Upon arrival at Noi Bai you may find the airport lacking in character, but the drive from the airport to Hanoi is rich with charming and interesting sights. So many people wearing conical hats! Farmers toil in rice fields, their backbreaking work aided only by a wooden plough and some oxen. And you never know what you will see coming or going to Hanoi on the back of a motorbike…
Hanoi has a lot of character with busy, bustling streets and markets in the Old Quarter, a pretty peaceful oasis in Hoen Kiem Lake with its temples, and impressive monuments such as Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum.
Crossing the road can take some time! There are so many motorbikes, cyclos and bicycles coming from every direction that you will never be able to see a clear path straight across the road. The only way to cross is to walk slowly across the road weaving around the traffic and remarkably as the path behind you closes back up the path before you will become clear. Once you get used to it – it’s fine – not really scary at all. If you are lucky you won’t get beeped too much!
You need earplugs. People here don’t just use the horn to warn of possible danger, they use it for every and no reason. Hanoi is also noisy because people get up before dawn and there are public announcements and music blaring onto the streets through loudspeakers early in the morning.
The Vietnamese are not night birds. The ‘nightlife’ in Hanoi is not the sort of thing you’d find in most major cities. There are plenty of bars, and a reasonable number of discos and clubs, but they close at about 11pm. After that it can be difficult to find things to do, as the streets become deserted.
The main Vietnamese nightlife is Karaoke. It is not the Western variety which is more like a ‘talent’ show; in Vietnam you usually get a small room to yourself with a TV and a catalog of songs to sing along with.
