The temple in the Hoàn Kiếm Lake was pleasant enough, but the sheer amount of Western tourists was just starting to become obvious. While we were aware that Vietnam was more touristy than the places we had been to so far, we were not quite expecting to be so obviously on the tourist track at this time of the year. In search of more secluded spots, we moved on to the Temple of Literature, where despite its fascinating history as Vietnam’s first University (where the King himself was the head examiner) and stunning architecture we still felt like small fish in a big touristy pond.
Walking around Hanoi’s streets was probably the highlight of our day, as despite the constant sweatiness we were amazed by how Vietnamese people risk their children’s lives by taking them on scooters in the crazy traffic (child’s play compared to Delhi, but still pretty insane). As Aeronautical geeks, however, Ben and I had to check out the B-52 Victory Museum, where an American bomber shot down by the North Vietnamese army is proudly displayed in many burned-down pieces. It is interesting to see how, despite the twenty years of brutal war with the US, Vietnam has become so receptive to the West and its hordes of tourists - I guess, at the end of the day, money talks.
After a quick stop at Hoi Chi Minh’s mausoleum we headed back to the Old Quarter, were we intended to book an overnight trip to Halong Bay. As we entered the Ethnic Tours office (recommended by the interwebs), we were convinced to do Bai Tu Long Bay instead, as it supposedly is just like the famous destination but without the thousands of tourists littering the waters and spoiling the otherworldly scenery. Despite our previous experience with travel agencies, we decided to take their advice - stay tuned if you want to find out whether or not this was a good idea!
Our evening evolved from a quiet dinner, where we ran into people we recognised from the Temple of Literature, to drinking absurdly cheap beer at a hostel bar, where we ran into people who yesterday had joined us in waiting for our bags for half an hour as they lay on the floor next to the belt, ready to be collected. It looks like the beaten track is also a small World. As there did not seem to be much going on in the Old Quarter and the bar was closing, we somehow got absorbed into the crowd leaving to what the loud Canadian guy standing on top of the bar described as a "bar crawl".
If you had told us we were going to be sipping two-dollar Whisky and cokes at a dodgy club in Hanoi, with the highest density of douchebags per square metre I have ever experienced, when we were dancing on the fifty-seventh floor of the Marina Bay Sands only 48 hours earlier, I am pretty sure we would have laughed it off. As you may have guessed, that is exactly what our night turned out to be. Despite my eagerness to give it a shot, Ben’s suggestion to bail before midnight was one hundred percent correct as the music was awful, yet substantially better than the crowd.
Our only night in Hanoi ended with a couple of drams of 16-year old Lagavulin, which Ben wisely brought to this leg of the trip, and a playlist filled with Lonely Island and Steel Panther. What else can a guy ask for?
Cheers,
J-Wowww
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