where the streets have Viet names

I don’t understand why they bother to draw zebra crossings in Hanoi. The vehicles don’t give way and neither do the humans, so what we have essentially is an interesting form of controlled chaos without bloodshed, which is quite an achievement given the harrowing experience road crossing can be.

However Cambodia prepared us well for this; personally I feel Phnom Penh has crazier traffic than Hanoi, with more drivers that are either less skilled or less attracted to the idea of self-preservation. I expect Ho Chih Minh traffic to be even more ball-tingling.

One trick: tag along behind the locals if you are too scared. Human shields are always useful. Also, numbers make right on the road. Alternatively, walk straight at a constant pace with hands covering your eyes.

The traffic here does not seem to end. Vehicles horns blare all the time. Drivers periodically and instinctively blast their horns to warn other drivers of their approach. Even on empty roads they do the same thing. I wonder who the honking is meant to be for. It is pretty miraculous that horning has any effect at all on the roads given its prevalent use in ALL traffic situations. I can hear horns sounding even from my hotel room at night .

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Concerning scams in Vietnam, the initial sense of trepidation is gone. I have not been tricked or conned so far and my experience of the people here has been generally a pleasant one. Like Cambodia, the population is made up of largely younger people in their 20s and 30s, and they are generally carefree and easy-going people.

Most of my experiences of the people come from eating local grub at road-side stalls. Maybe it is the physical similarity that forges a sense of kinship between us and the locals which reduce their inclination to take advantage of us.

I think the more likely explanation is that we look like beggars, or little boys with no money. This is especially so for Zihao, who frankly looks like a drug addict waiting for his next shot. One trick we used in Cambodia was to walk in a straight line with him at the front so as to ward off touts and beggars. I think it helped. There is no need to do so in Vietnam given the significantly lesser number of touts, but the beggar/little boy effect still worked.

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Navigating Hanoi requires a change in my perception of street lengths and size. The streets here are uber narrow and short compared to Singaporean streets and they are not properly aligned with each other, resulting a confusing mass of intersections and crooked streets with names that look and sound the same. It took me a while to get the hang of the place, but once I got used to it, walking around Hanoi is a piece of cake. The free tourist map provided is good enough with sufficient details for us tourists not to get lost. For too long.

Also, the pavements are non-existent at times and we are often forced to walk on the road itself, which makes it more dangerous. Sometimes shops hog the pavements, or motorcycles are parked along the pavements.

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From the food front, today was a fruitful day.

Breakfast was provided by the “hotel” and it was a buffet. There were different kinds of bread, ham, sausages, fried noodles that tasted like ammonia and overdone fried eggs. Given my low initial expectations the food was decent.

Lunch was significantly more extravagant. We went to change money at Vietcomm Bank but sadly we arrived at their lunch break, which lasts from 1130h to 1300h. Eat your hearts out you miserable Singaporeans clinging on to 1 hour lunch breaks. It took us a while to realise that the branch was closed, despite the fact that the counter guy laid himself on the floor to snooze and ignored us throughout the time we camped at the counter trying to figure out why the bank staff turned off the lights.

In any case we finally realised that the bank is closed for lunch and we loitered around the neighbourhood searching for a place to have lunch at.

We settled at this brightly lit restaurant that many locals patroned. The tables were super low and so were the chairs. I felt like I was sitting on baby chairs. The first thing that the waitress asked was “Bia Hoi?”. Which basically meant draught beer. It took a while for us to realise what she was asking about but we gave the standard tourist-who-don’t-know-a-shit-but-want-to-be-nice answer, which is to nod our heads vigourously, grinning sheepishly and say yes.

The menu was entirely in Vietnamese and we didn’t have a clue what we could order. No one there spoke enough English to be able to explain the menu to us. We ended up picking random dishes from the menu. We had a rough idea what each dish was because under each heading there was a clipart of some animal. I mistoke the clipart of a squid for a carrot and ordered some squid which I thought was a vegetable dish. Not that it mattered because the squid turned out to be pretty decent.

We ended up with four dishes with a mountain of rice: squid stir-fried with herbs and spring onions, fried chicken marinated in some paste, a soup with tomatos, onions and pork, and- the highlight – fried snake with mushrooms, herbs and onions.

The snake looked like eel and tasted like fish, which is significantly different from the one we had in Cambodia. Maybe it is because of the preparation method; we had the snake in Cambodia teppanyaki-style without sauces while this current one is stir-fried in a wok with other herbs and ingredients.

I was quite surprise to note that the snake was wiped out faster than the chicken. I guess our tolerance level for exotic foods have risen. The price was great too: we spent about 4 USD per person. One peculiar observation: there were only male ptarons at the restaurant. Go figure. And it was lunch time. Hmmmm.

We had dinner at this place which was spartanly named “Pho”. As you might have guessed it serves Vietnamese pho, i.e. rice noodles with beef slices in clear soup. Lonely Planet recommended that place as a great place for pho done well, and it did not disappoint in my opinion. The soup was the mainstay; the broth was well done and rich enough. The lime juice squeezed into the soup made it even more appetising. We ordered their version of you tiao together with the noodles. Their you tiao is significantly smaller and shorter than those we have in Singapore. I think Vietnamese people who come to Singapore will be shocked at the size of our you tiao.

The menu had a confusing variety of dishes like “beef fillet”, “special beef”, “beef with tendon” and “grilled beef”, and we each ordered a different dish each. When our orders hit the table, we couldn’t see the difference between the dishes. All of them looked, and tasted the same.

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I think we need a proper rest. We slept on the benches at one of the museums we visited today for close to half an hour, and nobody said a thing. Normally we would be eager to get going with our trip and not to waste time. Zihao blamed it on the plane trip.

When you feel tired you begin to work in quirky ways. Zihao asked me what time the night market opens. I told him that it opened at night.

The trips to Halong and Sapa should hopefully rejuvenate us in time for the gruelling backpacking ahead to Hue, Nha Trang, Hoi An and Saigon, which includes a few overnight bus trips which promise to take the piss out of us.

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We are setting off first thing tomorrow morning for Halong Bay. We have already booked a tour for both Halong Bay and Sapa from Ocean Tours and I believe that our stress levels will drop rapidly from tomorrow onwards since we do not have to bother about planning ahead for at least the next 4 days as we are on a scheduled tour with guides.

I can’t wait to kayak along Halong Bay and go on a homestay with the villagers at Sapa. Ciao. Or rather, tam biet!