Hanoi 2 : Electric Boogaloo

After a busy first day in Hanoi and after an evening of alcoholic indulgence, we opted for a more sedate Day 2, setting the alarm for five minutes later, visiting seven or eight cultural sites and walking only a measly thirteen kilometres.

Much of our initial distance was achieved via periodic shuffling whilst queuing to see the body of Uncle Ho, not the friendly neighbourhood pimp but the affectionate nickname of the reverex revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

When first approaching the mausoleum from the road we spied a particularly long queue that Mark remarked made the queue for the Reichstag in Berlin, our to-date point of reference for exceptionally long queues within the context of the three of us holidaying together, look short. Alas, on rounding the corner to join this really long line we noted that this was the line for people with appointments to see Ho Chi Minh, which we didn't have.

Unable to fathom how to secure a spot in a dead man's diary, we continued walking round the complex to find the queue for people with a more spontaneous attitude toward cadaver ogling. We soon found the end of the queue, only it was the end at the end of the queue, as opposed to the start of the queue we could join. We followed the queue through the designated queuing space, out of the designated queuing space, out of the complex, onto the street, across six-or-seven other street, restraining our remarks that this actual queue made the queue we thought was the queue that made the Reichstag queue look short look short until we found the back.

We never actually found the back of the queue. In an astounding breach of ethics and Englishness, Mark surreptitiously found a gap into which we could queue-jump and myself and Woody, abiding sheep/accomplices that we are, followed. The woman in front of whom we jumped yelled some choice words at us, but she chose them in foreign so didn't sting too much. After much, though unfairly curtailed, queuing we reached the impressive mausoleum and walked through the viewing chamber, kept cool for freshness.

Uncle Ho has been dead for nearly fifty years. Still is. I've never seen an almost fifty-year post-human human before, but it's honestly not a good look. I think it's fair, and only possibly very slightly offensive, to say that yesterday's preserved giant turtle looks more like a turtle than Uncle Ho looks like a person. To each their own, but family/friends note when I die I don't wish to be placed in a cooled glass case in the centre of a tourism complex with visitor's centre, museum and gift shops. Just the museum will suffice.

After a brief walk round the museum, wherein limited translations required us to interpret ourselves the meaning of the various esoteric displays, and a quick climb/descent of the single-stilted pagoda the complex closed for lunch. We left and headed toward a temple, though the sheer abundance of temples in Hanoi render such statement meaningless. The temple was nice, though the sheer abundance of nice temples in Hanoi make etc.

We then walked, and I checked this afterward for accuracy, a billion miles north to visit another temple that was slightly nicer than the previous temple but didn't really satisfy the effort/reward ratio. We then took a taxi back, in which I left my bag containing my passport and so my holiday was over and we'd have to find the embassy and plead for my passage back home, until about five minutes later when the driver returned. We tend not to dwell on epic fails unless committed by persons other than myself, but still God bless that man, and his descendants, and his descendants' descendants, but that'll do.

The Ho Chi Minh complex reopened, we went for a stroll round Uncle Ho's former home and grounds, including Uncle Ho's fishing hole, Uncle Ho's stilt house and Uncle Ho's classic car collection. Being leader of a nationalist movement for more than three decades, fighting against the Japanese then French colonial powers and then the US-backed South Vietnamese and being President of North Vietnam for fifteen years clearly brings home the bacon.

Tired and with aching feet we returned hotelwards, coincidentally also in the direction of a temple, for a rest before our planned evening excursion. Walking back past the turtle-tower-temple we'd visited on Day One, now all lit up and pretty at night and likely one of the pictures I'll attach to this post, we went to a Water Puppets performance. It was genuinely very entertaining, even the parts I could only see through the conduit of some dickhead's phone who'd dickheadedly decided to film the first third of the show. It's hard to describe, but closest approximation would be Punch & Judy meets The Muppets on Ice, only the ice has melted due to global warming. A bit like Waterworld. Only good.

We had steak sandwiches for dinner then tried to find a new bar, but failed and went to the one over the road from the hotel. We had a few beers and eventually remembered probably all the rules to play blackjack. I invented a brand new game called Blackjack Extreme with all-new special rules and cards that we only played once because it was so great.Read more