Vietnam is quite a long and skinny country. Almost 2,000 km from the north to the south.
It has the world's 14th largest population - about 92 million and approximately 7 million of them live in Hanoi which is the capital of the country.
Hanoi is shown on the map below - it is dead centre about a 1/4 of the way down from the top.
Central Hanoi is a helter-skelter kind of place. Hardly any cars but thousands of motor scooters. In fact we were told there are over 5 million scooters registered to owners in Hanoi.
This is a typical scene at every stop light.
And there are very few stop lights. Most intersections are not controlled. More on that further down.
In Hanoi Scenic put us up in a Sofitel Hotel - top notch! No complaints!
We stopped in the Bamboo Bar on the second night and had a couple glasses of wine each. The restaurant we'd just eaten at (genuine Vietnamese cuisine) did not serve wine with the meal - only beer. Anyway, the bill was 1,962,089 VND or Dong. Not cheap no matter how you slice it. About $87 US dollars - for four glasses of house wine!!!!
Anyway, the surroundings were nice.
Here we are with Lý Thái Tổ who is regarded as the founder of the city of Hanoi.
You may wonder what all the marks are above some of the vowels in the guy's name - it is how they (Vietnamese speakers) know how to pronounce their words. One of our guides explained that the Vietnamese word "ma" can mean up to six different things depending on the tone of the "a". I imagine it is a very hard language for a gringo to learn. Here's a wiki page that explains everything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_language
Right across the street from our hotel room was a park. A well used park. Below is a shot of the sidewalk that runs around it. There's all kinds of things going on
A lady has set up a restaurant right on the pavement. She has a small stove and a basket of food. People come by and she cooks for them.
These guys are having some sort of business meeting.
And this is a bride and her groom. They come here to try on different dresses. Who knows what that's all about. See the video following.
The bride in this video is not the one in the picture above but the routine was the same. Try on one dress after another.
We were walking around on the day we arrived and this huge group of school kids all dressed up as Santa went by on the street. They really seem to like Christmas here.
As noted elsewhere Vietnam is a Buddhist country although there are quite a few Christians too. There are many temples and pagodas. Our guide explained the difference between the two but I can't recall.
The interior of one.
The exterior of a different temple.
And another interior.
A close up of Buddha.
Santa costumes for sale
This is entrance to the Hanoi Hilton. It's where US prisoners of war we taken and kept (most notably John McCain, US senator from Arizona), sometimes for years, during the Vietnam war. We didn't go inside as it wasn't part of our tour - we just saw the outside. We thought we'd go back later on our own but another couple with our group whose tour had included the interior said it was pretty much "propagandized". Pictures of happy, smiling US prisoners tending their gardens, playing volleyball, etc. - not at all the way it really was so we decided to skip it. We found out later that most of the prison has been converted to other purposes and only a small part remains for tourist purposes.
A couple more.
One of the things that was really different here is the amount of business that takes place right on the sidewalk. In Canada and the US the sidewalk is for walking. Cars and scooters park on the street or in a parking lot and business takes place inside the store.
Here the sidewalk is for parking scooters and doing business. Inside the store is where people sleep and live. And the street is for pedestrian walking.
The second day we were in Hanoi the tour company arranged a tour of the city centre for all 22 of us on Cyclos. Cyclos are basically a bicycle with a seat mounted on the front.
Here I am with Joan, one of our group and also a Canadian - from Vancouver. The guy taking the picture thought we were a pair but Joan was here with her partner Eylene.
As I mentioned earlier, traffic is nutty here - scooters and bikes going this way and that way, cars and pedestrians- even huge tour buses competing for space on the skinny streets. I don't know how many people get killed here each year but it's got to be a few.
Here's a video of the cyclo trip where. It's just over six minutes long so feel free to skip ahead or just ignore it all together.
A couple fine pics...
A very unusual street...almost no scooters...
A Christian church...
That's all for Hanoi.