Hanoi

I touched down into the muggy heat that I’ve come to expect from every city in this region. From the airport, Hanoi looks just like Saigon. But within the city, its a world of difference.

Where Saigon is massive, dirty and decrepit, Hanoi is only slightly less massive, slightly less dirty, and not all together decrepit. In my little section of the city–the Old Quarter–a block or two north of the Hoan Kiem lake, it’s actually a little charming. Charming in the 24-hour, non-stop honking, all-kinds-of-crazy-animal-carcasses-drying-on-the-sidewalk-for-sale-in-the-night-market kind of way.

I briefly stepped onto the tiny island in the small Hoan Kiem lake this morning. This lake’s name comes from Vietnamese for “Lake of the Restored Sword”. Several centuries ago the heavans dropped a magical sword into the hands of Vietnam’s king who promptly used it to kill the shit out of the Chinese. One day a giant turtle jumped out at the king, took his sword to the bottom of the lake, and thus returned it to the gods. It was this lake and the locals still believe the sword is in it somewhere.

What’s kind of fascinating about this is the turtle they say took it. They caught one of these turtles and covered it in epoxy or something and put it in a air conditioned glass box on the island back in the 50s. The thing is probably six feet long and is definitely many hundreds of pounds. The Vietnamese revered these turtles so much they promptly caught and ate them all. And now they’re extinct. Or, are they? Check out what was discovered just two days ago.

This morning I cruised over to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum to catch a glimpse of his corpse. In the tradition of Lenin and Stalin, Ho Chi Minh’s body was embalmed and put in a glass box for display to visitors. What’s great about this is that he left explicit instructions not to do this to is body. Ha! Unfortunately, I arrived after it closed. See you later, Ho Chi Minh.

I just booked overnight travel on a junk that’s going to cruise around Ha Long Bay for two days starting tomorrow. As of right now, this 16-person boat only has three people on it, including myself. Betting money is on the others being French, as it seems all the balang in this town are from France. We return to Hanoi the day after (Monday) and I immediately jump on a night train for Hue.

Because the next two days I’ll be on a boat and then taking a 14-hour train ride to Hue, I won’t be writing any blog articles for a few days. I’ll be sure and share my tales when I resurface in central Vietnam.