Hanoi may be the capital of Vietnam, but it wasn’t as international or as urban as I’d expected. That said, there are a fair number of historic buildings.
A pyramid, maybe..
This is where Vietnam’s war hero Ho Chi Minh lies at rest. It was a hot day and we had to queue for ages to get in. Inside there’s just a single coffin, and that’s it. Hmm.. Every corridor was packed with soldiers standing guard, which made me a bit nervous. Photography is banned inside, along with any kind of noise, so we went in and came out very quietly.
A temple that is supposedly very old
It looks a few hundred years old, but I can’t remember the details.. I took this during a short break in the park out back, after a quick look at Ho Chi Minh’s body.
Inside the temple..
Looks like a Thousand-Armed Guanyin. The north was heavily influenced by China, so both the food and the religious life have a strong Chinese flavor.
On the way to see the wreckage of a B-52 bomber..
It felt like a faithful re-creation of a Korean hillside shantytown from the ’70s and ’80s. Somehow it looked familiar..
Street scene
This is the bomber’s wreckage.
It sits in a neighborhood like this.
Pretty hard to get to for a tourist spot..
Even in daylight, the swarms of motorbikes are something else..
Waiting to ride a cyclo.
Taking a cyclo for a loop around the area.
Roughly what it feels like..
We pushed our way forward through countless motorbikes and cars. A timid guy like me could never ride a bike on roads like that, not in a million years..
Couples who ride their motorbikes glued together, day and night..
In this heat, what are they even doing..
A woman walking around selling snacks
Riding a cyclo seems nice because it isn’t dangerous.
Foreigners are bound to be targets, after all, especially naive Japanese tourists carrying lots of cash. I’m not Japanese, but since I was traveling with Japanese people, I stayed on my guard too.
A traditional old-style market right in the middle of the city.
Korea used to be like this too.. I remember those days, but as a country develops, places like this all end up turning into supermarkets.