Big Buddha then off to Hanoi
Having packed most of my stuff up last night, including a minor cull of some unnecessary pack clutter, I was off early after finally having a solid night’s sleep. A short taxi ride took me to Kowloon station where I checked in my backpack and got my boarding pass, despite it being 6 hours before my flight. This is part of the deal when you catch the Airport Express train which is really good value at under HK$10 (£9). From the airport I then took another short taxi ride to Tung Chung, where I caught the gondola up the steep hills of Lantau Island, overlooking the airport. At the top of the gondola is a Buddhist monastery and an enormous Buddha statue, along with a thoroughly contrived tourist village (though with surprisingly good gelati, including pistacchio – it was the wrong side of lunch but it had been a while so I had to indulge).
I had been harbouring delusions about walking up to the top of Lantau Peak, but once I saw how steep it was, these were quickly forgotten. The track was signposted as ‘Happy Trail – Lantau Peak’, which I found puzzling. Perhaps it named by the local monks as the pain involved in hauling oneself up this very steep path was likely to lead to a spriritual awakening of some kind. That, or it was someone’s idea of a sadistic joke. Either way, it was now clear why the Lonely Planet suggested that this was a non-trivial exercise, best attempted after staying the night at the nearby guesthouse.
So, no mountains to be climbed today, just a leisurely ride back down the gondola and back to the airport.
I was going to talk about the flight but suffice to say that Vietnam Airlines delivered a pretty good service. Mind you, given what the flight cost, I should bloody well hope so. Unless something goes horribly wrong at some point, that will be the single most expensive part of the whole journey (yes even more than the flight from London). The primary complaint was that the inflight meal (remember those) was full of MSG, so I spent my first few hours in Vietnam with a dry mouth and a headache.
Anyway, then I was really in Asia. I had a feeling that Hong Kong was only just a warm-up, and that was a large part of the point (apart from the fact that I couldn’t get a Oneworld points flight direct from London to Hanoi). And I was right. From the moment I got into the minibus (leaves when it’s full) from the airport into town (US$2 or 25,000 Dong – thanks to Dr Sinclair, I got to pay the latter), everything was all suddenly so much more real.
I thought the air quality in Hong Kong was bad (and it is) but as we approached Hanoi, we (including Maria & Colin, the couple from Vancouver) started to worry. Despite the warm temperature, and partly based on our other friend Richard, the Bostonian, who has lived in Vietnam for about five years bigging it up – “if you think this is bad, wait ’til we get downtown”, we made a calculated decision to sweat over the alternative of having the windows open and the concentrated carbon monoxide intake that would result.
We all tried to forget about the moped that we passed with the cage of puppies on the back which I think we all knew, even before Richard made the point that “they’re not going to a pet shop”, was not full of happy thoughts. Anyway, if you haven’t experienced peak hour in Hanoi (by now it was 5pm), or perhaps Saigon (which, they tell me is orders of magnitude worse), it is something to behold. I think perpetual motion is probably the best way to describe it. Unadultered chaos is another phrase that springs to mind. Imagine thousands of mopeds streaming around the odd car/minibus with no apparent regard for anything other than their own relentless progress and with no discernible observance of any road rules.
About an hour later, we finally made it into ‘the Old Quarter’. At this point, Maria, Colin & I were on our own. We elected to walk the kilometre and a bit, past the lake, to where the hotels we were looking for, were located. As we were working off different guide books, we had slightly different destinations, though they turned out to be across the road from each other.
My chosen hotel turned out to be full, so I begrudgingly took a ‘single’ room across the road for US$21. This turned out to be about the size of my flat in London (no exaggeration but the bathroom was the size of the room I had In Hong Kong – technically it was a triple but I’m sure I could have squeezed in a dozen backpackers). It was very quiet and I figured it would do for one night (which was all they were offering anyway).
So, after a quick shower, I set off 40m down the road to the ‘Hair of the Dog’ bar. This had been mentioned in my (not-Lonely Planet) guidebook, so it was clearly a good place to start proceedings. Maria & Colin duly turned up about half way through my first beer (Ha Noi beer on special until 9pm at 10,000 Dong = ~US$0.65).
Shortly after, Chris (probably not his real name) appeared at my feet, pointing at the rubber sole on the front of my right shoe that was just starting to peel away, which even I hadn’t yet noticed. I then negotiated (or so I thought) to buy a small bottle of super glue from him for 16,000 Dong (US$1). What I had in fact bought however, was a complete shoe makeover. Though I suspect that the super glue on its own would have done just fine, Chris clearly had other ideas, getting out a large needle and thread to supplement the glue, and before I could say, “hang on, they’re gore-tex and I’m pretty sure I don’t want you to do that”, he was away. Then, just as we were discussing how silly my shoe will look with white stitching on the front, out came the black paint and the stitching was rendered invisible. That in itself would have been impressive, but Chris was far from finished, proceeding to give my shoe a thorough cleaning, with a toothbrush, no less (to be fair, they were pretty grotty). I was so pleased with the result that naturally I insisted that he had to clean the other shoe as well. So, for less than three bucks, we were entertained by Chris’s amazing shoe repair skills for a solid ten minutes, and I got a pair of shiny clean and good as new walking shoes as well.
After another beer we headed off to the fried fish place (it got a mention in both LP & their ‘other’ guidebook so it must be good). We managed to avoid the three closely-named impersonators next door, and found our way upstairs to the real deal. This place is a real one-trick pony (grilled fish with spring onion, coriander and dill served in a frypan sitting on a little pot full of really hot coals – a total nightmare for any health and safety lawyer) but that’s what we were expecting. Though we concluded that they were milking their fame for all it was worth (though we were eating within five minutes of walking in), it was a unique dish, and we were in and out within 45 minutes, surprisingly satisfied (though ready for perhaps another beer).
We duly returned to ‘Hair of the Dog’ where it was by now 2-4-1 cocktails. We therefore ordered two pairs of Mojitos sans ice (at Colin’s very sensible suggestion), which came with real sugar cane, which caused me to reminisce about driving up the north coast when we were kids and Dad would always insist on stopping off to pinch some cane for us to suck on. We then made friends with a Finnish couple, who’d just done the full Trans-Mongolian from Helsinki. They were pretty cool and we shared a couple of beers before an abortive attempt to head off to a karaoke bar. As it was now midnight, it seemed a good time to call it a night so I went back to my enormous hotel room and watched two episodes of Friends, before turning in.
Hanoi photos coming as soon as Flickr wants to let me upload them…
