October 6, Hanoi, Vietnam
After our overnight train arrived in Hanoi at an early hour, we went to visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the grounds around it. We then walked through the Old Quarter, including watching a train go right in front of our café table. For dinner, we did another food tour.
Everyone was tired as we boarded the night train, and it didn’t take us long to go to sleep. We saw dawn as a backdrop of Hanoi.
After we dropped off our bags at the hotel, we walked a short distance to a local shop to have chicken pho for breakfast. The place was quite busy, but the service was quick, and we were just as quick slurping down the noodles. Then it was back to the hotel to quickly freshen up, send our laundry out to be cleaned, and then we got back on the bus.
Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
As we drove up to the entrance to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, we started seeing long lines. Bao said that the line looked about half an hour long, but can go a lot further down the street than what we were seeing. There were also a lot of school groups there, which happens on Sundays.
It was difficult for us to stay together in the outside line, but now and then we would be moved to form a new line and we were able to regroup. After going through security, we then went into a long pair of lines under canopies and saw it stretch what looked like a long distance to the mausoleum building.
Now and then the line would stop for some reason, and as we got closer, we saw that at times a special group would be allowed ahead of the rest of us, or a wreath of flowers would be moved to a more prominent location.
Once we entered the mausoleum we climbed some steps, then walked along three walls to view Ho Chi Minh’s body, and just as quickly, we exited the building. There was no photography allowed from well before the mausoleum until after we were out; there’s even a booth where you’re supposed to turn in your cameras (other than phones) and they move them to another booth where you can pick them up after you exit.
As we were on the square outside the mausoleum, we saw a lot of school groups taking group photos. A couple of boys approached two women from our group (they happen to be very tall) and asked for a photo, and they were appreciative after the photo was taken. They were also trying to practice their English, as was another student who approached another group member. The student said he was trying to listen to what Bao was explaining to us to also practice, and then followed our group for a while, asking questions and explaining that he wanted to be an Electrical Engineer.
During the wait to go in, we saw banners with the dates 10/10/1974 and 10/10/2024, and Bao explained that it was the 70th anniversary of when the French left Vietnam. The whole city is decorated with banners and Vietnam flags with people getting ready to celebrate.
We then walked around the Ho Chi Minh Memorial Complex, which included some homes that Ho lived in, including his stilt house. The latter was very simple; the main floor had a table and chairs for receiving guests, and the upstairs had a small bedroom and study. The whole thing was on short stilts. There was no bathroom since Ho went to another room for that. There was also no kitchen, and even though the workers always offered to take food to him in his house, he always wanted to be with the other people when he ate.
The last stop in the complex was the Ho Chi Minh Museum, which we ended up not spending much time in. While there was a section on the main floor talking about Ho and his history, Bao said we had already seen a lot of that information in other places, so we went directly upstairs. There were several installations that we gathered that were meant to honor Ho and his legacy.
At that point we split up, some of us going on a walk through the Old Quarter, the rest going to the hotel.
Old Quarter
For those of us on the walk, our first stop was Train Street, which is an alley with cafés on either side and a set of working train tracks right down the middle. At given times, things get pushed to the sides of the alley and the train goes by. We found seats at a café called Chu Chu and ordered drinks. We then heard a series of bells, thinking that the train was coming soon. Shop proprietors started moving tables closer to the sides. A few more times, the bells rang again, and each time there was more urgency to have people get out of the middle and to fold up chairs and tables that were too close to the tracks. Some of the folding chairs were put in the middle of the tracks so the train would go over them.
The last set of bells lasted much longer, and you saw almost everyone point their phones towards where the train would show up. We then saw the lights of the train, which was understandably going pretty slowly. After the last of several cars had passed, people swarmed towards the middle, and the tables and chairs got moved back from the sides of the alley. There was also an exodus of tourists.
We then walked the rest of the way to the hotel, going through the Old Quarter. It was pretty busy, even for a Sunday. It seemed the ratio of cars and motor scooters wasn’t as heavily tiled towards two wheels as Ho Chi Minh City.
Once we got to the hotel, Melody and I went to grab a small lunch, and some ice cream, and then back to the hotel to relax for the rest of the afternoon.
Food tour
Most of us had signed up for a street food tour. Before we met our guide for that, our laundry showed up. We found our bag, paid, and took it upstairs. We then hurried back downstairs where our food tour guide was waiting. The guide was very cheerful and informative, and was good at making sure we stuck close together when crossing streets; he would hold his fist up and yell, “Sticky rice!” so we would stick together.
Our first stop was near the Dong Xuan Market where we went to a cart that sold miniature banh mi, kind of like a slider. Next, we started to walk along the market and our guide spotted a vendor selling fruit he wanted us to try, what he called bon bons (it seems some people call them langsats). They were really sweet and tasty, and we each had several.
Continuing our walk around the market, we saw vendors with multiple colorful bins of fruits, vegetables, meats, mushrooms, beans, etc. The next stop was a stand that sold a kind of donut. The easiest way to describe it is a small mochi with mung bean paste inside, then deep fried so it puffs up to a golden brown ball. They make up to 8,000 per day and close when they sell out.
We then went to a store that rolled stuffing into freshly made rice noodles. After that, we went into a store that served fresh beer.
Our guide had been organizing the tour in courses, with the mini banh mi and donuts as appetizers, so the next stop was the entree, bun cha. He understood that since we had already eaten a bunch of things we wouldn’t be expected to finish the noodles. Most of us did finish the pork, however, since it was very good. And a lot of noodles were eaten, too.
After walking some more, we went to a small street and grabbed seats for dessert. It was a bowl of ten different types of fruit (including a slice of avocado) with sweetened condensed and coconut milk at the bottom of the bowl. The liquid complemented the fruit very well, but the guide said that locals normally have it with three times as much milk as we did. When they first tried taking tourists to the place, the comments were pretty plentiful about how sweet the dessert was, so the tour company asked the vendor to make it less sweet. The guide said he now orders the tourist version when he’s leading a group.
Our last top was to have egg coffee at a rooftop café. We had ordered at street level, then went up steep stairs, a spiral staircase, then more stairs to get to the seating area. The view was great, and we could see the river.
The tour was over, so the guide tried to get a couple of taxis to get us back to the hotel. The streets were very busy, so he took us a few blocks outside the Old Quarter to make it easier for taxis to get to us. In our taxi, there was a bag that someone left with a cell phone in it. It rang a couple of times and the driver answered it, chatted, then hung up. We did make it back to the hotel, and that was the night for us.
