Hooked On Hanoi

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday June 21, 2003

Anthony Denni

The Vietnamese capital has a quiet charm that gradually seduces the visitor, writes Anthony Dennis.

In the shaded courtyard of a cafe called Au Lac the various languages of the expatriate clientele struggle to be heard above the incessant tooting of what sounds like a million motorcycle horns on the surrounding streets.

But in the middle of the French quarter, and with the city revolving around you, this is the perfect place from which to begin a visit to Hanoi. It's also the most perfectly obvious place, apparently. At a nearby table sits the American woman from my Thai Airways flight from Bangkok (she has finally removed her surgical mask - even the most SARS-fearing tourist has to eat, after all).

Au Lac is located in the grounds of the kind of elegant, converted French villa that abounds in Hanoi. Here a club sandwich comes on a baguette and you can order your coffee in any style you desire - preferably the French-favoured drip approach in keeping with the surrounds. Hanoi, a city of 3.5 million, does a convincing Gallic impersonation.

Little more than an hour after arriving in the Vietnamese capital I already feel I've been transported back to an era I've only read about. Directly across the road is the whitewashed backside of the rambling, French-owned Metropole Hotel, the embodiment of luxury. The suite once occupied by Graham Greene is up there, in the old wing. He moved in in 1951 and worked on The Quiet American while earning his keep as a correspondent for Paris Match. The suite has been faithfully restored and comes with a commemorative plaque and a suitably giddy tariff.

On the other side of Au Lac's wrought-iron fence streetwise motorbike taxi and cyclo (pedicab) drivers tout for trade. Shoeshine boys wander hopefully among expats and tourists; nearby a teenage bookseller is desperately trying to hawk his stock.

"Please buy something, Sir," he pleads. "It's been very quiet day. If you buy one of my books I'll never forget you."

There are many who regard Hanoi as one of Asia's most attractive cities. It's definitely one of the cheapest for tourists. But you suspect that, as a holiday destination for foreigners, its time has yet to come.

Hanoi fully embraced tourism little more than a decade ago, which perhaps explains some of its appeal. For many visitors it is a stepping stone to the hill tribes of Sapa and the watery wonders of Halong Bay. Yet Hanoi is also a destination in its own right, a place where you can wander for a few days or more absorbing the flavour of the streets, the people and, of course, the food.

Despite its troubled 1000-year history the city still feels largely untrammelled and remarkably undamaged by the wars that pummelled it. It's a sensual place, a city that seduces the visitor not so much with its sights but with the vignettes that gradually form in your mind.

As I sit in the back of a taxi en route to Hanoi's Old Quarter my gaze becomes fixed on a young woman on a motorcycle, travelling at speed beside me. Like many Hanoi women she's immaculately dressed, and, yes, beautiful. Perched upright on the bike with the perfect deportment characteristic of Vietnamese women, her face is wrapped in a scarf to protect her against the sun and smog. All I can make out from my moving vantage point are her eyes above the fringe of the scarf.

Then she notices my stares and suddenly removes her scarf, revealing all her face. She stares back at me but it's impossible to tell if she is offended or flattered. Then she vanishes, swallowed up by the tooting, honking, beeping two-wheeled swarm ahead of her.

As I take a cyclo to the markets one morning a young female passenger on a motorbike pulls up alongside me with a "Welcome to Hanoi" T-shirt fully unfurled, imploring me to buy it as we both travel down the street.

The next day I spot a pair of women in conical hats delivering freshly cut flowers on motorcycles. The bikes are ingeniously covered in fresh November lilies, their tyres barely visible as they race along the street. The flowers are being watered in the morning drizzle.

As I stroll by tranquil Hoan Kiem (Lake of the Restored Sword) on the edge of the Old Quarter one evening after dinner, a middle-aged madam on a moped, followed by her younger charge in requisite high heels, draws up beside me, offering her services. "You want massage?" she asks. "We go on motorbike to madam hotel - $US30 [$45]."

Hanoi exists on a human scale absent from most Asian cities. It's built around a network of silvery, mist-shrouded lakes flanked by French-style boulevards lined with Belle Epoque architecture (most now used as government offices) - romantic and well-preserved artefacts of the French colonial era.

The French were unloved colonisers but they did provide the city with a sumptuous aesthetic legacy. It was disturbing to hear an Australian colleague, who lived in Asia for many years, declare that Vietnam's communist rulers would have been quite content had the Americans flattened the capital. Then they would have been able to rebuild the city on the severe Soviet lines they admired. Fortunately only a few signs exist today of what they had in mind.

Near the Lake of the Restored Sword, providing a contrast to the restrained sophistication of the French Quarter, is Old Hanoi, a vibrant maze of 36 streets that combine to form the preserved artisan and merchant district.

Every street once had a distinct purpose, specialising in everything from silver to silk, hats to herbal remedies. Today many of the streets still tend to specialise - there's even one section dedicated to selling cheap sunglasses - but some have changed their roles.

The silk street is now the jewellery street and the peach street is now the watch street. Internet cafes are encroaching and are becoming ubiquitous enough to satisfy the most homesick backpacker.

As you walk through the Old Quarter in the afternoons, communist propaganda blares from loudspeakers on telephone poles and men congregate in olive green, military-style pith helmets decorated with the red star. Peasant women in conical hats, loose cotton blouses and trousers waddle past, stooped by the wooden poles suspended across their shoulders to support heavy baskets of fruit or vegetables.

With so much happening around you in this frenetic place it's quite easy to miss one of the most fascinating sights of the Old Quarter. Pause for a moment and pop your head inside one of the dark, narrow doorways to discover the world of the tube or tunnel house, unique to Hanoi.

The French taxed the Vietnamese on the basis of the width of their street frontage and the Vietnamese, in response, cannily built the narrowest possible entrances to their homes.

If you want to see directly inside one of the houses it does help to have a Vietnamese speaker with you to smooth the way in such a conservative, communist-run city. Today I'm fortunate to be accompanied by a bright local guide, Hai, arranged through my travel agent in Sydney.

He leads me down a dank stone passageway off an Old Quarter street, past a kindergarten at the street front, until we re-enter the light at a tiny courtyard with a cumquat tree in the middle. From here we can see, through an open doorway, an elderly man sitting on his sofa watching television. I ask Hai to see if the man will allow us to look inside his house.

Soon the old man's wife and niece appear, ushering us into their home, propping us down on the sofa beside the old man and popping open cans of Coca-Cola for us.

Mr and Mrs Hanh, 80 and 76 respectively, and their 17-year-old niece Linh say that, typical of the tube houses, the small space above and behind is shared with three other families. It's a modest existence, lacking in privacy, but there are the vitality and convenience of the Old Quarter just outside their door.

My visit to Hanoi coincided with the US-led invasion of Iraq. Mr Hahn, who can recall the war against the French and served in the army against the Americans, has been following the events in the Middle East. Hai attempts to interpret his reaction to the war, bluntly explaining that he thinks it's just another reckless exercise by the "crazy Westerners".

My hotel, the Sofitel Plaza (the tallest building in low-rise Hanoi), is beside the lake from which a US Air Force pilot, shot down over the city during the American War - as the Vietnamese call it - was rescued before being installed at the Hanoi Hilton for a long stay.

These days you have to look hard for evidence of the wars as Vietnam enjoys its longest period of peace for more than half a century. If the ordinary Vietnamese people still harbour any ill will to the West, they certainly don't show it.

But the painful memories clearly linger. The Vietnamese had been following the events in Iraq with the interest of those with bitter shared experience. (A few weeks after my return to Australia the Vietnamese proved once again their skill at wearing down an enemy by managing to control the SARS outbreak that had been concentrated on the capital).

Early one morning, I take a taxi back to Hoan Kiem for breakfast at a waterside cafe and a stroll around the lake - a ritual for health-conscious Hanoians.

On a park bench a man is a reading a newspaper, with "Baghdad" the only word discernible in a headline. In the drizzle an old man is using a tissue to dry a set of bathroom scales used to weigh kilo-conscious walkers. Further around the lake there's a woman trying to offload the last of her baguettes from the breakfast rush. An elderly gentleman in a fetching fedora is sitting on his stationary bike, one foot propped on a concrete park bench, eating rice with his fingers from a bamboo leaf parcel.

One warm afternoon Hai takes me to a bia hoi - one of the al fresco beer halls that can be found all over the city. He chooses one near the Opera House in the French Quarter. It's not designed for a lanky Westerner: there are plastic tables and chairs so tiny they remind me of the kindergarten back near the tube house. But I quickly feel at home.

Hai says the beer is ridiculously cheap - a single US dollar buys five beers - which is just as well as it seems to have been watered down.

A group of boisterous youths have stripped off their shirts in the afternoon's heat and are getting drunk while a boy moves from table to table selling packets of chewing gum and providing neck and knee massages to patrons in the hope of a few thousand dong (less than $1).

In Vietnam, wherever you go, whatever you visit, there's always more than one thing happening.

On my last night in Hanoi, as I prepare to leave the capital on the 1726-kilometre train journey south, a near-midnight departure allows time for me to drop by Au Lac for a final fling. Leaving Hanoi is almost melancholy; it's the sort of city you succumb to, like the drip, drip, drip of one of those French coffees.

DESTINATION HANOI/HO CHI MINH CITY

WHEN TO VISIT

Hanoi has four distinct seasons. The cool days and cold nights of winter last from December to March; the hottest months are April to September. Ho Chi Minh City's weather is hot or warm all year. April-October are the rainiest.

GETTING THERE

Vietnam Airlines departs Sydney three times a week. Flights start at $899 a person in low season, but must be combined with accommodation and or tour arrangements. Phone 1300 888 028. Airport taxes of about $110 a person are extra.

Thai Airways flies to Bangkok daily with connections to Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City for $1159, plus taxes of $110. Phone 1300 651 960.

Until September 15, Travel Indochina, in association with Vietnam Airlines, is offering free return international air fares and upgrades to some of Vietnam's hotels with bonus free nights. The deals are available only to customers who join selected Travel Indochina "small group journeys" to Vietnam. (The author travelled in Vietnam with Travel Indochina.) Details, phone 1300 365 355, www.travelindochina.com.au

EATING THERE

The simplest pleasure is a breakfast of pho (rice noodle soup) while a meal for two at a smart restaurant won't cost much more than $30.

In Ho Chi Minh City cocktails at the garish rooftop bar of the Rex Hotel, a former war correspondents' haunt, is an essential experience.

In Hanoi the more deluxe drinking hole at the Metropole Hotel (15 Pho Ngo Quyen Street, phone 826 6919), which the author Graham Greene once favoured, is a popular spot.

Recommended Hanoi cafes include Au Lac (57 Ly Thai To Street, phone 825 7807) and Little Hanoi (21 Hang Gai Street, phone 928 5333). For restaurant meals, try the beautiful Seasons of Hanoi (95B Quan Thanh Street, phone 843 5444) or the more casual Three Mountains Cafe (34 Ba Trieu Street, phone 934 7021), a popular lunch spot.

In Ho Chi Minh City visit the atmospheric Temple Club (29-31 Ton That Thiep, District 1, phone 829 9244). It boasts the city's most stylish bar as well as a respected colonial-style restaurant. On the rooftop of the Temple Club is 3T, a casual and lively Vietnamese barbecue spot.

STAYING THERE

Be wary of hotels such as the famous Continental, which are operated by the Vietnamese government-run and infamous Saigon Tourist. The hotels may tempt travellers with their boundless nostalgia but they have a reputation for being both poorly managed and tacky. Stick to the reliable though more expensive international chains though be aware that sundries, such as phone calls, room service and laundry, are often charged in US dollars.

MONEY

Vietnam's national currency, the dong, can't be bought outside Vietnam. It comes in large denominations so don't exchange too many US or Australian dollars at once or you'll need a box to carry it.

ATMs aren't as common in Vietnam as in other parts of Asia so take traveller's cheques in US dollars. It is also useful to carry a small amount of US dollars with you.

DANGERS

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are generally safe, though the Australian Government includes Vietnam in its overall warnings about terrorism in Asia. Be vigilant on trains, at stations and on streets popular with tourists - and pickpockets.

In Ho Chi Minh City the green and white taxi company is the most reliable. Make sure the meters are switched on. Tourists are sometimes mugged by audacious "motorcycle cowboys" who snatch watches and handbags. Carry cash and valuables in a money belt under your clothing.

© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald

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