Glasgow to Hanoi

We had chosen to fly direct from Glasgow to Dubai and then on to Hanoi to avoid the need to change in London. We had a couple of hours in Dubai airport and even though it was between 12 and 2 in the morning the airport was very busy but we were soon on our way again to Hanoi where we arrived around 12:00 midday. I had booked a taxi from the airport via the hotel and the journey was out first introduction to Hanoi traffic.

If you have never experienced Vietnam traffic it is a site to behold. There are plenty of cars on the roads but their number is dwarfed by the thousands of mopeds and scooters that weave their way around the roads happily beeping their horns, not out of anger but more as an ‘I’m here’ signal. The scooters have multiple uses transporting not just individuals but often entire families with small child standing in the well in front of the seat. Also scooters as pack horses loaded with boxes or barrels often piled frighteningly high and seemingly on the verge of collapse. But like so much of the activity on the roads we witnessed it never happened. With a decided lack of transport infrastructure like traffic lights, give ways and lane markings it would seem that everything would grind to a halt but through a mixture of good driving, a bit of courtesy and pushing your luck things seemed to work and the traffic flowed in its own haphazard way. To be honest we didn’t see a single accident in our whole time in Vietnam.

We asked a couple of people how you learn to drive in Vietnam but we never received an answer as though the translation for ‘learning to drive’ didn’t exist. Perhaps experience from a young age of the working chaos of the roads is all the training that is needed. There is a fear that as cars get more affordable to ordinary Vietnamese then the congestion on the roads may become undrivable.

Our driver navigated to our hotel which was the Golden Legend Boutique Hotel This turned out to be an excellent base for our time in Hanoi. The room was an excellent size with 2 queen sized bed, everything was spotless, there was a buffet breakfast and the staff were fantastic and could not do enough for us. On top of all that the hotel was incredibly cheap by western standards and only a short walk to the old quarter of Hanoi.

It always seems a bit of a lottery when booking hotels yourself and you are really only able to base your choice on reviews of what you assume are previous clients and to some extent cost. Once you start reading reviews it soon becomes obvious that some reviewers are incredibly picky and will rate a hotel or restaurant down for the smallest of reasons. In general for places with a large number of reviews the common consensus seems correct and certainly in all of our cases for hotels and restaurants we found the consensus of reviews to be very accurate.

We stowed our bags in the room and then headed out to explore Hanoi. As I said we were very near the Old Quarter and walked through the tightly packed streets which comprised of continuous shop fronts selling everything from coffee and food to motorbike parts and kitchen utensils. The streets were bustling with people and countless scooters and mopeds which darted between people and other bikes seamlessly with just the often heard toot of their horns. We soon learned that crossing the road was more a leap of faith as no-one was going to stop for you but would happily weave around you. Even on the busiest roads it was just a matter of heading across or else be left waiting a long time on the kerb.

We walked past St Jospeh’s Cathedral and on to Hoan Kiem Lake and visited Ngoc Son temple on the small island at the north end of the lake. Once we had looked round the temple we headed North for our restaurant. This took us into the many streets of the old quarter with their incredible mix of architecture from some very old buildings to French colonial style mansions.

We ate in a vegan restaurant called Chayfood which was excellent with many Vietnamese dishes.

We then walked back down to the lake and as it was a Friday and after 7 pm there were no cars and mostly no scooters on the road round the lake and a lot of tourists and locals were walking in the warm evening, stopping at cafes or eating ice creams. We walked around part of the lake and visited the Ba Da Pagoda before returning to our hotel.