Day 33 - A City Tour Around Hanoi

Our first impressions of Hanoi from leaving our hotel last night it that it is a vibrant city with both strong eastern and western influences. It was filled with brightly lit streets (in all kinds of colors) and BUZZING with people and scooters! We were quite proud of ourselves for finding our way to a street restaurant about a mile away that Phong recommended to experience our first authentic Vietnamese food. Then we strolled back to our lovely hotel (Hotel L'Opera) as we were quite tired after a travel day.

We started the day off at Tran Quoc Pagoda, the oldest Buddhist temple in Hanoi. Interesting though, 80% of the country is "non-religious". This is due to the communist government which discourages religion which is not uncommon in communist countries.

The history of Vietnam is a complicated one with an early period of rule by the French that has influenced a lot of the architecture in the old city. Yellow is the color of royalty here so many of the important buildings are yellow with green trim which are quite pretty.

A big part of the local history is of course the Vietnam war, and Phong explained that the country very much reveres Ho Chi Minh as a father figure and founder of the unified communist country. We saw the impressive and massive mausoleum where he was interred after his death (photo#1 below). The mausoleum is part of a complex we toured that includes the small house where Ho Chi Minh lived (photo #2). Ho Chi Minh very much wanted to live as "one of the people", so, he rejected a palace that was built for him and instead lived in a simple house that only had 3 rooms. The complex also included a reflection pond and gardens (photo #3) and some of the cars that he used many years ago (sorry, no photo).

More thought provoking and challenging was the "B52 Museum" which displayed the carcass of a shot down B52 bomber (photo#1), the SAM missiles used for that purpose and an old MIG21 fighter jet. Less controversial were gardens and the "one legged pagoda" (photo#2) and visiting a street side fruit seller where Phong encouraged us a taste some SE Asia specific fruits that we'd never had before (photo#3). The crusted apple was a little weird (strange texture), the jack fruit actually quite good but our fav was the mangostein - a white juicy meat that looks like huge garlic cloves but tastes a lot better and sweeter!

We also made a quick detour to "Train Street"! Steve had seen this on YouTube and was intrigued to witness the spectacle. Essentially, the train line runs right through the city and in a couple of places skewers narrow alleyways lined with restaurants and bars. We've seen videos where people are literally trackside at ground level, inches away from the passing train. That has been restricted these days (almost afraid to ask why), but we did snag a balcony seat at one of the bars in time to see the morning train rumble by. Still very impressive!

We got a little out of our cautious food mode with some delicious street food offerings of Banh Mi, a Vietnamese sandwich of meat and vegetables with a creamy sauce served in a baguette and Pho (a noodle soup). Hoping we don't regret it - figures crossed! Sitting at street level next to a busy intersection to eat was a trip! Swarms of mopeds everywhere and a chaos of traffic flow that somehow seems to work as we shockingly haven't seen an accident - yet!

We've also been accumulating pics of crazy things (mostly enormous loads) on either bicycles or mopeds. We saw some even more outrageous ones that zipped by too fast for a photo.