Day 5 - Wicked Hat Tan and Humidity in Hanoi

We left for Hanoi at 6am this morning and have been going ever since. It is about 7pm right now and my mother and I are resting. We are getting used to taking ice cold showers to help make this incredible heat more bearable. It is 36°C right now in Hanoi and the humidity makes it feel even hotter. It actually reminds me of being in Delhi, India when I was there last March.

My uncle Hung picked us up this morning and took us for breakfast - he must have had a direct line into my stomach because he took me for what I've been craving since I got to Vietnam - Bánh cuốn, which is a wide, thin rice sheet filled with a mixture of ground pork and mushrooms and rolled. You eat it with fresh basil, blanched sprouts and pork sausage (well, more like ham) and you drench it in fish sauce. I have to say, I was in heaven for the five minutes it took me to inhale this dish. LOL

The plane ride was about 2 hours and we slept through most of it because of the early morning start. I always find it interesting to know what they serve on plane rides in other countries. On this domestic flight, they served us sticky rice with pork for breakfast! I didn't eat any of it because I was still full from the banh cuon but my mother did have a bite and said it was all right. I have no idea what vegetarians would eat on these flights.. there really were no other options!

When we got to Hanoi, we literally jumped right into the tour. There are 28 people on the tour, which makes it more fun and my mother is already trying to make friends. Because we booked this tour through a Vietnamese company, we found out quickly that the tour caters mostly to the locals. There were no other foreigners in the tour group, which meant that we would go to local restaurants and the tour is entirely in Vietnamese. Herein lies the main problem though - I cannot understand the Northern Vietnamese accent at all! The other problem is, my mother is the worst translator ever. She actually said to me on the bus as I struggled to understand what our tour guide was saying: "Now you know what it's like for me in Canada!" haha!

Our first stop was lunch at a local restaurant where we were served some local dishes. In the Vietnamese culture, we basically get a bowl of rice each and then a number of side dishes are placed in the middle of the table to share. It's a free-for-all and if you don't eat quick, no one will save a portion for you! It's customary for the younger ones at the table to wait until the elders take their first pick. We all use chopsticks and there's no serving spoons - no fear of germs or shared spit!

Our second stop of the day was at Hoan Kiem Lake (Hồ Hoàn Kiếm), which is a major site in Hanoi. When you walk over the Huc Bridge, there is a little pagoda where they keep the Hoan Kiem tortoise that apparently came from the lake. It was found in 1967, weighing 200 kg (440 lbs) and measured 1.9 meters long (6 ft 3in).

Here's my mother being sassy in front of the lake entrance. Note that we are wearing the bright pink hats from our tour, which you can spot from a mile away. It is also the hat that gave me this wicked hat tan - my forehead has a clear horizontal division now (sorry, no pictures were taken of that).

The weather in Hanoi is absolutely horrid right now and if you're going to travel to Vietnam during this time, make sure that you bring sunscreen and that you're not afraid to walk around drenched in your own sweat. Everything that we drank was absorbed by our clothes in the two hours that we spent walking around town. There are many people walking around selling fans and cold water but the problem is, with the humidity, ice melts as soon as it hits your cup and everything becomes room temperature. There is no relief from the heat.

The third stop of the day was the Temple of Literature (Quốc Tử Giám). This is also the site of Vietnam's first University. The people who were on the tour with their children found this place fascinating and my mother told me it's because they believe that coming here will help the children with their studies - most of them stopped at the Stalea of Doctors to touch the stone turtle heads that would give them luck. We walked through the five perfectly groomed courtyards within an hour and by then, it was already five o'clock and we had to head out for dinner. It was also scorching hot and most of the tourists were dying to get back on the air-conditioned bus!

After dinner, the tour bus dropped us off at the hotel and we are going to call it an early night at just a little past 8pm. We are leaving for Ha Long Bay tomorrow at 8am and I'm told it's going to be beautiful. The tour guide told us that we might be sleeping on the boat tomorrow night so I'll wait to find out if he's telling the truth - I mean, I think that's what he said! LOL

Good night and I'll talk to you tomorrow.. :)