Vietnam, Hanoi: Scams and Gruesome Sights
Travel Location: Ha-Noi,Vietnam
This journal entry actually marks the second time we arrived in Hanoi. The first time, if you remember from our journal entry for Tam Coc, we were abandoned in Hanoi by the open bus we took from Hue, all the time thinking we were going to be dropped off in Ninh Binh. We won’t harp on again about the hassle we experienced, so if you want to know more about it, go back two journal entries and you will get what you need to know.
After finishing our tour to Tam Coc and Cuc Phuong National Park, we were taken back to Hanoi and dropped off at Thuy Lam Hotel in the old quarter area of Vietnam’s capital city. We were itching for a relaxing evening and we decided to find somewhere to eat nearby a cinema, so we could see a film afterwards. The guy at reception at Thuy Lam Hotel mentioned a cinema in Vincom Towers, which we later found out was a new and modern shopping complex in Hanoi. However, he didn’t entirely sell us on Vincom, so we decided to try the Lonely Planet’s suggestion first, to see what English language movies were playing at Fanslands Cinema.
You will see skinned, headless frogs that were still hopping around in the basket they were thrown into
Lonely Planet, as helpful and resourceful as it has been for us on this trip, has been wrong on many occasions. This has been more a result of Southeast Asia’s rapid growth and modernisation than Lonely Planet’s inadequacies, so we can’t entirely blame them. However, when we arrived at Fanslands and the only film on offer was a black and white Audrey Hepburn film from a few decades ago, we thought we might give Vincom Towers a try.
All the trekking in Cuc Phuong during the day had taken its toll and we decided to get a taxi to Fanslands Cinema. Our taxi driver was the second person in Hanoi to scam us; the first person was the tour company guy who abandoned us, on the side of the road in Hanoi two days earlier, when our open bus forgot to drop us off in Ninh Binh. Apparently, we flagged down a “private” taxi that still had a meter but the meter’s price ran up about 10 times faster than a legitimate taxi meter would have done.
In the space of 15 minutes, we owed a taxi fare of 120,000 Vietnamese Dong (around ₤4 or $7), but it should have been only 12,000 Dong (40p or $0.75) at that point in the journey. We thought something was fishy when we noticed the meter was already at 90,000 Dong and by the time we got the driver to stop, it had gone up an extra 30,000 Dong in about 30 seconds!
We argued for a while with the driver and ended up paying him 90,000 Dong to avoid any physical assault – he looked like the type of guy who may have been carrying a knife or some other weapon. Luckily, we were only a block away from Fanslands Cinema, so we walked the rest of the way. After agreeing that we weren’t in the mood to see Audrey Hepburn on screen, we decided to find Vincom Towers to see what the fuss was about. Having known that we were scammed by the taxi driver, we didn’t want to get scammed again, so we went into a really nice hotel that was fortunately nearby, and asked the concierge to help us flag down a proper taxi driver who would not cheat us out of our hard earned and saved money.
The next cinema was ten minutes away and we only paid 15,000 Dong for the taxi journey; our confidence in getting taxis in Hanoi increased tenfold. Vincom Towers surprised us when we arrived; it was even nicer than Saigon’s Diamond Plaza. On the top floor of the shopping mall, we found a nice Italian restaurant and had some good pizza and lasagne. The staff members in the restaurant were really funny when they spoke to us because they clearly had a ball practising their English pronunciation. At the cinema, there were many English language films on offer and we ended up seeing “Primeval” which was a silly, but enjoyable, horror film.
After having breakfast in the hotel the next morning, we decided to work on our travel journal. We spent a few hours writing up one of our stories, and as we tried to post the journal entry online, the internet on the computer we were using locked up. We had saved the story as a document on the computer (this had happened to us before so we thought we normally did this just in case) and we didn’t think anything bad would happen when we rebooted the computer to try posting our story again on the travel website. However, as soon as the computer started up again, we noticed that all of the documents on the desktop had been deleted. Apparently, the computer was set up to clear all files and changes which had been made by a previous user when it was restarted, and we lost everything we had written!
Many things had been planned on that day, but we decided it would be better to spend time rewriting the journal while all of the information was fresh in our heads. However, we also needed to look into travel to China, so Dan decided to search for a trustworthy travel agency that we could use to book our bus journey to Nanning, the first main city in China that you can travel to from Hanoi. Kyle got stuck with re-writing the journal, to his joy.
Lise and Tarjei, the Norwegians we travelled with to Tam Coc and Cuc Phuong National Park, were quite envious of the cinema experience that we had the night before, and since they wanted a relaxing, comfortable night out, we all decided to see a film together later that evening. We needed to withdraw money from an ATM machine as we were running low on cash; therefore, we headed to Vincom Towers a little early in order to do so. This was the beginning of many problems for us, as none of the machines we tried seemed to work. After trying all of the machines in the area around the mall, we decided to look for an internet cafe to call Barclays Bank and find out what the problem was.
No one around Vincom spoke English, but finally we ran across a guy from South Korea who spoke enough Vietnamese to translate for us. We found out about an internet cafe nearby and we headed there hoping that there would be Skype facilities, so we could call Barclays. “Nearby” was actually a 15-minute walk and, when we arrived, the packed internet cafe had one computer open that did not have Skype. None of the other computers looked like they would have the software, either, and when we tried to download Skype, it would have taken over an hour due to a very slow internet speed. We decided that our best bet, at this time, would be to return to our hotel and try to make the phone call from there.
Since we were running out of time (and money), we had to flag down a motorbike taxi. Riding through Hanoi’s congested traffic at night, on the back of a motorbike whose driver reeked heavily of alcohol, was not a very reassuring experience. Once we were safely inside Thuy Lam Hotel, we ask reception how much a call to England would cost. We had to laugh out loud when they said the call would cost over $4 per minute, and we quickly asked where the nearest internet cafe with Skype facilities was located (the hotel, unfortunately did not have Skype loaded onto their computers).
Luck was with us, as there was an internet cafe a couple of minutes down the street. Also, we bumped into Lise and Tarjei, just as they were heading back to Thuy Lam Hotel in order to clean up and head towards the cinema. Once we explained our ATM problems to them, they were happy to wait at the hotel for us, so we could all share a taxi to the cinema. Skype was ready to use at the internet cafe and in five minutes, Barclays had removed all card blocks, so ATM usage would not be a problem.
One good thing about banks keeping an eye out for card fraud is that all strange activity on an account triggers an alarm that blocks a card. The bad thing is that when you are travelling abroad to so many different countries, some of which are notorious for card fraud, you often find yourselves panicking because your card suddenly stops working, as we often have found the case to be.
With wallets full of cash, we hopped into a taxi with Lise and Tarjei and headed to the cinema, arriving just in time to see “Codename: The Cleaner”, a comedy with Cedric the Entertainer and Lucy Liu. After the film, we headed back into the old quarter to have a late dinner. We ate burgers at a place that Lise and Tarjei ate at the night before – Papa Joe’s. The food was good and the service was great.
Our next day, our final full day in Vietnam, was a day packed full of activities. We had to visit the Mongolian Embassy to obtain visas for our trip there in June. Also, we had to fit in as many sights as possible since we didn’t make it to any the day before. Finally, we had to book our bus to China, to ensure that we would indeed be leaving Vietnam as planned.
We woke up early and hopped on motorbike taxis to be taken to the Mongolian Embassy. The address that we found on the internet was no longer correct; when we arrived at the place, it had been taken over by the Chinese. We were both quite tired when we woke up early that morning, so tired that we had forgotten the most important item for obtaining a visa… our passports. Whilst Kyle tried to find out where the Mongolian Embassy was located, Dan flagged down another motorbike taxi to go back to the hotel and retrieve these vital documents.
When Dan returned with the passports, Kyle had received the new Mongolian Embassy address from the Chinese Embassy employee who was kind enough to help him, and after a 15-minute motorbike taxi ride, we arrived at the correct embassy. There was more panic during the ride as our driver seemed to be a bit lost when searching for the embassy. We finally got there and were faced with even more worries.
The embassy was closed on Mondays and the day we chose to sort out our visas was indeed a Monday. We rang the doorbell to the embassy anyway, and luckily someone answered the door. After begging and pleading for several minutes, the guy agreed to process our visa applications, but he doubled the price; instead of paying $30 each, we ended up paying $60 each.
The man told us to return around 3pm with $120 in cash. We had enough money to pay for the visas in Vietnamese Dong, thinking that this would be okay. However, the Mongolian Embassy in Hanoi only takes US Dollars. Did you know that banks in Vietnam do not change their own currency into US Dollars? They don’t actually exchange their own currency for any other currency. We ended up finding a dodgy gold jewellery shop where we trustfully handed over 2 million Vietnamese Dong to the owner, who left the store to change our money for us. He returned about ten minutes later with our cash and ended up only taking a small commission from us (less than $1); we were happy once we confirmed that the money was not counterfeit.
Money in hand, we had about four hours to kill before returning to the embassy to collect our passports. We were not far away from the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex and nearby attractions and, along the way, we walked around for about an hour, stopping off to have ice coffees and to take photographs of scary goods at local markets. All of the main attractions at Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum were also closed on Mondays, so we could only view things from a distance.
The photo album for this journal has many photographs from our walk that day, including some gruesome photos of local market delicacies, such as pig’s head, feet, tongues and hearts. You will see skinned, headless frogs that were still hopping around in the basket they were thrown into, and buckets full of snails and other sea creatures as well as some unknown things. We also saw a woman on a motorbike with a cage full of cats, heading towards a market we are glad we did not see.
Between the time we dropped off our passports at the embassy and the time we picked them up, we saw many local flavours of Hanoi, as we walked way off the tourist beaten path. It was actually quite nice that the Mongolian Embassy had been moved to a more remote location as we didn’t see any tourists for several hours.
When we returned to the embassy, our passports had been processed and our visas were attached inside. We were really happy to have sorted that out, as it meant we no longer had to worry about getting to Beijing in time to do it. We headed back to Hanoi’s old quarter and walked around some of the sights there for the next couple of hours. We visited Ho Hoan Kiem, “ho” means “lake” in Vietnamese, where a beautiful red bridge leads out to a temple called Den Ngoc Son on an island in the northern part the lake.
In the old quarter, we also visited an ancient house and a couple of other temples. Most of all, we enjoyed walking along the narrow streets, looking at the various shops and restaurants as we passed them by, and speaking with many of the locals busy at work. For dinner that evening, we asked reception at our hotel to recommend one of the places mentioned in our Lonely Planet. They suggested we try Brothers Cafe, which was our top choice, too. The place was a converted 300 year-old temple and served a gourmet buffet of freshly cooked food; we enjoyed a huge meal before heading back to Thuy Lam Hotel.
Leaving Hanoi the next morning was great. We had booked our bus tickets through Hanoi Blue Sky Hotel, which was a couple of doors down the street from our hotel. We went there to be picked up by a taxi and were taken to the long-distance bus terminal. The bus company used by the hotel was CTS, or China Travel Services, and we were very impressed by the quality and service offered by them. Getting across the Chinese border and to Nanning ended up being a much easier ordeal than we anticipated, and we quickly surmised that the two of us were very happy for a change of scene, to be entering a more developed nation than those we had been visiting for the past few months.
