15.04 - Day 18 - Hanoi to ... Overnight Train, Vietnam
Wednesday 15th April
Hanoi to overnight train Southbound Vietnam
Temperature Min 26, Max 34
22,581 steps
My early to bed last night at Eliana Ruby has me awake from 5:00am. I wait until 5:45am before venturing out assuming by now the city will have started to wake. Turns out I'm way behind - our hotel alleyway is in full swing.
You could live your whole life in this 80 metre long, 4 metre wide alley: shoemakers, laundry, chemist, convenience store (that is really a trolley with shelves pushed to the front of the house), multiple fruit & veg shops (again just spilling out the front of the house), bakery, meat stalls, fish, eels in large water bowls, cafe at one end. Then bring in the walkers, the cyclists, the scooters and it's abuzz.
So too is the main road I join, heading south, past a hospital - people pouring in despite it only being 6:00am. Rows and rows of scooters left parked on the pavement. I reach the bottom of Lake Ho Hoan Kien where there are dozens of groups of mostly senior women roughly following the dancing/stretching routines from memory, boomboxes blasting out music, each fighting for attention. Around the lake I walk back up to the hotel collecting a Ca Phe Muoi - salted ice coffee for my troubles.
The five of us have breakfast with the enthusiastic Mai - who is also enthusiastically suggesting we should name check her in a Google review. We head out, retracing my walk from earlier. It's just on the edge of the Old Town such that the European faces are much less evident and demonstrates this is a city not just built on or for tourists. Mema and Pawpaw visit Don Ngoc Son temple on the lake admiring the bright colours hidden from the shoreline.
The easy reward is a set of Mixu ice-creams as we wend back to the hotel to check out by midday. We're on an overnight train later not leaving until 7:45pm so we use the level 2 mezzanine as a base for the rest of the day. Lunch is a few minutes away at Pho 10 Ly Quoc Su. Imitations of this place have popped up due to its popularity - I guess if all the shops are selling fake North Face tops, football shirts, Crocs, luggage why not fake restaurants?
We queue briefly but don't/can't waste time with the menu - its Pho or nothing: your only choice is your cut of beef and how well cooked you want it. There's no airs and graces about this place, but the Pho is tasty - unless you're Sienna and Seb who share one portion between them and top it up afterwards with a Banh Mi from Tooth Alley.
A Grab picks us up, crossing over Train Street taking us to the Ho Chi Min Mausoleum. We hadn't accounted for the no-knees-or-shoulders-to-be-exposed requirement, luckily an industrious skirt and shawl seller is just around the corner doing a predictable trade. Now Mema is armed or rather wrapped in the shawl, we get past the stern faced soldiers and enter the vast open expanse in front of a squat columned mausoleum housing Ho Chi Min.
Even if it were open (but it's closed today) I'm not sure we would have felt the need to file past the former prime minister and president lying in state. We amble around the One Pillar Pagoda which is cute - less cute are some of the Karma examples on a large wall. We scoot, in so much as anyone scoots in this heat, to the front of the mausoleum for the hourly Changing of the Guard.
Two guards in crisp white outfits are marched from around the corner exchanging places with the pair currently stationed at the large front door. Having had their uniform checked, the two new guards will remain in place for the next hour, meanwhile a third one, nicknamed Sour Face by Sienna, will walk about shrieking their whistle if anyone steps on the curb (not us), crouches on the floor (Seb), puts a bag on the ground (Mema). Worth seeing we reflect in our Grab - and a much more appropriate flag size then the Chiang Koi Shek memorial in Taipei.
We're looking for Sweet Street but we want a middle ground between Eastern and Western sweet treats; the street we're dropped at we're way out of our depth knowing what any of the foods might be. Trusting my memory we walk east and do at least find a Sugarcane Juice man. I get one for Mema and Pawpaw to try and then we instantly get another - the juice they get out of a stick is impressive.
Onwards we do find Pick 'n' Mix Alley where Sienna and Seb gleefully dip their hands into cylindrical containers two feet tall filled to the brim with multi-coloured wrapped sweets. That box ticked, we stroll back to Eliana Ruby through Lantern Lane then Yellow-Lotus-Flower-Light Street before knowing we're close to home when seeing Hardware Street and Steel Street.
After a break, in an effort to add more Streets to our collection (I forgot to mention Sunglass Street by the lake), Pawpaw and I pop out collecting a Salted Ice coffee for our troubles to walk to Ladder Street - about five shops all selling bamboo ladders of varying lengths lent against the wall outside the shops.
As we prepare to leave Hanoi there's a few rounds of cards, a round of showers, then Mema and Pawpaw get one Grab to the train station whilst Sienna, Seb and I collect mango and avocado smoothies, along with a bag full of triple skewer Banh Mi's from one of our original haunts and then collect our own Grab to the station.
Mema and Pawpaw seem almost agitated when we arrive at 7:05pm - that's because they thought the train was at 7:00pm. There's a bit more time in the bank though until it departs at 7:45pm giving us time to find our cabins on board. Mema, Pawpaw, Sienna and Seb have one 4 bed cabin to themselves, I'm next door joined by a Frenchman soon after.
Pawpaw admires the old engine that's going to haul us through the night, each carriage with its own attendant in charge of proceedings. This includes the offer of a foot spa soon after leaving bang on time, which Mema and Sienna say Yes to for 70,000 ($3.50). So as we're racing the scooters of Hanoi alongside the rumbling train, feet are being de-stressed in a wooden bucket of warm water.
The cabin is compact but clean and comes with drinks and snacks and that's before the food cart is pushed along the corridor “ Food Drinks Beer” is his refrain. Not long after eating the rolls it's time to bed down, Sienna and Seb on the top bunks above Mema and Pawpaw. I'm joined in my cabin at Ninh Binh station by two more, who don eye masks and instantly fall asleep. It takes me a little longer to nod off as the train trundles south.
