in a limited area of vocabulary and it is quite difficult to guess their range of conversation.

We have finally booked the rest of our time in Vietnam having rather struggled to get around the fact that we are in the off season. More on that to follow.