Hanoi and the long walk

 Friday November 3rd 2023
Hanoi, Vietnam


I have sweated so much that my shirts show salt stains, and that is just the first half of the day.

Let’s try to catch up a bit. Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks pulled a last minute win from the jaws of defeat. I missed that I was on a bus between home and the airport. The bus ride was totally forgettable and the hotel check in was the same.

I was really looking forward to eating at a nearby restaurant named 13 Coins. They were having some sort of big whoop-de-do and the kitchen was not serving meals because of a large group in the back room. Something I had never expected or experienced before. Of course I was welcome to sit in the bar and drink my dinner, but that didn’t sound very filling.

Back to the hotel and their restaurant’s offering was something that you would only eat if you had just been released from prison and had no way to leave the premises. Fortunately I did not have an ankle monitor.

Across the six lanes of traffic from the hotel and down the street a block or two was Sharp’s Roadhouse. I had eaten there once before with a less that stellar. Tonight’s visit lived down to my previous experience. I should have walked another block to Jack-In-The-Box. I got food and left. One of the things I detested about this joint was when it came time to pay, I handed the server a credit card and he had a hand held device where he swiped the card and then thrust the damn thing in my face with several pre-suggested tips to tap on.  This tipping has gotten out of hand. SeaTac city has a mandated minimum wage of $20 an hour and the server is still begging for additional wages from the customer?

Back to the hotel and up at the proper time to catch the proper plane at the proper location. I only made one wrong turn in the terminal so got to ride the transit train a few extra times

The flight from Seattle to Seoul was flight. There is nothing to say about it. It started at the right time and got to the right place about the right time. The meal was the worst I have ever had on an airplane, and we all know how airplane meals rank on the Michelin star level. The before landing snack was an egg and cheese burrito. The box was marked ‘Best By January 7th 2025’. Only nearly a year and a half from now. That left me questioning the quality of Delta Airlines.

In Seoul they had it down to a science. Scan your passport at a gate, if you are going in the right direction the gate parts, if not it points you in the correct direction. It really was slick. I did lose a less than one inch keychain knife to their security that I had completely forgotten about. Even if I had remembered it, I still might have left left it where it was. I mean, what could I do with it, carve my initials in the flight attendant?

The plane ride was barely endurable. Vietnam Airlines is not built for human taller than 5 feet five inches, especially after 11 hours on a previous flight. I fidgeted and fussed for 5 hours and finally was released from that cocoon at Hanoi.

Immigration with my e-visa was a snap. And soon I was in Vietnam. I changed a Benjamin to a bunch of Ho Chi Mins and stepped outside into the din and crush that is always immediately outside in most foreign airports. There I made my first mistake that I knew at that moment was a mistake and took the first taxi offered and the first price offered. He did get me to the right hotel, but for the price it should have been a stretch limousine and not a nine person van. I was really tired and hope to not make that mistake again in the future.

After a full 24 hours between beds I fell into on here in Hanoi, grateful that the trip had been no worse so far..

First full day in Hanoi, Wednesday November first. This was a get situated day, do a few errands and clean up my schedule for vacation time.

Jet lag was evident as is/was expected. Hopped in bed and immediately went to sleep. Then 5 hours later fully awake at 3am. This is after a true 24 hours between beds and not sleeping a wink. Finally at 6:30 I gave up and got ready to fact the day.

Breakfast was what you would expect from a tour bus hotel. That's not very much in the way I would consider breakfast. There was the egg/omelet station and some toast and a muffin. The rest of the menu was totally Asian. I like most Asian foods, but noodle soup for breakfast really doesn’t do it for me.

Of course the dining room was completely packed with full tables, and the empty ones laden with dishes awaiting to be cleared. My fellow Breakfast Club members were as accommodating to the rest of the club as one Jackal is to another. Hands reaching in between me and the food. Heaping plates forewarning of the coming famine. Each person with a lanyard with the name of their tour group emblazoned on it. They might have been leashed, but they certainly weren’t very well trained.

After breakfast and based on the bellman’s “Go that way” gesture I soon found a beautiful pristine lake in the middle of an very hectic city. Groups of people clustered lakeside flowing from onto Thai Chi pose to another. A silent dance symphony of movement. This was in total contrast to getting to the lakeside.

Getting there, when crossing any street, much less the 5 marked, 8 actual lanes of traffic all late for some important meeting or possibly tooth flossing. The good advice I was given, before leaving home was step into the street and walk slowly forward. NEVER backward. The motorcycles will steer around you in you just keep walking. Cars? Trucks? You might want to not step in front of them and if you do you better not tarry. If you avoid getting a free ride on a windshield, and only get beeped at it was only a minor faux pas. I am not sure if the beep means “Watch the heck out!” Or “Darn it ! Missed another one !”. Now a long horn blow, means that the pregnant lady in the back seat must have had her baby in the car, and that is why they were in such a hurry.

I continued around the lake, getting the very occasional street vendor beckoning me to look and buy their wares and the pedicabs offering rides for “Very cheap”. I was on a mission, sorry no time to diddle daddle.

Phone store found, plan chosen, magic buttons pressed and I was again a member of society with Google maps, email and Facebook. All the essentials for most people in my circle of friends back in the US . Except here, WhatsApp is communication king and Grab is Uber with the added option of the back of a motorcycle.

I fired up Google maps, typed in the address of my next stop, a 10 minute walk to the company  that I will be sailing on Halong Bay with. The room (cabin?) I have booked is quite adequate for my needs, but there are two Executive cabins on each vessel that look other worldly. Their website designer did a great job for a 4th grader, but try and find sailing dates and room availability forget it. If you want to see pages and pages of smiling people doing happy things you are in the right place, but how to get to do them yourself it was a mystery to me. So the 10 minute walk took 15 but I found my destination, a huge plain concrete box with elevators. I walked in and was about to press the call button and some guy comes up to me and starts pestering me. He’s in some sort of uniform, so I get that he is security. I whip out my phone and show him the address of the company and Lost in Translation begins to play. He doesn’t read English, and I do not speak Vietnamese. He rolls into a 2 minute soliloquy about something I assume about ‘you don’t belong here, Lady’. I point at the email street address and owing at the building address and I think he gets it, but no elevator button pressing for me today.

I give up and refer to the email and see a phone number and call it. The nice lady at the other end said yes that is the correct office, for their banking operations, but not their business office, and she doesn’t offer that to me. I explain that I want to know if there are other sailings with the executive suite is available and she says she’ll look into it. I somehow felt that she was just saying the right sounding words to get me off the line. (She eventually did email me back to say that she could up sell me to a cabin on the same sailings, but no mention of the executive suite on other sailings)

I checked my next location of google maps and it was a 35 minute walk away. Well that turned into a hour and a half slough through areas not seen by a tourist eye this millennium. First I got on the wrong side of a major highway with no crossing. Then I found a warren of little streets that only had one way in and one way out, the same way I entered. Then I found the correct street. Mind you it is close to 90 degrees with matching humidity. Back home I drink a liter of water, and a while later about the same leaves. Here that same liter of water magically disappeares like a David Copperfield performance. So I look across the street and see that I am at the 800 block and I need to be in the 600 block. I don’t know if a block here is the same as a block back home, but there is no way a sidewalk block is the same. They are mazes. Hot boiling vats of oil, little stools with seated men and women eating, motorcycles completely blocking the side walk where you have to step into the street to get around these roadblocks. at last I see the 600 block, Frogger  across the street and can not find 605. I turn and look back across the street to see if maybe to odd numbers are over there. Nope, the 800 block is over  and the 600 block I want is where I passed a liter of water ago.

Back up the block to the right area and show a shop keeper the address and he does the ‘it’s just over  there’s motion. I end at the right address eventually and walk into a salon where a woman is getting her long tresses washed. This really doesn’t look like any bike manufacturing company to me. They look a question at me and I mime the pedals of a bike and I get a blank stare in return. The wet headed woman dials someone and hands me FaceTime with another someone. I explain what I want and get the same deer in the headlights expression. I Hang up. I do the bike mime again and nuttin’. Then epiphany strikes. Google translate. BIKE SHOP. Bike shop?!?!? Why didn’t you say that sooner!! Right down that alley! Ya! Right there !.

Needless to say, they were right but I still needed to call the company and the sales representative picked me up on his motorbike and rode me to the end of the alley, to a turn for a block, and then a U turn up a concrete ramp and into a large dark warehouse for another 1/2 a block to his company. Simple as that. Except they didn’t do what I was hoping they did. No rainy day windshield for this kid.

My fitness tracker said I had walked nearly 8 miles so was pooped, so I called a Grab car and the sales rep scootered me back to the hair salon.

I melted into the bed at my hotel until an appropriate dinner time and had a nice Cantonese meal before calling it a night. Apple Watch says 9.12 miles I think that’s enough for a day.


Jet lag the next day November 2nd, hit again at 3am, but I nursed naps until 7am. I looked at my t-shirt from the day before and could white lines of salt ringing it.

 With business out of the way yesterday it was tourist time. There is a Hop-on — Hop-off double decker bus that goes to about 10 or 12 stops. I only wanted 2, but I’ll pick up a 4 hour pass just in case I decide to stop in at a pagoda or two.

It was a nice walk back to the lake and then to the north end of the lake where the bus started. It was pretty interesting seeing the city from the top of an open bus, after seeing so much of it from street shoe level.

Past pagodas and churches and other places I should see, but I did have a goal in mind. I hopped off at the Ho Che Minh Mausoleum, not that I wanted to see him lying in state, my destination was further on.

Dressed in t-shirt, shorts and sandals I started trucking west. At least I think it was west. Along the way there were offers of motorbike rides, and the vendor offering to rent me a skirt so I could enter the grounds. Like Jesus in the Vatican and Buddha and even God in Greece. Nobody likes shoulders or knees. I can see not liking some parts of the human body, but those are two universal pieces of anatomy and it’s not like it’s going to surprise God or Ho that I have them. Anyway I wasn’t worried about my knees because I had no intention of going there.

I started to get out of the area where people were stopping me on the street to hawk this or that, and I knew I was on the right path. I found the cousin to what I was looking for so decided to stop and see the B-52 museum. No, not a museum dedicated to the Bailey’s and Kaluha cocktail, but huge masses of aluminum and wires. They were full of heavy metal things full of explosives half the time and empty the other half. The museum consisted of kind of a jig saw puzzle of a B-52. None of the pieces seemed to match one another, but the completed puzzle did look like a very, very broken aircraft. I am assuming that several planes were pieced together to form this display.

I toured the museum and then went to sit and ponder over a bottle of water. The guy who ran the museum’s cafe didn’t speak a whit of English. I had to Google Translate “Bottle of water please” before he got the concept. That’s 2 for 2 for Google Translate.

I showed him on Google Maps where I wanted to go and he pointed just around the next corner.

I found it is a snap and was in for a letdown. The B-52 landing gear, that came to rest in the middle of a small lake was no more. Probably picked up and moved to the aluminum jigsaw puzzle a block away. The only thing I got there was a yappy drop kick dog that tried to bite me as I walked past.

Back past the rent-a-skirt people and the motorbike taxis only to find that my way back was now blockaded off. The entire complex was blocked off. Someone important was coming to visit, and I guess they didn’t like crowds. I went a-roving until I saw a big red topless bus stop for some fat people in shorts and cameras and decided to hang out there for a bit until the next big red bus came along.

Next stop for me was “Maison Centrale”. Google Translate says that is something like Center House. I actuality it was the central prison that the French built in the late 1800’s. Google Translate now 2 for 3. U.S. citizens of a certain age, might also know it as the “Hanoi Hilton” where U.S. downed fliers were housed during their stay from 1964 until 1973.

The tour seemed to be broken into 2 halves. The first half was about the French holding political prisoners there until 1954. Frankly the conditions were Hellish. The second half was about the U.S. POWs. There were photographs of them playing volleyball, decorating a Christmas tree, playing soccer and making Christmas dinner. Which only re-enforced for me the adage that ‘History is written by the winners’. Because that is not exactly how I remember former POWs describe it when they were reunited back in the USA.

Finding the red bus was easy this time and my 4 hours was about up so I headed back to the lake and then my hotel.

In the evening I had arranged through the hotel a food tour. The price included pick up at the hotel and 2 to 3 hours of local food from street side vendors. I forgot that this was Hanoi and pick-up did not necessarily mean four wheels. Yes, it was a motor scooter. F me ! Careening through the streets treating stop lights as suggestions and pedestrians as chaff we arrived at the meeting place. Six members of the human race from nearly as many locations and one Vietnamese lady off to find food. The tour was great fun. Six or seven stops each stop a different menu item. Most consisted of a rice paper shell that you filled with various meats and vegetables and then dipped in a sauce the was generally vinegar based where you added your own custom touches to it. Some of the dishes I could replicate at home, some I could if I was able to practice for 5 years. It was well worth the time and money and everyone waddled away at the end, with distended and happy tummy’s.

I opted to walk back to the hotel rather than risk invalidating my health insurance policy.

Bed was great until 3am, and then mostly good until the next morning.