Vietnam Highs and Lows

We arrived in Hanoi from Hong Kong around 6pm local time on Wednesday and got checked into our hotel. As you may have noticed we made another mid-course correction with hotels as Kendall decided she did not like the pictures of the $15/night Fortuan and preferred the $40/night Hotel Elegance 2. I have to say that I am pretty glad we made the switch as well. Our room is pretty nice and I think we even got upgraded to the best room in the house. We are on on the top floor and have the only room with a balcony as far as we can tell. This does mean that we have a good amount of street noise, especially around 6am rush hour when the public announcement system kicks in. But I have started to get used to it and don't even think I heard the prayer over the PA this morning.

Our first night we went to a little place right next to our hotel called 69 Bar-Restaurant. It was recommended by Lonely Planet and full of tourist from Australia and the US. The food was delicious, the best we have had all trip. I had a traditional Vietnamese dish called Cha Ca which is a fish and noodle dish that is very popular in Hanoi. Kendall had a fried chicken dish the restaurant is famous for. We both had appetizers, drinks and desert and the total bill was around $18. Finally, we have arrived at a spot that works with our budget.

We woke up on Thursday and had breakfast at the Hotel before deciding to explore the city. You cannot walk more than 5 feet here without being bombarded by offers for Cyclo (basically pedi-cabs) or Moto (back of a motor bike) rides. As soon as we walked out of our hotel a Cyclo driver offered us a ride and we refused because I only had large bills and also Kendall has a kind of weird paranoia about the cyclos. She really thinks one of the guys is going to abduct us. I am not sure how they could possibly ride in such a way that if we really felt in danger we couldn't hop out. Anyway, I needed to get change at the bank but this cyclo driver was insistent and even offered to take us to the bank to get change. Once I had change and tried to pay him for the ride he offered to take us around to the sights for the day. Our Lonely Planet book said such "day trips" should cost only $5 to $10 US so we took him up and off we went.

Our first stop was the Temple of Literature, which is the site of Vietnam's first university founded by Confucius in the 1000s. After taking a "look look," as our cyclo driver called it, we met him back outside; however, it was already about 11:20AM and most tourist attractions close for lunch from 11:30 to 1:30PM. Because we were paying for it anyway, we decided to first have him take us to the train station to buy our tickets from Hanoi to Hue on the overnight train. After that we decided to have lunch.

Our driver recommended at place called KOTO and it was also recommended by Lonely Planet so we decided to try it. It turns out KOTO is short for Know One Teach One and is a restaurant that was started by an Australian and his wife that takes kids off the street and teaches them English and cooking/waiting skills and then gets them jobs at restaurants all over Hanoi. It was actually really touching to see the Australian women taking the waiters and waitresses around, helping them take orders and serve dishes. Her husband works with the kitchen staff in the same way. The food was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS. I had BBQ pork ribs and Kendall had a marinated steak sandwich. Our entire lunch with 2 beers was 140,000 Dong which is about $8.75. I dare Nick to do more with less.

After lunch we went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex and also saw his Presidential Place and Museum. These were all things that you have to go see while you are here but were not all that interesting to me.

Mausoleum and Ho's house on stilts

Next we headed to the Army Museum where all of the US Army tank and Air Force planes that the North Vietnamese captured are on display. It was pretty weird to see signs heralding the capture of US Military soldiers and their guns, missile launchers, and planes.

We kept with the Vietnam war theme by going to the Hoa Loa Prison, also know as the Hanoi Hilton, where the US pilots who were shot down over Hanoi were kept as prisoners of war. This was probably the most interesting stop of the day for me because of the propaganda on display. The prison was first used by the French colonists to keep Vietnamese political prisoners. All of the museum displays tell stories about how tortuous the French were to the Vietnamese prisoners and how poor the prison facilities were horrendous. However, the same displays depict the treatment of the US POWs as kind and the facilities as comfortable. I am not sure what to believe.

Finally, we made a stop at the St. Joseph Cathedral. 10 percent of Hanoi's population is Catholic and the Cathedral was a like being transported back to medieval Europe; in stark contrast to all of the pagodas we have been seeing.

By this time it was about 4:30 and we were about ready for a break so we told our driver that we wanted to head back towards the hotel. He recommended we make one final stop at the Ngoc Son Temple which is located in the middle of Hoan Kiem Lake just near our hotel. It sounded good to us so again off we went.

Up to this point we had really had a wonderful day. All highlights really. The following events came fast and hard.

On our way to the Ngoc Son Temple our cyclo driver was pulled over. We aren't really sure why. He stopped and got off, leaving us sitting alone on the side of a pretty busy road. He was gone for about 10 minutes. We probably should have just got up and left, but at this point we still liked the guy. He had been a great driver all day. He came back and told us he had gotten a ticket for 1 million Dong (about $80 USD) and was obviously pretty pissed.

He took us just around the corner to our last stop and I offered to pay him for the day. I figured the going rate should have probably been about 150,000 Dong but felt bad for the guy because he had just gotten the ticket so thought I would pay about 200,000 Dong ($10 - $12 USD) for all that we had done. He asked for $200 USD. This is where I lost it.

I don't know if the guy thought we were idiots or if he was just really mad about the ticket. I sat and argued in the street with him for about 15 minutes. He went quickly from $200 to $100 and then not as fast to $50 and then to $4o. I told him that I did not have that much and needed to go to an ATM. I figured I would take out 300,000 Dong and work my way down to that.

The nearest ATM was just a few yards away and I told him to follow me there. I put my card in, typed in my PIN and the machine went black. It had lost power momentarily and started to reboot. Some DOS screens came up and then the Windows NT login but my card never got ejected. So, my card was now stuck inside a random ATM in the middle of Hanoi. Quickly, people started to gather as I banged on the machine to try to get my card back. Luckily, the shop that the ATM was protruding from called someone at the bank and they came in about 10 minutes. They were able to open the machine and retrieve my card. After we filled out some paper work with the bank man we were back to haggling with the cyclo driver. At the same time I am trying to not even think about the fact that my bank account could very well be drained at any second. (luckily all the money is still there today)

By now he had found some friends to help him and was pretending he did not speak English. It was clear that my offer of 300,000 was a fair because some of the other cyclo drivers in the area were kind of looking at me like "I would have taken you for twice as long for that price." We sat and argued for a few more minutes before Kendall started to get tired of it all and I took out another 80,000 I had in small bills, shoved it all in his hands and walked off before he could count it. So we ended up paying about $23 instead of the $8 - $12 it should have been.

I guess I can only be grateful we didn't have to pay $200 and I didn't loose our ATM card in the process.

We had an afternoon break after the chaos and then headed out for dinner. We ate at another great spot recommended by Lonely Planet and again ate for less than $10.

In all, we had an excellent day with a few learning experiences. First, always negotiate a price before you ride. And second, stick to ATMs that don't look like they could "reboot" at any minute.

We are just about to head to dinner on day 2 so we will update more later...