& Tet New Year: Part One">Hanoi, Halong Bay & Tet New Year: Part One

The travel blog­ging is back!

Note: This is the first part of a final three part art­icle that com­pletes our time in Viet­nam. The next part will be auto pos­ted in 4 days and the third part 4 days after that.

This was the last stop on our tour of Viet­nam and almost the last stop in the whole of South East Asia. It had been a long wind­ing road up this thin and sunny coun­try. A long wind­ing road inside us too; as the fur­ther we trav­elled around SEA the more we felt changed by our time here. We wanted it to be an end­ing to remem­ber. Luck­ily, the Viet­namese were only too will­ing to provide one hell of a party to see us off.

This was because in a few days it was Tet. To the Viet­namese this is Xmas, New Year’s Eve and everyone’s birth­day all on the same day.

We arrived in Hanoi by, the now com­mon­al­ity, of a “Crush Bus” and were dumped unce­re­mo­ni­ously on the out­skirts of the city by the corner of a set of turn­pikes. Traffic ran seem­ingly in all dir­ec­tions around us as we nego­ti­ated our bags off the bus.

Sit­ting on the side­walk for a few moments, we almost fell prey to the taxi drivers who des­cen­ded on the arriv­ing tour­ists like fish­er­man who have just spot­ted a large shoal of fish. Cesca and I watched as the newer tour­ists were net­ted, gut­ted for cash, placed in small packed tins and driven off into the city. Clearly the bus com­pany had dropped us here as a way of sup­port­ing out­rageous taxi fees, prob­ably for some sort of kick back. I looked around; the Hotel was prob­ably only 30 meters away as the crow flies, but from here, well most would pay any­thing to get away from all this traffic. Cesca waved away all prowl­ing taxi drivers and we sat on our bags and waited. After a while, we were the only tour­ists left and indeed the bus moved on as well. Only a few unlucky taxi drivers remained.

Good. We were ready.

We approached one and offered a price, a fair price.

He deman­ded a ridicu­lous price.

We all laughed and the game begun.

I remem­ber think­ing that seen from a dis­tance through the eyes of, say, an observer from another planet, what was hap­pen­ing here would look like some sort of strange and ancient ritual dance. The Taxi driver and we moved around each other twist­ing and sway­ing, we were all point­ing at maps and towards dis­tant objects. We were hag­gling with big arm ges­tures and subtle head nods or shakes. At moments, we would turn away with a wave of a hand dis­missively, and then strangely come back almost as if we had for­got­ten some­thing whereupon it would all begin anew. The taxi driver would throw up his arms and cry out deplor­ingly, and then hold his hands apart in an unmis­tak­able ges­ture of reas­on­able­ness. There was lots of count­ing on fingers.

The observer from another planet might say to him­self that, “Surely all this can­not just be for a taxi ride?” and when his fel­lows asked him later, he would prob­ably the­or­ise that we were con­jur­ing up some sort of God.

Even­tu­ally all the moves were made and the strange waltz ended with my say­ing, “Look mate, do you see any­one else here except us? Don’t you want to get paid?”

The taxi driver sighed and con­sidered the truth in this fact. “Ok,” he said. He con­spired to look wounded.

It was at that point that I real­ised that we had in fact lost this exchange; as although a $30 taxi had cost us $10, it was actu­ally only worth $5. No mat­ter, he had been a worthy oppon­ent and I respec­ted that.

The bus com­pany we used to move around Viet­nam is called Sinh Café. As men­tioned in pre­vi­ous posts all Viet­namese cafes are in fact tour­ist offices. The Sinh Café office was the loc­a­tion we now depar­ted in the taxi. How­ever, I was sur­prised to spy another office with the Sinh Café logo on the drive in, “Look baby,” I said point­ing out the win­dow, “another Sinh Café, it’s prob­ably a little closer for when we leave.”

“And there,” she said point in a dif­fer­ent direction.

“Oh and another there,” I said. “Hang on…”

“They’re all over the place!”

Indeed, on the jour­ney into the heart of the city, we came across no less than 18 Sinh Café’s, all with the cor­rect logo, all with the cor­rect adverts, but all fake.

Some were laugh­ably so; con­tain­ing noth­ing more than a single bedraggled look­ing per­son sit­ting on what looked to me like an upside-down bucket. Oth­ers had taken the decep­tion so ser­i­ously that they looked more pro­fes­sional than the real thing; invest­ing in moul­ded plastic counter tops and sport­ing large hi res­ol­u­tion posters. We coun­ted them off as the Taxi pulled into the nar­row streets that make up the old quarter. The traffic, mostly an end­less train of mopeds, was every­where. A few more turns and the streets nar­rowed again. Now the shops took on a strange and more “tour­istic” look. I star­ted to see west­ern style bars, street food vendors, and end­less travel agents amongst which were dot­ted infin­ite fake Sinh Cafes. We were in the tour­ist quarter now; a place as much removed from the city’s true life as it was pos­sible to get.

The Taxi dropped us off, spat out our bags and was instantly gone into the throng of bikes. We walked down a nar­row alley to our hotel. There is no short­age of hotels in Hanoi, of course, but try­ing to find one with good reviews, had space and was open over this period was dif­fi­cult. The staff was unusu­ally brusque con­sid­er­ing I had cash in my hand, and I came to the ini­tial con­clu­sion that we had annoyed their sens­ib­il­it­ies merely by being born. At the time, this man­ner seemed strange, but now I can see that this was a New-year for them and they would rather be with their families.

In fact, this atti­tude was to be found almost every­where on that day. They say not to travel at Tet, and yet we had no choice, I remem­ber won­der­ing how well this was going to work out.

We went out for a walk around the city and tried to get out of the tour­ist bubble. As these things go, there is lots to see here. There is the park area around the lake, which func­tions as a sort of meet­ing point and place of celebration,

…the street mar­ket with its fresh fish and a mil­lion smells,

…and the church area with high-end cof­fee shops and moneyed wealth. Then there is the amaz­ing way that the city plan­ners have laid out the shops; all are col­lec­ted together accord­ing to type. So, one street has only spice shops full of strange things in jars that smell incredible,

…while another has fake money sellers who sell stacks of fake $ notes used in funerals.

One street we walked down was full of noth­ing but people nois­ily ham­mer­ing out tin buckets.

Cesca and I really enjoyed our walk that day.  When we arrived back we looked into a 3 day trip to the legendary Halong Bay, and be back for Tet proper.

Some­thing you have to come to terms with when pick­ing a trip to Halong Bay is that you can­not make a cor­rect choice. That is one that doesn’t, some­how, try very hard to rip you off. It is a kind of like a shell game, in that the entire edi­fices of the travel agents, bro­chures, glossy posters, spe­cial money-off deals and so-called impar­tial advice is setup to con­vince you that what you are sold is some­how rel­ev­ant or bares any rela­tion what­so­ever to what waits for you when you get there.

It does not.

So, in order to assist read­ers con­sid­er­ing the options, remem­ber that there are really only three price brackets:

Under $50: For which you are prob­ably kid­napped and bur­ied alive at mid­night. At least that is the impres­sion that the woman in the hotel con­spired to give us when we enquired about the “cheaper deal.” It is impossible to buy this deal or more likely it prob­ably does not exists at all.

$80 — $140: If you do not look rich, then you are pushed firmly towards this bracket. While the price range here appears large, do not let that fool you into think­ing that one boat is actu­ally going to be bet­ter than another. Whatever your hotel or travel agent tells you, WHATEVER, the boats are effect­ively ran­dom­ised. This is the range in which to bar­gain hard.

$140+: You can pay up to $1000 without try­ing in this bracket. The boats prom­ise to be truly splen­did for this much, but remem­ber that they are all going to the same places and tak­ing the same trips off the boat. How­ever, I am sure that if you pay enough, you will get an amaz­ing experience.

Cesca and I were offered two options in the second bracket and she poin­ted to the one she liked. The women poin­ted to the other.

“What about this one?” the very short, female hotel man­ager asked.

“No that one please,” said Cesca smil­ing and point­ing again at the bro­chure on the left.

“Ok then,” she replied with a nod to the one on the right, “I book you this one.”

“No, I said that one,” Cesca said point­ing, “I like the look of this boat more than that one.”

The women picked up the bro­chure and con­sidered the pic­ture of the boat care­fully. “You go bet­ter on other one.”

“Why?”

“Boat bet­ter.”

Cesca was get­ting annoyed but her voice remained very calm (only I – as her hus­band – could pick up the anger), “I… want… that… one.”

The women looked at Cesca as though ques­tion­ing the inno­cence of someone choos­ing a tour based on the pic­ture on the bro­chure, which clearly, she knew, was noth­ing to do with any­thing. Cesca was look­ing very determ­ined and I could see the lady weigh­ing up her options. She broke first, and waved a hand smil­ing, “Ok ok ok. This one.”

“Thank you.”

Of course, the next day, we got on the bus and found that we were on the other boat tour…

The next part is com­ing in four days…

Regards,

Basho

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