Frozen in time, crumbling French colonial era buildings line the streets of Hoi An. Navigating the streets can be done on foot, but the oppressive heat makes riding a bicycle a breezier option. We pedaled around the narrow streets among an eclectic mix of motorbikes, vendors, camera toting tourists, and other cyclists - many times narrowly avoiding collisions. Practically every second shop in Hoi An is either a tailor or cobbler, with each shop displaying similar dresses, suits, jackets, shoes and pants in the front and rolls and rolls of fabric to choose from in the back. The concept of “just looking” doesn’t exist and within moments of stepping foot in a shop, we were seated with ice cold waters and catalogues of all the latest fashions placed in front of us. By the time the dust had settled, we both had new wardrobes and were off to the post office to mail it all home.

Awaiting our new wardrobe

We met Mr. Trung after a day full of appointments and fittings while having a drink in an outdoor restaurant. He started making small talk about Vietnam and we agreed the next day to hop on our bikes and follow him the three kilometers to his fishing village for a small tour. He showed us the ins and outs of their small fishing industry as well as the local pottery factory. We gave fishing a go ourselves but we only managed to catch a couple of guppies. Afterwards Mrs. Trung made us an incredible lunch while her daughter insisted we practice Vietnamese characters in her notebook.

The road to Hanoi hugged the coast and when we weren’t going through 6000 meter tunnels, we could see the glimmering water on our right and field after field of green rice paddies on our left. We arrived just after dawn and the morning exercises around Hoan Kiem Lake were already well underway. Hundreds of Vietnamese turned out in their spandex and leotards to practice Tai Chi in groups. We were hating that first day when bureaucracy involving our passports would hold us up in Hanoi for six days. In addition, on returning to our guesthouse we frantically searched for our air conditioning remote control only to find that the man that checked us in took it away while we were out and claimed that we had only a fan room and wanted to charge us more for the air conditioning that we had previously agreed was included. We were angry at his deceitful manner and for peace of mind we left for a more trustworthy hotel with a room twice the price. Once we were settled in the nicer place, we began to enjoy the extra time we had in Hanoi and discovered the city at our own pace.

Dodging traffic

My favorite part of Hanoi was wandering the busy streets. Swarms of bicycles and motorbikes loaded with goods ten times their weight weave past trains of cyclos giving tours of the city. Riding single file with one tourist per buggy, the guides looked more like a dozen mothers on a day out pushing their finicky cargo. Women in conical hats balancing two baskets of fruit with the poles on their shoulders miraculously made it through the throng of motorbikes to the other side of the street without dropping one precious pineapple. A man spray painted a mannequin silver on the meridian of a busy intersection while a pair of ladies consulted their map in traffic. A mother whizzed past with a tutu clad toddler hanging on to her skirt yielding to a woman whose white poodle stood on the scooter in front of her, paws at the helm and fuzzy ears flapping in the wind. Dozens of children in miniature motorized vehicles did laps around the floodlit square near the lake. I’m not sure who was having more fun, the children who thought they were driving or the fathers behind them with the remote controls.

Bia Hoi lovers

At a crossroads of four narrow streets, affectionately coined Bia Hoi Junction, we sat drinking the twelve cent beer (bia hoi) sold at every corner as our company morphed around us. Located in the heart of the Old Town and full of locals, travelers and vendors, it is a really interesting way to spend an afternoon. Especially when the police come by and our host scrambled to take away the miniature chairs from anyone sitting on the road and bustling them onto the curb. When the police were almost out of sight she would give them all back again. We also enjoyed watching women selling pineapples particularly when they “spontaneously” asked the non-buyer to balance the pole on their shoulders for a photograph again and again. I think the photographs go for more than the pineapples. In situations such as this one, I find that I prefer my Vietnam nickname of Madam instead of the “Hey Lady” I was coined with in Cambodia. Even when the receptionist at our hotel in Cambodia politely said “Goodbye Lady!” it still felt weird.

Seemingly a tradition in Communist countries, we visited the preserved, wax-like body of the venerated liberator of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh. It was as if he had passed away yesterday and we were attending his wake. The queue snaked around city blocks and rows of large fresh flower pieces were on display as you approached the mausoleum. White uniformed guards stood at regular intervals maintaining that all kept cameraless, quiet, orderly, single file and above all, appropriate. Brett was busted a few times for the forbidden act of putting his hands in his pockets. Inside the mausoleum, a perfectly preserved wax-like Ho Chi Minh lies prone in a glass case, an island in a sunken room and guarded over by six silent, motionless guards. Additional guards grabbed at our arms and hustled us along lest we get too long a look at the corpse. It was all rather eerie.

The show did not end there. The same line snaked past replicas of his modest dwelling, his two car garage and into his one room stilt house in true Disneyland fashion. The museum is one part photo gallery of Ho Chi Minh being a generally great guy while the upper level is a fantastic although questionable modern art interpretation of how communism relates to worldly events and trends. All Vietnamese are granted free admission to these sites and it seems to have become a pilgrimage especially for students. Communism in theory seems to be a solution for people less fortunate and maybe it is encouraging for them to see that a figure in a position of power like Ho Chi Minh may have lived a modest life without excess. If communism is as successful in Vietnam as this compound seems to indicate, is it really necessary to go to such extent to convince everyone of its merit?

Halong Bay sunset

Passports in hand, we were finally able to indulge in our much awaited and slightly postponed anniversary treat - an overnight boat cruise in Halong Bay. We arrived in the harbour with about fifty other busloads of tourists and set out on our trip, luckily we were only seven. In our spacious cabin there were windows on either side and we could lay back and watch as hundreds of haystack shaped limestone islands jutting out of the green waters came into view. By far the highlight of the trip was leaping off the third floor of the enormous junk into the abyss of warm but seemingly invisible ocean after dark. It wasn’t long before the glowing phosphorescence began dancing over our bodies as we swam through the black waters. It was all over too soon, and the next morning after a two hour paddle in the kayaks and another gorgeous seafood meal, we were on our way back to the harbour – and then on to China.

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