Life
Tour of Hanoi
Christopher Buckley, 05.28.10, 05:40 PM EDT
Forbes Asia Magazine dated June 07, 2010
http://www.forbes.com/global/2010/0607/life-travel-history-cuisine-hoan-kiem-lake-tour-of-hanoi.html
History, great food and terrifying traffic make for an experience unlike any other.
My first full day in Hanoi I awoke at 4 a.m., but for once I was grateful for circadian dysrhythmia, otherwise known as jet lag. I'd been told that if you want to see "the real Hanoi," you must stroll around Hoan Kiem Lake as the city is waking up. There are many reasons to stay at the Metropole hotel as I did; one of them is its proximity to Hoan Kiem.
It was dark but already steamy. Boom boxes blared tinny-sounding exercise music. Women and men did calisthenics and Tai Chi in groups along the shore. Men fished. Another group of men, wearing what looked like underwear, were setting up weight-lifting equipment on the sidewalk outside a temple. Hadn't seen that before, but by the time I left, a week later, I decided that I hadn't seen anything like Hanoi before, period. And I've been around.
Walking on that first morning, I came across another temple and the smell of incense drifting from a small shrine atop some rocks. A woman appeared out of nowhere with joss sticks to sell. I handed her 10,000 dong and she led me up irregular steps to the shrine so that I could light the incense. I did, but she shook her head and in sign language conveyed that it must be an odd number of sticks. I held out five and the old woman nodded. I said my thanks, made my awkward orisons to whatever spirits inhabited the shrine, descended the tricky stairs and crossed the bridge--appropriately called the Bridge of the Rising Sun--to the Temple of the Jade Mountain.
It's old news, but: During the Ming domination of Vietnam, a fisherman here discovered a magic sword one day in his net. It had been sent by the Emperor of the Waters to aid the leader of the people's revolt in ending the Chinese occupation. With the sword's help, the occupiers were driven out. A year later, while the same leader (now king) was boating on the lake, a tortoise appeared and asked him to return the magic sword. Hoan Kiem is thus the "Lake of the Returned Sword." There are about 20 lakes in Hanoi, each with its own legend. In 1967 Lieutenant Commander John McCain parachuted into one of them. Its name, Truc Bach, means "white bamboo."
It was growing light, and hot. I completed my circumnavigation of Hoan Kiem and proceeded west.
I found my destination without difficulty, its name painted above the main entrance: Maison Centrale 1896--1954. Actually, the place's history is quite a bit longer than that: This was the Vietnam War's infamous Hoa Lo prison, jokingly referred to as the "Hanoi Hilton." After being fished out of White Bamboo Lake, McCain spent five and a half years inside these walls, the
After spending an hour inside, staring in silence at dungeons, shackles, torture cells and its once oft-employed (by the French) guillotine, I will never again think of it in association with the word Hilton. The display about the later era of American inmates of Hoa Lo makes it out to have been a mildly uncomfortable guest home for naughty imperialist pilots. Photos show them smiling, playing basketball and even gratefully receiving "souvenirs" before they went home on Mar. 29, 1973. Reading the pilots' memoirs tells a somewhat different story.
I made my way back to the Metropole and was happy to be within its marble-lined, air-conditioned interior. The hotel was built in 1901, at the height of the French colonization of L'Indochine. The contours of the swimming pool's floor, added in 1991, were determined by the bomb shelter beneath it. Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard spent their honeymoon here in 1936. Graham Greene drank vermouth cassis here--and Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser stayed here a half-century later while filming Greene's The Quiet American. (The Graham Greene suite is No. 228, and much requested by Americans, who tend to prefer the old wing; Asian guests typically prefer the new wing.)
I had my first meal in Hanoi at one of the hotel's three restaurants, Le Beaulieu. I was hungry after my morning ramble, and did not hold back. I started--as you must in Vietnam--with pho. (To pronounce it correctly, imagine you are Inspector Clouseau.) It's the national dish: noodles in broth with beef or chicken, vegetables and herbs. I slurped down two bowls and then tucked into a plate of fried rice with bok choy and chile sauce. Then I went at the croissants. I was tempted by the pancakes, the omelet station, full Japanese breakfast, cheeses, cold cuts, crème caramel, yogurts. Le Beaulieu's breakfast buffet is the sort that makes you think, Well, I could always just spend the day here.
Although Hanoi seemed generally laid-back, authority-wise, every day at about the same time there were loudspeakers blaring outside my window. I made inquiries. A local friend explained with a shrug of the shoulders, "the Party." What are they saying? "Oh," he said, "they're either denouncing someone or telling everyone to do something. Yesterday it was to have your dog or cat vaccinated by 3 o'clock the next day." He rolled his eyes: "Communism." Actually he put it a little more colorfully than ForbesLife permits.
The hotel arranged for a guide and for us to be driven around in its 1953 blue Citroën limousine. It was a pleasant, and strange, sensation, touring rainy, hyperbusy Hanoi in a car made a year before Dien Bien Phu. Mr. Anh, our driver, was in full chauffeur's livery; Mr. Tuan, my guide, sat beside him in front. As we pulled into Hanoi's chaotic traffic flow (more on this later) I felt rather colonial, and therefore uneasy, as if fearful that someone on a passing cyclo might toss a grenade through the window. But the sensation passed, and we made our way through to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and house.
The mausoleum--monumental and grim in the Soviet style--was closed for its annual renovation.
Ho Chi Minh's body, preserved after the fashion of communist gods, goes to a sort of funereal spa for "refreshment." (Don't ask.) The mausoleum is sited on the spot where, on Sept. 2, 1945, Ho declared independence from France, ushering in nine years of war.
Ho's house, where he conducted the war against the South and the Americans, is near the mausoleum in a lovely, leafy precinct of grapefruit, bamboo, willow, almond, and trees lively with the chirping of birds. There's a large fishpond full of carp. The house is teak, on stilts, after the style of Vietnamese village houses. Ho's air raid helmet is there under glass, next to his three telephones, one of which is crank-operated. With that, he won a war against the most powerful nation on Earth.
I had asked to see the "B-52 Museum" that I saw on my map, thinking it sounded like something an American should see, so Mr. Anh, shifting--rrrr-unk--gears, drove down impossible, crowded streets. Driving through Hanoi is … well, Disney ( DIS - news - people ) World ought to have a ride called Driving Through Hanoi. Hanoi is a city of more than 2 million motorbikes, and I saw them all, every single one. On the way to the B-52 one passed us, its rear rack heaped with boiled carcasses.
"Pigs?" I said.
Mr. Tuan and Mr. Anh laughed. The Vietnamese laugh easily, one of their endearing aspects, along with courtesy, friendliness and generosity.
"Dog."
"Oh."
The streets grew narrower and narrower until finally we came to a lake, no bigger than an acre, surrounded by city houses. It could have been Venice, only the water was the bright green color of jade and there was a B-52--or a large portion of one--in the middle of it.
It had fallen here during the 1972 Christmas bombing raids that forced the North back to the table in Paris. A plaque referred to the wreckage as evidence of the "Dien Bien Phu of the air." I said a poor, silent prayer for the crew, and we left.
We proceeded to the Temple of Literature, a thousand-year-old university where the mandarins took their exams. These were tests you really wanted to pass, inasmuch as mandarins ruled the country.
But my tourist receptors were flagging. It was past noon, and I was hungry. We went to a place in the Old Quarter called Cha Ca La Vong. It's been there since 1871, and it serves only one dish. If you guessed that the dish is called cha ca, you are correct. It was one of the best meals I've ever eaten: pieces of perch dusted in turmeric, grilled atop a wooden brazier set on the table. It cooks while you drink cold beer (Bia Hoi). Add green onion, dill, fish sauce, peanuts, shrimp sauce (not for the faint of heart), herbs and hot chiles, all heaped onto rice noodles. Cost of meal for three: $25.
The next day I set off on foot to see a bit of the city on my own. This turned out to be a pedestrian adventure. Literally.
Kai Speth, the Metropole's general manager, had given me advice on how to negotiate Hanoi's streets. He said, "Just walk out, and keep walking slowly. If you stop, you die. If you run, you die. And whatever you do, don't look into their eyes. It only confuses things."
My first moment of truth was on Dinh Tien Hoang, the street that runs along Hoan Kiem Lake's eastern shore. When I crossed it that first morning, before 5, there was only minimal traffic. Now, as I stood sweatily on the curb, it was a continuous onrush of motorcycles, with a few score cars and trucks thrown in. No stoplights, no cops, just Hanoi's 2 million motorbikes, half of them beeping their horns.
I stood for perhaps 15 minutes, mustering courage. My mouth went dry. Finally I said, "Well, are you a man?" A voice returned, No--go back to the hotel. Maybe they're still serving breakfast. I took a deep breath and stepped off the curb.
Keep going, I told myself. Do. Not. Stop. Do. Not. Run.
Hundreds of vehicles threaded their way around me--although they all hit the horn. I made it to the far curb and collapsed against a tree, gasping.
Emboldened by my accomplishment, I walked for four hours. Unedited excerpts from my notes:
-- A new and interesting challenge as I make my way down Trang Thi St.: a woman driving her motorcycle at me on the sidewalk.
-- Heart soars as I encounter an intersection with an actual traffic light! Bliss! Resolve to spend rest of day here.
-- Turns out there is little difference in Hanoi between intersections with lights and intersections without lights.
-- A new strategy--wait until pregnant woman (plentiful) appears and cross using her as shield.
Some peripatetic hours later I found myself in an open-air market a few blocks north of Hoan Kiem Lake. It's off Hang Be Street; you can't miss it. Drenched in sweat, I walked amid the most concentrated commerce I'd ever seen. Everything Vietnam had to offer by way of foodstuffs was here along narrow streets pungent with a thousand smells. I wrote down:
Flowers, live eels, snakes, catfish, meats, spices, snails, sweet herbs, watercress, live crabs tied with vines, noodles, cooked ducks, live ducks, live shrimp in tubs, squid, giant shrimp, periwinkles, nuts, live sturgeon, carp, duck eggs, quail eggs, cakes, ribs, limes, cilantro, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, curry, coffee, chiles, ginseng, vermicelli, incense, moon cakes, live rabbits, dead chicken feet, green dragon lychee. ...
I wanted to prolong the visit, but I was due back at the Metropole, to lunch, as it happened, on Nha Trang lobsters, champagne, and fines de claires from Brittany. I braced myself for one more assault on Dinh Tien Hoang Street with the thought that the five joss sticks I lit that first morning might just see me safely across.
http://www.forbes.com/global/2010/0607/life-travel-history-cuisine-hoan-kiem-lake-tour-of-hanoi.html
Tour of Hanoi
Christopher Buckley, 05.28.10, 05:40 PM EDT
Forbes Asia Magazine dated June 07, 2010
http://www.forbes.com/global/2010/0607/life-travel-history-cuisine-hoan-kiem-lake-tour-of-hanoi.html
History, great food and terrifying traffic make for an experience unlike any other.
My first full day in Hanoi I awoke at 4 a.m., but for once I was grateful for circadian dysrhythmia, otherwise known as jet lag. I'd been told that if you want to see "the real Hanoi," you must stroll around Hoan Kiem Lake as the city is waking up. There are many reasons to stay at the Metropole hotel as I did; one of them is its proximity to Hoan Kiem.
It was dark but already steamy. Boom boxes blared tinny-sounding exercise music. Women and men did calisthenics and Tai Chi in groups along the shore. Men fished. Another group of men, wearing what looked like underwear, were setting up weight-lifting equipment on the sidewalk outside a temple. Hadn't seen that before, but by the time I left, a week later, I decided that I hadn't seen anything like Hanoi before, period. And I've been around.
Walking on that first morning, I came across another temple and the smell of incense drifting from a small shrine atop some rocks. A woman appeared out of nowhere with joss sticks to sell. I handed her 10,000 dong and she led me up irregular steps to the shrine so that I could light the incense. I did, but she shook her head and in sign language conveyed that it must be an odd number of sticks. I held out five and the old woman nodded. I said my thanks, made my awkward orisons to whatever spirits inhabited the shrine, descended the tricky stairs and crossed the bridge--appropriately called the Bridge of the Rising Sun--to the Temple of the Jade Mountain.
It's old news, but: During the Ming domination of Vietnam, a fisherman here discovered a magic sword one day in his net. It had been sent by the Emperor of the Waters to aid the leader of the people's revolt in ending the Chinese occupation. With the sword's help, the occupiers were driven out. A year later, while the same leader (now king) was boating on the lake, a tortoise appeared and asked him to return the magic sword. Hoan Kiem is thus the "Lake of the Returned Sword." There are about 20 lakes in Hanoi, each with its own legend. In 1967 Lieutenant Commander John McCain parachuted into one of them. Its name, Truc Bach, means "white bamboo."
It was growing light, and hot. I completed my circumnavigation of Hoan Kiem and proceeded west.
I found my destination without difficulty, its name painted above the main entrance: Maison Centrale 1896--1954. Actually, the place's history is quite a bit longer than that: This was the Vietnam War's infamous Hoa Lo prison, jokingly referred to as the "Hanoi Hilton." After being fished out of White Bamboo Lake, McCain spent five and a half years inside these walls, the
After spending an hour inside, staring in silence at dungeons, shackles, torture cells and its once oft-employed (by the French) guillotine, I will never again think of it in association with the word Hilton. The display about the later era of American inmates of Hoa Lo makes it out to have been a mildly uncomfortable guest home for naughty imperialist pilots. Photos show them smiling, playing basketball and even gratefully receiving "souvenirs" before they went home on Mar. 29, 1973. Reading the pilots' memoirs tells a somewhat different story.
I made my way back to the Metropole and was happy to be within its marble-lined, air-conditioned interior. The hotel was built in 1901, at the height of the French colonization of L'Indochine. The contours of the swimming pool's floor, added in 1991, were determined by the bomb shelter beneath it. Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard spent their honeymoon here in 1936. Graham Greene drank vermouth cassis here--and Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser stayed here a half-century later while filming Greene's The Quiet American. (The Graham Greene suite is No. 228, and much requested by Americans, who tend to prefer the old wing; Asian guests typically prefer the new wing.)
I had my first meal in Hanoi at one of the hotel's three restaurants, Le Beaulieu. I was hungry after my morning ramble, and did not hold back. I started--as you must in Vietnam--with pho. (To pronounce it correctly, imagine you are Inspector Clouseau.) It's the national dish: noodles in broth with beef or chicken, vegetables and herbs. I slurped down two bowls and then tucked into a plate of fried rice with bok choy and chile sauce. Then I went at the croissants. I was tempted by the pancakes, the omelet station, full Japanese breakfast, cheeses, cold cuts, crème caramel, yogurts. Le Beaulieu's breakfast buffet is the sort that makes you think, Well, I could always just spend the day here.
Although Hanoi seemed generally laid-back, authority-wise, every day at about the same time there were loudspeakers blaring outside my window. I made inquiries. A local friend explained with a shrug of the shoulders, "the Party." What are they saying? "Oh," he said, "they're either denouncing someone or telling everyone to do something. Yesterday it was to have your dog or cat vaccinated by 3 o'clock the next day." He rolled his eyes: "Communism." Actually he put it a little more colorfully than ForbesLife permits.
The hotel arranged for a guide and for us to be driven around in its 1953 blue Citroën limousine. It was a pleasant, and strange, sensation, touring rainy, hyperbusy Hanoi in a car made a year before Dien Bien Phu. Mr. Anh, our driver, was in full chauffeur's livery; Mr. Tuan, my guide, sat beside him in front. As we pulled into Hanoi's chaotic traffic flow (more on this later) I felt rather colonial, and therefore uneasy, as if fearful that someone on a passing cyclo might toss a grenade through the window. But the sensation passed, and we made our way through to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and house.
The mausoleum--monumental and grim in the Soviet style--was closed for its annual renovation.
Ho Chi Minh's body, preserved after the fashion of communist gods, goes to a sort of funereal spa for "refreshment." (Don't ask.) The mausoleum is sited on the spot where, on Sept. 2, 1945, Ho declared independence from France, ushering in nine years of war.
Ho's house, where he conducted the war against the South and the Americans, is near the mausoleum in a lovely, leafy precinct of grapefruit, bamboo, willow, almond, and trees lively with the chirping of birds. There's a large fishpond full of carp. The house is teak, on stilts, after the style of Vietnamese village houses. Ho's air raid helmet is there under glass, next to his three telephones, one of which is crank-operated. With that, he won a war against the most powerful nation on Earth.
I had asked to see the "B-52 Museum" that I saw on my map, thinking it sounded like something an American should see, so Mr. Anh, shifting--rrrr-unk--gears, drove down impossible, crowded streets. Driving through Hanoi is … well, Disney ( DIS - news - people ) World ought to have a ride called Driving Through Hanoi. Hanoi is a city of more than 2 million motorbikes, and I saw them all, every single one. On the way to the B-52 one passed us, its rear rack heaped with boiled carcasses.
"Pigs?" I said.
Mr. Tuan and Mr. Anh laughed. The Vietnamese laugh easily, one of their endearing aspects, along with courtesy, friendliness and generosity.
"Dog."
"Oh."
The streets grew narrower and narrower until finally we came to a lake, no bigger than an acre, surrounded by city houses. It could have been Venice, only the water was the bright green color of jade and there was a B-52--or a large portion of one--in the middle of it.
It had fallen here during the 1972 Christmas bombing raids that forced the North back to the table in Paris. A plaque referred to the wreckage as evidence of the "Dien Bien Phu of the air." I said a poor, silent prayer for the crew, and we left.
We proceeded to the Temple of Literature, a thousand-year-old university where the mandarins took their exams. These were tests you really wanted to pass, inasmuch as mandarins ruled the country.
But my tourist receptors were flagging. It was past noon, and I was hungry. We went to a place in the Old Quarter called Cha Ca La Vong. It's been there since 1871, and it serves only one dish. If you guessed that the dish is called cha ca, you are correct. It was one of the best meals I've ever eaten: pieces of perch dusted in turmeric, grilled atop a wooden brazier set on the table. It cooks while you drink cold beer (Bia Hoi). Add green onion, dill, fish sauce, peanuts, shrimp sauce (not for the faint of heart), herbs and hot chiles, all heaped onto rice noodles. Cost of meal for three: $25.
The next day I set off on foot to see a bit of the city on my own. This turned out to be a pedestrian adventure. Literally.
Kai Speth, the Metropole's general manager, had given me advice on how to negotiate Hanoi's streets. He said, "Just walk out, and keep walking slowly. If you stop, you die. If you run, you die. And whatever you do, don't look into their eyes. It only confuses things."
My first moment of truth was on Dinh Tien Hoang, the street that runs along Hoan Kiem Lake's eastern shore. When I crossed it that first morning, before 5, there was only minimal traffic. Now, as I stood sweatily on the curb, it was a continuous onrush of motorcycles, with a few score cars and trucks thrown in. No stoplights, no cops, just Hanoi's 2 million motorbikes, half of them beeping their horns.
I stood for perhaps 15 minutes, mustering courage. My mouth went dry. Finally I said, "Well, are you a man?" A voice returned, No--go back to the hotel. Maybe they're still serving breakfast. I took a deep breath and stepped off the curb.
Keep going, I told myself. Do. Not. Stop. Do. Not. Run.
Hundreds of vehicles threaded their way around me--although they all hit the horn. I made it to the far curb and collapsed against a tree, gasping.
Emboldened by my accomplishment, I walked for four hours. Unedited excerpts from my notes:
-- A new and interesting challenge as I make my way down Trang Thi St.: a woman driving her motorcycle at me on the sidewalk.
-- Heart soars as I encounter an intersection with an actual traffic light! Bliss! Resolve to spend rest of day here.
-- Turns out there is little difference in Hanoi between intersections with lights and intersections without lights.
-- A new strategy--wait until pregnant woman (plentiful) appears and cross using her as shield.
Some peripatetic hours later I found myself in an open-air market a few blocks north of Hoan Kiem Lake. It's off Hang Be Street; you can't miss it. Drenched in sweat, I walked amid the most concentrated commerce I'd ever seen. Everything Vietnam had to offer by way of foodstuffs was here along narrow streets pungent with a thousand smells. I wrote down:
Flowers, live eels, snakes, catfish, meats, spices, snails, sweet herbs, watercress, live crabs tied with vines, noodles, cooked ducks, live ducks, live shrimp in tubs, squid, giant shrimp, periwinkles, nuts, live sturgeon, carp, duck eggs, quail eggs, cakes, ribs, limes, cilantro, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, curry, coffee, chiles, ginseng, vermicelli, incense, moon cakes, live rabbits, dead chicken feet, green dragon lychee. ...
I wanted to prolong the visit, but I was due back at the Metropole, to lunch, as it happened, on Nha Trang lobsters, champagne, and fines de claires from Brittany. I braced myself for one more assault on Dinh Tien Hoang Street with the thought that the five joss sticks I lit that first morning might just see me safely across.
http://www.forbes.com/global/2010/0607/life-travel-history-cuisine-hoan-kiem-lake-tour-of-hanoi.html
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