Old Quarter and Turtle Lake

The oldest part of Hanoi, the aptly named "old quarter," grows out from the southern banks of turtle lake. Legend goes that, in the 15th century, the first Vietnamese emperor went to fight the Chinese occupiers and a turtle rose out of the lake bearing a sword which he then used to defeat the Chinese. Now, in the middle of the lake there is a temple dedicated to turtles and a tiny island only for turtles. It is supposed to be very good luck and quite a commotion if a turtle is ever sighted. The water is so murky and stagnant they should celebrate seeing any living creature in the water.

The pagoda island for the turtles on the left and  the temple island  is hidden by all the trees on the right.

The island solely for turtles.

The entrance to the temple for turtles on an island in the middle of the lake.

Depicting the turtle bearing a sword.

 The narrow streets of old quarter are lined with shops and congested with traffic. Shops of each street focus on a particular type of product to sell and those streets are creatively named after the things you buy there; i.e.: musical instrument street, lock street, metal street, luggage street, etc.
There are three ways to get around old quarter: walking, which I have already covered, on a scooter, and on a cyclo which is sort of like a backwards tricycle with a covered bench build into the front. The cyclo drivers target tourists offering a nice ride and promising to know the best and cheapest locations to buy anything. We employed three drivers for a day and it was a great experience, they take you anywhere and everywhere, pampering you as you go.

After a full day of driving us around the city, our driver, Ving, stopped abruptly and pulled me out and told me to drive my dad down the street. I got quite a few stares, cat calls and whistles from the people of Hanoi who are not used to seeing a round eye on the back end of the bike.

Our full delegation.

We stopped and had a beer with our drivers: Han 45, Ky 72, and Ving 34. All three of them  are from the same tiny village north of Hanoi and rent one room in the city together. They work for three or four months and then go home for a week to visit their wives and family who all work in rice fields.

(I shot video of riding through old quarter on the cyclo, but due to technical difficulties I will have to upload it some other time. Check back later, it's very exciting!)
Lastly, you can get around on a scooter, though I would only recommend riding with someone you know. There are scooter taxis, but I have been told that there is usually a pick pocket scam attached to that service. Being an intrepid traveler, I have a friend in Hanoi, Hang, who showed me her city by scooter. I have to admit that I was pretty scared walking up to her bike. I waited a few seconds for her to hand me a helmet, but one was never offered. My fear intensified, I climbed onto the back of her scooter, wrapped my arms tight around her stomach and held on for dear life. Suddenly aware of my own mortality, I asked Hang if she has ever been in any accidents. "Yes, a few," she replied. That made me feel safe....

Hang is a very good driver and didn't do anything crazy. Within a few minutes I had relaxed my vice grip on her stomach and eventually held her hips loosely. Eventually I felt comfortable enough to hold my camera up in the air to record a video as we drove and after a stop at a baking supply shop on metal street, I had to hold all my bags and nothing else.
(Again, check back later for the video of riding on a scooter.)

Evidence of War

Traveling through Vietnam with three Vietnam vets, I could not escape vestiges of the war if I wanted to. The whole purpose of our trip is to do some work in conjunction with Libraries of Vietnam Project, which is a group a friend of my father's started a decade ago. They build libraries in rural villages near the local school. My father says that he is still fighting the war, but with education instead of violence.
In Hanoi, the capital, which was heavily bombed and then reconstructed, is currently being taken over by modern progress. However, there are a few monuments to remind everyone of Vietnam's triumph over the "imperialist U.S," including a huge war museum which to our misfortune is not open on Mondays and that is when we had planned to visit. However, I think we managed to see the rest of them.
This is Ho Chi Minh's mosoleum. Like all other communist leaders, he is frozen and well preserved. I took these pictures on a sunset tour of Hanoi on the back of a scooter.

This is the monument dedicated to the crash landing of Senator John McCain in a lake in the middle of the city.

The central prison build by the French in the early 20th century to torture and kill Vietnamese and then used by the Vietnamese to do the same to Americans including John McCain.

A propaganda picture of US POWs having Christmas dinner.

This sheet of paper asks for help and safety in five languages.

This is a picture of John McCain being pulled out of the river .

John McCain returned to the prison where he was tortured in 2000.

And a tiny monument deep in side an urban neighborhood that you'd have to know about to find: wreckage of a B52 bomber

How to Cross the Street

Everytime I visit a country where traffic laws are sparse or loosely regulated, I say that it is the worst, most unorganized traffic I have ever seen. Hanoi is no different. Unlike Mexico where traffic just flows, or even in China where cars mostly go however they please, the traffic in Vietnam moves and scatters like ants whose anthill has just been destroyed (if they had horns). About 90% of the traffic are scooters, and they drive in which ever direction they want to: with traffic, against traffic, sideways through traffic, it really doesn't matter. However, this makes every street one big clusterf**k.


If driving through the streets seems like madness, then walking through and across them is pure lunacy; but it is nessicary. The sidewalks are cluttered with parked scooters and people sitting around drinking tea with friends. You must learn how to walk through all that madness. It requires a willful suspension of every safety lesson your mother ever taught you. If you wait for a clearing of traffic and then look both ways, your window will be closed.

Like plunging into a torrent river to get to the other side, you must boldly step out onto the street and without stopping, walk in a measured pace across the street. Scooters, cars and bikes will move around you. They slow down or speed up and weave through eachother to avoid hitting you. They have more to loose by hurting you, than you have to loose from being hit. If there is an accident where someone is hurt, their scooters are impounded for 3 months and if they kill someone, they have to pay the victim's income for the rest of thier lives. They won't hit you. To avoid this, they lay on thier horns to let everyone know where they are; the problem becomes that the whole city is a live symphony of honks, horns and beeps that meld together.

Your only job is to keep moving, do not stop unless there is a scooter directly in front of you. Also, do not run or rush, give the drivers enough time to figure out the best way to avoid you. The first time I stepped into traffic, it was surreal. It went against every instinct in my body and like a normal person I was watching oncoming traffic and half way through, froze like deer in headlights. We all know what happens to the deer... Fortunately, the drivers swerved around me, cutting off and almost running into everyone on either side of them and nearly caused a wreck. I found it nearly impossible to overcome the instinct to stop when I saw 10 scooters zooming right at me. My trick to avoid this, which adds a whole new level of excitement, danger and naughtiness, became to simply not look. I kept my eyes resolutely fixed on my destination across the street and ignored the horns I knew where directed at me. Sure, I squealed when a motor bike whizzed by so close it ruffled my shorts, but I lived to cross another street and the scooter driver got to their destination