Hanoi craziness and the Perfume Pagoda

Well, it has been 2 days now in and around Hanoi and already knackered! This city is totally crazy mental, the sounds of motorbikes (or to be more specific 125cc or less motorbikes and scooters) are most definitely the kings of the roads around here; with cars a close second; people carrying ridiculous amounts of vegetables and fruit on their shoulders third and brave elderly folk on antique cycles a distant fourth. The incessant use of horns, beepers, buzzers, bells seems to be the way to get your prescense noticed by other road users - indeed many hawkers seem to have recorded messages blaring out of their piles of rugs, teapots, fruit, kettles and got knows what else they are selling from their trolleys. It is fair to say that a couple of days here and you will never cross the road in the same way ever again...crossing the road just involves throwing caution totally to the wind and just walking out in front of the traffic and watching vehicles flow past you somehow - it is as if actually there is a system there somewhere - but I for one don't know what it is. Certainly waiting to cross the road at a 'green man' is a waste of time, as are traffic lights and indeed pavements. There is a happy calamity to it all tho, everyone is at some kind of peace with each other and almost respect we are all just trying to get somewhere, albeit very slowly!

The people here are all great, a smile is greeted with a smile and a "hello, how are you?" precedes every offer of a bag of deep fried squid, frog or lift on a motorbike. A smile and a polite no is all that is needed for them to move on, there is no pestering - they all seem to nice and polite for that.

We have been staying at the lovely Madame Moon Hotel, the staff are all brilliant and super helpful. Thang Ha, the lovely receptionist pretty much organised about the next week of our trip, booked us trains and boats on what will be a fairly complex week or so in exchange for a few dollars...money well spent and definitely earned. The profuse apologies when our wifi went down briefly was unexpected and almost ironic really considering where we are.

After a fairly uneventful flight (which is of course a good thing!) with Vietnam Airlines, who certainly were much better than we had anticipated, we arrived in Hanoi yesterday and spent most of the day wandering about getting lost. It's quite intense with jet lag and JB was in need of a tactical nap by the end of the day, as was I. The highlights were certainly when we got off the busy main streets into the backwaters where the locals live, a polite nod by friendly locals to stop us walking into the sewerage channels...! The telephone and electricity wires here are a sight, certainly health and safety has not made it here and all the better for it!

Shops are amazing, groups of traders seem to work together, meaning you come across about half a dozen shops selling pretty much one item all in a row! (shops selling exclusIvely deep fat fryers, exhaust pipes, sunglasses, foam, 2 by 4, orange and blue tarpaulins, saucepans...you name it it's out there somewhere!). Seems a strange way to trade as you can presumably trade them off against each other but all seem content. 

Had a bit of a mixed bag experience with the street food, but we have put that down to experience...let's face it for 3-4 quid it doesn't matter if you want to go to 3 places to get a square meal.  Certainly we have found a couple of special places.

We decided today we could not face walking about again, so we booked a tour through the hotel to see the 'real Vietnam' and visit the super holy Perfume Pagoda. We kinda knew it would probably be a bit awful joining a bus load of tourists, and it kind of was, but our tour guide was hilarious and the rowing boat trip to the Pagoda itself was pretty special. Also seems that Buddha is a bit of a fan of the old chocolate cake, biscuits, super-noodles and strong coffee as these seem to make up a large proportion of the offerings. Was also nice to stretch the legs a bit climbing up the hill to the pagoda itself which was in a large cave. There was also another much more impressive (but less holy) temple and pagoda which was a very special spot - we hope to see lots more of these and maybe not be so busy. There were a few curiousities along the way as well including a couple of slightly sad looking monkeys.

Certainly Edward seems to be a bit with the kids, raising a cheery smile whenever he is brought out to say hello and with him motivating our boat rower we overtook most of the competition on the return leg of the river journey!

We are up early to head over to the much anticipated Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island tomorrow for a few days but Hanoi has certainly left an impression...! Tom