This post was written in 2009. Some information may be out of date.
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.