Day 22 Shanghai, China - Hanoi, Vietnam

Day 22 – His

We set off from Shanghai at around 11. Mostly just after we got up, had breakfast and a bath. I have been collecting the free toothpastes. For some reason the Chinese are obsessive about clean teeth. This is not your 2 minutes in the morning two minutes in the evening kind of obsession. This is the four or five times a day followed by mouthwash and mint gum for the rest of the day kind of obsession. Consequently the hotels all provide free toothpaste and I have been collecting them – hey, save a dollar here a dollar there! Consequently the top pocket of my backpack is now stuffed with little tubes of toothpaste. I’ll use them – in fact I am determined to use them – who knows what the dental hygiene standard is like for the rest of our trip – of course if it is up to the level of the Chinese I will have enough in toothpaste to have paid for the trip several times over. So, after brushing our teeth we set off.

I have many pet hates and little fears when it comes to travelling and one of them is taxi drivers. I live in fear of being ripped off by them. Of course it doesn’t help when you arrive at airport and all the notices warn you of avaricious taxi drivers waiting to rip you off. In fact every tourist i know has a deep and ingrained distrust of taxi drivers and this seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. It must come from somewhere – personally i think it came into being from taxi drivers being avaricious and greedy. So, I guess they only have themselves to blame. Still, on occasion i do feel sorry for them. I mean everybody thinks they are thieves. Anyway, as part of this fear I wanted to use the Metro out to the airport. I have to say to everybody visiting Shanghai – Learn to use the metro! Actually, just go down there – it is stunningly easy to use. There is a little button on the ticket machine that translates it into English for you and the trains warn you when you are coming to your stop – In English!

It’s amazing – far easier than the Paris Metro – which really just hints at where you have to go and leaves the rest up to you – so easy to get lost. Or the London tube, which is supposed to be so easy that a five year old could use it. You try telling that to the hoards of worried looking, confused and lost London tourists I have seen hanging around the underground with tube maps open and tired expressions. However, the Shanghai metro is truly easy – so try it. The tube ride out was only 14 yuan – about £1.40 (I think the cheapest London tube ride is £5), The taxi to the airport here is about £30.

I think i said before, (on arrival) how clean the airport is. Now I have to add civilised. They have little smoking rooms in the departure lounges. They are walled off and have giant fans in them so they don’t bother anybody and you can puff away until you drop dead from lung cancer or your plane is called whichever comes first. JFK used to have a little smoking lounge until they were forced to close it by the health police.

There must have been some mistake in the booking because the food on the plane was delicious (we flew Vietnam Air, by the way) it was some kind of noodle thing with crab salad and fresh fruit. Patti spent most of the meal waxing lyrically about the quality and amount of crab – I, on the other hand, spent most the meal pouring packet sugar onto the fruit to make it edible. After a three hour-ish flight we arrived in Hanoi where i had to face my taxi driver fears – again!

 Day 22 – Hers

Rob goes a little crazy on travel days.  He says it’s the taxis – maybe so, but whatever, I am always relieved when we get where we’re going.  I try to distract him by pointing out little oddities.  In this case, the cartoons on the metro showing you how to behave properly and the group of Chinese tourists from the countryside who chattered away in Shanghai airport to their be-flagged guide, munching on sweetcorn and dancing in a ring around a little 2-year old boy with trousers that left his nether regions open to the air and no nappy.  I had seen this style of country children’s clothing before – any business just flows out as required (once on a child’s mother’s shoe) – but in an airport? I couldn’t be a guide – I would forever be trying to get the whole group to conform to the conventions of where we were. I certainly would have bought that child a nappy.

We arrived in Hanoi around 4:00 local time – it’s an hour earlier than eastern China – the first indication that we are wending our way back to England.

Immigration at Hanoi was easier to negotiate than just about anywhere we have been in the world.  The usual stony-faced official checked that you matched the photo on your passport and visa and that you were listed on his computer – and you were through.  I don’t know what else US, British , Chinese, Bolivian, etc., etc. immigration officials have to do that takes so long.... 

I picked up a free map of the city, calmed Rob’s nerves whilst he found us a taxi with a meter that worked and settled back to watch the scenery on the 30km ride to our hotel in the Old Quarter.  Dusk fell quite early – it was dark as we passed the roadside shops and ‘cafes’ (just groups of plastic stools on the pavement with someone cooking in a wok), karaoke bars and garages.  Signs along the way proclaimed in Vietnamese and English: ‘Hanoi – City of Peace’. We immediately noticed that scooters seem to be the preferred mode of travel – helmeted and face-masked riders whizzed by us on the highway – and in the city centre, they became like a never-ending swarm of bees.  Crossing a street has so far seemed impossible – we shall have to figure that one out tomorrow.

The countryside looked quite lush – with little canals and lakes scattered between areas of palm trees and fruit groves.  The buildings on the outskirts could have been from any of a dozen tropical countries we have visited – I was strongly reminded of southern Ecuador – but in the city centre, they developed a style of their own.  Many are very narrow, their facades a curious mix of southern European and Asian decoration. A few larger buildings are turreted and balconied fairy-tale concoctions – and a few are utilitarian communist block constructions or modern tourist granite and glass.

We checked into our hotel – they turned on the lights in reception as we arrived and 6 members of staff held doors, checked forms, gave information and generally hovered around us. (I don’t think this hotel is very busy....) As with all of the hotels used by Gecko, it is locally-owned and of a good standard.  This one has a gym, laundry-service, room-service and a variety of other facilities we won’t have time to use.  Its one drawback, as we discovered later on, is that the walls are paper thin (Ah, so there are other people staying here...).

We went out for a brief stroll – only around the block as I refused to cross the sea of scooters – and into a little shop to buy some biscuits to have in the room.  Getting to grips with the money is another of those new country challenges – the shopkeeper kindly refused Rob’s offer to pay over $10 for a small packet of Ritz crackers and sorted out the 80 cents that was actually due.... 

Back in our room, we revelled in the hotel’s free wifi and Vietnam’s internet freedom, catching up on Facebook and uploading to our blog page – 2 activities that are banned in China.