The hotel had a driver pick us up from the airport for $5. It was a 'real' car (vs taxi) and the driver opened and closed our car doors for us! Leaving the airport... lots of farms and fields and billboards... B said it was just like China, except the billboards were in a different language. Drivers drive on the right hand side of the road and the driver's seat is on the left hand side of the car like we're used to (unlike Malaysia and Thailand). Still no seatbelts in the backseat though.
There's a bunch of French influence in the architecture since the country was colonized by the French for a while. Many of the buildings are concrete with painted fronts but with the sides and back left bare. K speculates that maybe it's like in The Sims when you want to save money so you leave stuff unpainted until later... or maybe they expect other houses to be built right up next to them, so why paint it when it'll just be covered up.
Upon arrival at our hotel, the receptionist informs us that she can no longer give us the 3-person room we reserved because she has a group of 11 people arriving the same day as us and she needs the room for them. She gives us a choice of two 2-person rooms, one with two twins and one with one queen... she's going to add a fold-out mattress to the room and cut our per night price to $22 (was $24).
This is definitely the newest-feeling and cleanest hotel we've stayed at thus far. The bathroom is pretty close to sparkling clean and they offer free internet on three computers in the lobby with a decent connection; the previous two hotels had internet but you had to pay for it... and the connect at the Bangkok hotel was quite slow). Also included is free breakfast, fairly low-cost laundry service ($1/kg vs. Bangkok's per item charge... pair of jeans = $1.20), the private car, the receptionist helping us with random bits (like getting tickets to a water puppet show or offering to mail Beilie's postcards for her). The only downside is the room is quite small.
We eat lunch at a place across the street and then get driven to the Museum of Ethnology (same dude that picked us up from the airport). The museum focuses on the many different ethnic groups in Vietnam. There's an outdoor exhibit of the different types of houses throughout parts of Vietnam... full-sized versions. One of them even had pictures showing the phases of constructing that particular house. Some have straw roofs, some wooden. Some houses and insides of houses...
The indoor exhibits are two floors of various artifacts from the different ethnic groups... clothing, musical instruments, pottery, etc. Very interesting and we quickly use up our 1.5 hours before the museum closes at 5pm.
I saw people carrying crazy loads on their motorcycles, but I'd love to see a person actually riding this bike. The sign said it was used by someone from 1982 to 1997, and he would frequently carry more than 800 fish traps at once...
Our driver takes us back to the hotel where Beilie decides to just chill while K and I go out for a walk along the street stalls. A few blocks takes us quite a while as we navigate slowly by the many vehicles... a few cars, some cyclos, some bicycles, and many many motorcycles. There are no sidewalks and where there are, it's occupied by stalls selling goods... so we need to walk on the busy-with-traffic streets. The air pollution in Hanoi is much worse than Bangkok (which was already worse than KL)... every hour I feel like I'm shortening my lifespan as my lungs fill with smoke.
People of all ages are riding motorcycles... a couple of schoolgirls/boys, a mother with her 5-year-old son, a woman in a nice blouse and skirt, an old man... everyone. It was somewhat true in Bangkok & KL as well, but there cars outnumbered motorcycles... here there's by far many more motorcycles.
For the most part, there are no traffic lights; where there is one, it's sometimes accompanied by a red or green countdown clock to when the light will change color).
Vehicles just weave through each other, beeping all along. The beeps of vehicles continue non-stop throughout the day. To cross the street, you just walk slowly across as the vehicles navigate around you. Running would surely get you killed. And a red light (or ok to walk green signal) doesn't mean traffic stops, but that it's maybe 50% less heavy. (After getting back to the States, we found out that Seymour Papert from the Media Lab was here in Hanoi a few days before us, during which he got hit by a motorcycle, sustained head injuries, and fell into a coma. So no, those motorcycles are not just *perceived* danger.)
After our walk, we head out to dinner with B. K's been having ill luck with Vietnamese food... he ordered a spicy crab fried rice at lunch, only to discover it was soft shell crab with the shell. His dinner ordering didn't fare too much better either. A lot of the food has either French or Chinese influences... so probably the most non-defining of the countries we've visited thus far. Many of the cafes have what we would call Vietnamese food (from our experiences in the States) as well as Chinesey dishes and things like quiche.
Water puppet show. An hour long show which turns out to be quite interesting and amazing. It is given in the water and the controllers are behind a screen, controlling the puppets with a series of rods and/or wires from below the water. The shows were originally given in the rice patties and the puppets are accompanied by a series of musicians.
12 midnight. Sleep.
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