Enter Hanoi

Upon reaching the baggage carousel for our flight we were pleasantly surprised to see our two bike boxes waiting by the oversized luggage door.  Our bagged up panniers turned up soon after and we began the job of freeing our bikes from their cardboard confines.

All appeared in order and we reassembled the bikes, pumped up the tyres and attached our panniers.  This activity brought a lot of attention our way including that of a middle aged airport official in her uniform of a blue traditional áo dài.  She spoke good english and was surprisingly open.

We chatted whilst I worked on my bike and she was mainly curious as to where we were from and how much our bikes were worth (a soon to be recurring question).  She also told me that it was 35km to the city.

It took us some time to prepare everything and once done we wheeled the bikes out through customs and into the arrivals hall to the stares of local Vietnamese, no doubt wondering what the hell they were seeing.  I picked up a local sim card with data for my phone so we could find a hotel to head to and the friendly guy at the mobile phone counter told us that if we were going to ride into Hanoi, there was a straight route into town but that we would not be able to cross one of the bridges, instead we would have to cut to a smaller local road.  He also advised the average price of a taxi into the city.

Once outside, our decision was made.  It was now dark and the rain was relentless.  It would have been foolhardy to attempt to ride into Hanoi in these conditions after a sixteen hour flight and so we found a taxi big enough to take us and both bikes.  We agreed a price of VND360,000 with our driver, loaded the bikes and squeezed in, both of us in the front passenger seat.

Our driver was called Hung and we had a surprisingly open and frank conversation.  We told him of our trip and he told us of his life in Vietnam.  He spoke about his job as a taxi driver, that his wages were low but better than those of his previous job as a lorry driver.

Perhaps it was because he felt safe within the privacy of his rented taxi but he mentioned how his family provided everything for their two children to go to school and that there was no safety net for falling ill or losing your livelihood. We spoke about the world ec*nomy in general and touched on the domestic one. Obviously, in developing nations the gap between rich and poor is noticeably larger but I was surprised by the amount of luxury european cars on the road.

He found our hotel in the Hoan Kiem old district of Hanoi and left us his card should we need another taxi.  After speaking to the hotel staff they told us they were fully booked but had rooms at a sister hotel a short distance away and that a member of staff would show us the way on a scooter.

So our first ride in Vietnam was a quick burst round a few streets in Hanoi, weaving from one side of the road to the other and blindly following our leader into oncoming traffic.  Thankfully, it was only a short ride.

We checked in, locked up the bikes then sat at the typical Vietnamese food eatery (which have small shopfronts and usually some small plastic tables and stools on the street) opposite, to eat our first bowls of noodle soup of the many which would surely follow.