Three of us flew to Hanoi with our Thai
girlfriends--Gus, who’s from England, myself, and David, who’s American.
From the time we got off our plane we got superb service from the Viet Anh Hotel, starting with the free cab the hotel sent to the airport
to collect us. But
once our driver dropped us off at the hotel I thought, “Now wait a
minute. This is not the Viet Anh Hotel”. And I sure as should have known
because I had stayed there a year and a half ago. The Hotel was just up
the street from the Viet Anh a few doors. When the young woman who had
booked us had emailed me that the wing I had stayed in before was having
extensive work done to it and we would be put in a new section of the
hotel it did not come across that the entire Viet Anh Hotel was being gutted--to
be completely rebuilt inside, and that we
would be staying in an entirely different building just up the street.
Before we could get unpacked, the woman
called, wanting to meet us straight off in the lobby. Gus had left us at
the airport since he was being picked up by a car sent by his English buddies who
were living off somewhere far away in Hanoi suburbia. Which left David
and me to decide with our hotel booking agent which tours we wanted to
book. I opted for the City Tour for my girlfriend, May, and me while
David left the day open, which would be the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow
being Friday was out for the City Tour, our hotel booking agent told us,
since all museums were closed on Fridays and Mondays. David and I agreed
on the Ha Long Bay cruise, both of us ecstatic that it would cost
us just $250 per couple, for three days and two nights, with one night on the boat
and the second in a three star hotel on Cat Ba Island.
My room was far more than I had ever hoped for.
It had a balcony overlooking the very busy street below me, a desktop
computer plugged into the Internet and my own jacuzzi in the bathroom.
The next morning we’d be getting a buffet breakfast including all the
free coffee I could drink, and all of this was costing me just $45.00
per night. You can’t even get a Motel Six room back in the states for
this amount of change, not even if it’s stuck in nowhere land let alone
at a major capital city such as Hanoi with its 4 million people.
With all the museums closed David and I decided
to max out whatever we could so we would not waste the day. With the help
of the front desk we booked three bicycle taxis,
which are often called
Pedi cabs. The old city of Hanoi is filled with them. These are rickshaws
with a difference, that difference being that the coolie is pedaling the
tourists
around the city instead of running around like a horse coupled
to its carriage.
We probably were paying too much, but it came
out to something like $5.00 per hour. Later we’d find out the metered taxis in
Hanoi were ultra cheap. We’d also find out that one had to be very
careful while dealing with taxi drivers. All three of us, Gus, David and
I would wind up getting cheated by a taxi driver. David, because he
mistakenly gave the driver ten times more money than he thought he was
giving him, which isn’t hard since Vietnam Dong looks like monopoly
money. The driver simply pocketed the change without telling David so
what should have been a one dollar short taxi ride ended up costing
David ten dollars. I’d make my mistake on the last day, when I took May
to the Army Museum. We had the hotel book our cab to the museum which
cost us two dollars to get there but after hailing a taxi
outside the museum to take us back to the hotel, I was charged close to
ten dollars for the ten minute ride back. Without losing my temper I
told the driver it had cost me two dollars to get to the museum. The
driver simply lied that because of the one way streets the ride back
from the museum took longer than the trip to the museum. If anything the
ride home was shorter due to the one way streets again.
The driver was in complete denial of the true
facts of the situation as I continued to push him about his overcharging
me. The driver even pointed to his meter that showed that I did owe him
ten dollars. Obviously, the driver had not set his meter back after the
last customer. Lesson to be learned is to watch all Vietnamese taxi
drivers like a hawk and make doubly sure they turn their meters back.
Finally I gave him two dollars in Vietnamese dong and started to get out
of the taxi. But the man continued to hound me for more money. My
girlfriend had still not climbed out of the rear seat, and even if she
had I don’t think she would have caught onto what was going on. Finally
I gave the cockroach his blood money. Had I been alone I would have
thrown the two dollars at him and started to walk or run down a one way
street so that he could not follow me in his taxi. When I got back to
the hotel I complained to the front desk. The two women there told me to
book all my taxis from the hotel from then on because they were using a
company that was reliable and that they were keeping records upon.
No doubt we were overcharged by the bicycle taxi
drivers as well, but oh well. I will just have to be more careful the
next time. But it was worth it because the pace is slow and relaxing.
You sit back in the little carriage being able to observe everything
around you, and you don’t miss a thing. Eventually we got up to Ho Chi
Minh’s Mausoleum, but as expected, it was closed. We had our bicycle
taxi driver’s deposit us at a Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food
restaurant
on Kiem Lake.
The three drivers kept asking us for a six
dollar tip for each man but by that time both David and I had figured
out that we had probably been overcharged already.
The next day, my girlfriend and I took the
city tour. I had been on it before on my first visit to Hanoi, but I
wanted my Thai girlfriend to see some of the city’s main sites. In
particular I wanted her to be able to go inside Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum
just to get the down in the gut feeling of how much love and respect
this man had been able to evoke from the Vietnamese people.
Unfortunately the inside of the museum was closed to the public due to
ongoing maintenance inside. Close by, however, was the Presidential
Palace, the Ho Chi Minh museum, the small home Ho used during the French
Indo China conflict, and the House on Stilts Ho lived in until his death
during the American Vietnamese War.
Nearby was the carp pond Ho often
visited to feed the fish.
Between my first trip to Hanoi and this one, Gus
and I had gone to Ho Chi Minh City together and while there we visited
the Re-Unification Palace that had been reconstructed by Diem and his
government back in the 1960's after an anti Diem pilot had bombed the
building. The palace in Ho Chi Minh City had been a
presidential palace just like its counterpart in Hanoi which my
girlfriend and I were now visiting. It had been built by the French
colonial government in 1868 and originally named the Norodom Palace
whereas the Presidential Palace in Hanoi
was built by the French in
1900. The Norodom Palace was renamed the Re-Unification Palace after
North and South Vietnam were reunited after 1975.
Today the Presidential Palace is a very
beautiful structure. When you gaze upon it from the street in front of
Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum there’s no question that the yellow building is
French. This is not the case with the Re-unification palace in Ho Chi
Minh City. And here’s my personal feelings on why out of both
presidential palaces, both of which were originally built for the French
colonial government and designed by Frenchmen, the two palaces differ so
vastly. The palace in Hanoi never was used by either Ho or the North
Vietnamese government except for special state occasions to receive
foreign visitors. Once the Viet Minh succeeding in defeating their
French occupiers in 1954, Ho took up permanent residence in a small
residence that had previously been used by the palace’s electrician
where he lived for the next four years. For Ho Chi Minh and his
government the presidential palace symbolized the regime imposed on the
Vietnamese by the French colonialists. Because it reminded him or
Vietnam's former colonial masters and because it was so ostentatious Ho decided to live in much humbler
surroundings. Ho lived four years in a small house that had been lived
in by the Presidential Palace's electrician before moving to the House on Stilts in 1958 where he lived until his
death in 1969. And from the House of Stilts he’d walk down to the carp
pond to feed the fish.
Ho showed until the time of his death his
disdain for ostentatiousness and his love of the more simple things in life.
As for the Hanoi Presidential Palace, ihe Vietnamese continued to maintain it
in its original French pristine condition in
order to showcase that period of their History when they were occupied
and governed by the French.
Such is not the case with the Re-Unification
Palace in Ho Chi Minh City. It seems just too ugly to have been built by
the French. A South
Vietnamese pilot had bombed it with his helicopter in 1962 in an attempt
to assassinate President Diem so Diem and his government started out
reconstructing it in the early 1960's. Pictures of the original building
show the front of the building in a pleasing French colonial style. What
replaced it was a distasteful garish architecture that could have been
designed only by people who had no sense of taste or beauty themselves.
A palace this ugly could only reflect the ugliness of its designers.
For me, the House on Stilts represents the
selfless giving nature of Ho Chi Minh, who gave himself completely to
his people in order to drive the despised French out and later to
protect his new Vietnam from the United States which had sided with the
corrupt South Vietnamese government. The Presidential Palace represents
the French and a past the country would never see again while the
Re-Unification Palace in Vietnam with its horrid architecture represents
the monstrous South Vietnamese government with all its corruption and
its persecution of anyone who would oppose it. While visiting the
Re-Unification Palace a few months earlier, although I did enjoy the
beautiful view of the nearby parks from its balcony I was thinking,
“This reconstructed palace could only be designed by a gangster or a
Nazi.” From that moment on I understandood all
that I needed to know about the South Vietnamese government we Americans
fought for in the Vietnam war and the real patriots led by Ho who we
fought against.
On this city tour we saw the first university of
Vietnam
along with several other interesting sites. But it’s time to
move on.
We would soon be taking the trip to Ha Long Bay.
In the meantime we went to several restaurants within walking distance
of our hotel. By far the best was at #72 May May Street. There was a
decent Mexican restaurant a little further on up the street that was
actually on the street May May dead ends into to form a T. One night we
more or less found ourselves at another restaurant close to Kiem Lake. I
already mentioned our pal Gus staying with his English friends out
somewhere in suburbia. That night we were to meet Gus and his friends at
a restaurant that was “Pretty close” to our hotel or so Gus had told us.
But one must keep in mind that when Gus tells someone he’s meeting them
at 9 p.m. he really means 9:30. So I’m thinking what he actually meant
when he told us the restaurant was close to Kiem Lake was that it was no
more than two hours away. It turned out that the restaurant the Engish
had decided upon was only one of a chain of perhaps half a dozen
restaurants throughout Hanoi. So after checking the situation out on the
internet on one of our hotel’s computers in its lobby and asking
the desk clerks, we had gone to a restaurant on Kiem Lake bearing the
same name. We had to take a taxi there and by the time we arrived we
were all very hungry. We immediately found out that the place was not only
the wrong restaurant but that it was high priced by Thai or Vietnamese
standards and had positioned itself squarely at tourists who
didn’t know any better.
We ate at a restaurant half a block away instead
thinking it would be more reasonably priced. I had a twelve
dollar salad because it was one of the most inexpensive things on the
menu.
It would be once again the woman
who worked for our hotel who had booked our rooms for us who proved to
be our savior. I had asked her where we could find some good restaurants
close to our hotel while David and I were booking our tour to Ha Long
Bay, and she had replied without a moment’s hesitation, “Number 72.” She
then mentioned one or two other places, one being across the street from
number 72. I think that’s one of the two restaurants I had frequented on
my previous visit and although it was good, its prices were nothing to
write home about.
I read our Vietnamese booking agent right.
It was just like someone like her to suggest the best restaurant first,
then add one or two others afterwards without dramatizing how she really
felt. The first place she mentioned, #72 was not just the best
restaurant, it was so far in front of the others that no one in
their right mind would ever go to those other places again. Then
again, who said that most tourists were in their right minds in the
first place? # 72 had a winding staircase climbing to several
levels of small rooms that oozed with atmosphere. The first night
May and I went, my bill came to eight dollars for two and that included
a couple of beers. So much for twelve dollar salads.
