Ha Noi means "city inside rivers", and its more formal name Tham Long (I think) means Ascending Dragon. It is celebrating its 1000th anniversary as Vietnam's capital city on 10/10/2010. We stayed in the Old Quarter, the tourist area north of the astonishingly green Hoan Kiem Lake. Did you know that Eiffel the architect built one of the world's longest bridges in Hanoi? I do now.
Our hotel had top ratings online, but the experience left something to be desired. Upon our arrival, I noticed a very weird and strong smell in the room. Kind of like onions and new paint. Explanation: they had just painted the room and they use slices of raw onion to absorb the new paint smell. So we found little treasure troves of onions all around our dwelling. We had a brand new bathtub. Which leaked a lot. And our toilet either didn't have water or never flushed properly. Construction on the street started at 6am with the jackhammers and smoothly transitioned into the screaming and banging of a middle school band that was occupying the remainder of the hotel. And everytime we came back to the room, something was new. Example: we got curtains (there were none before). And a new sink. And a phone. Etc. Very bizarre.
The one real day we had for sightseeing, the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex was closed. And the highly recommended Museum of Ethnology was 7km out of town. So we contented ourselves with a stroll around Hoan Kiem lake and ice cream (sidenote: why don't we have ice cream buffets in Canada?). Also, we don't understand where Hanoi dwellers go to eat, because there were about three restaurants in the whole Old Quarter... everything labeled "cafe" was in fact a tour agency. Very misleading. The Lake was quite pretty and apparently is home to giant tortoises. The legend is that the Viet king who defeated the Chinese after 1000 years of occupation with a divine sword returned the sword to its divine owners via the lake's golden tortoise.
We then got caught in pretty serious rains (which we later learned was the typhoon that hit southern China) and took in a water puppet show at the theater. No, you read that correctly. The art of water puppetry dates back to the 11th century, when they used the puppets to tell stories and legends on the rice paddies.
It was pretty entertaining despite being in Vietnamese. We then dropped in on a jazz club on the bar street which was pretty good.
We also learned why the houses are so thin here - property taxes are based on the width of the face of your property!
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