July 13: Hanoi to Hong Kong. Tears and treasures…

Posted on July 14, 2013 by ossianshine

Hong Kong Phooey, number one super guy.
Hong Kong Phooey, quicker than the human eye.

SO FAREWELL Hanoi, and hello Hong Kong.

On Day 13 we bade farewell to the Vietnamese capital with something of a heavy heart, leaving Southeast Asia for the last time on our Long Trip Home.

A room with a view — our Hong Kong hotel vista…

On reflection, it was a curious place, Hanoi…. a place where communist monuments sit cheek by jowl with designer shrines to commercialism and excess. I struggle to put my finger on it, or give a sense of what makes it tick. I guess, though, what it comes down to is that while it may lack the energy of a Saigon or the charm of a Hoi An; it is not all bad news, for missing too, it would appear, is the extreme poverty found in many Asian cities. It is a city where communism would seem to have worked.

After a fairly fractious departure from the otherwise-splendid Metropole (okay, okay I was a little twitchy but they were SLOOOOOW checking us out and the clock was ticking…) we set off for the airport for one brief and last deviation from our rail odyssey — a short flight from Hanoi to Hong Kong (it is the railroad all the way from Hong Kong to London now…)

KA267 was a short flight on a fantastic airline (Dragon Air). Mrs S, Kitty and I bagged one side of row 26, while Jasper and Ben squabbled over who would have to sit next to the poor non-Shine in the row of six.

We had tears from an over-tired Ben, shouting from an over-tired daddy and then tears from an over-tired Jasper before Ben agreed to sit in the middle, still feeling a little aggrieved at having to sit next to :the stranger.

Take a look at this picture. Who do YOU think got the short straw?

Let me OUT OF HERE…. It doesn’t look too far. I could jump…

Immigration was cleared swiftly and we were soon loading our bags into a taxi — this was slick. Ngai Kiu’s bright red Toyota Crown had plenty of room in the boot for our nine bags and we were soon on our way. For around 45 seconds. And then we pulled over.

I know our driver’s name is Ngai Kiu because I had a good 20 minutes to stare at her ID as she frowned, screwed up her eyes and rotated her Chinese map in confusion.

She twisted it this way and that in a bid to align it with the English map I had marked for her. It was like a bizarre geography jigsaw. And Ngai was very, very bad at jigsaws. She looked at the map from six inches, then 16 inches, then two inches. She squinted and grunted and snorted and sighed. She even phoned a friend.

Hello. Do I come here often?

We got there in the end, possibly more by luck than judgment, and as we pulled up outside the Metro Park Hotel in Causeway Bay, poor old madam Ngai could barely look me in the face.

Still. We were at home base and went to check in. The pimply doorman with the shattered Samsung Galaxy phone screen told me check-in was on the first floor and we headed up the escalator lugging our bags behind us.

Once at the reception, Nigel checked us in. QUIZ POINT… guess which of these characters is Nigel:

“We’re only making plans for Nigel…”

Well, quite!

I’ll put you out of your misery. Nigel is on the right. The assistant manager, Nigel caught me at a bad moment post-madam Ngai but after a shaky start we got on fine as she shuffled some rooms and managed to find two fairly close to each other on the 18th floor.

The boys are sharing one room and Mrs S, Kitty and yours truly have another. I don’t anticipate any problems, though, as Ben has figured out how to operate the room-to-room dialling if he needs us. And left 14 messages for us in the first FIFTEEN MINUTES within checking in (true stat, that).

Hello operator? I’d like to make a trunk call. Yes, please. Errrr… to next door please.

After a quick turnaround we headed up to the Peak to visit the marvellous Cat Preston, mummy of Hana — a schoolfriend of Ben’s from Tanglin who moved from Singapore to Hong Kong last year. (Hana, it turns out, is the maker of the finest lemon-glazed shortbread known to man)

Ben and Hana… just like the old days…

Our taxi crawled its way up the hill to where the kites glide and the clouds begin, and to where Cat treated us to some of the best supper we’ve had on our trip so far. The children were in their element, in a real house, with toys and friends and not in a train carriage or restaurant… we had to drag them out of the house to get them home to bed.

The happiest girl of all, though, was Mrs S, who took possession of a much longed-for pendant studded with our children’s birthstones, designed and created by the über-talented Mrs Preston (did I mention that in addition to being a wonderful hostess she is a fantastic jewellery designer — you don’t have to believe me, check out her website: http://catherineprestondesign.com/)

This thing of beauty was hewn from enough gold to fill an Inca mine and featured Tourmaline for Jasper, Amethyst for Kitty and Diamond (of course) for our Ben… It really is beautiful – Mrs S is beyond-words-thrilled…

The object of all desire…

We really don’t know how to begin to thank you, Cat, but thought dragging you round Disneyland Hong Kong tomorrow with all the children would be a good start, so consider that a date…

More images from Day 13 of the Long Trip Home:

I can’t think why they are such good friends, can you?

Cat, Mrs S and Kitty get papped in The Peak

The motliest of crews, including Hana’s brother, Josh

Okaaaaaay…

Pancakes? Check. Egg? Check. Bread? Check. Hot Chocolate? Check.

Image

All the major food groups represented – the Hanoi Metropole serves up my kind of breakfast…

Day 11: Hanoi…

Posted on July 12, 2013 by ossianshine

AS THE CHILDREN snoozed, Mrs S and I sat in the pre-dawn light, peering out of the train window and watching morning life speed by. Hanoi slowly roused from its slumbers and scooters carried ducks, eggs, dogs and bonsai trees to market.

On the back of one scooter a rack of splayed beef ribs bounced up and down, while on another what appeared to be a whole cow, pulled inside out, rode pillion along the highway as the sun rose.

Elderly men and children played badminton at 0530 by the rail tracks, some dressed all in white, others more casually attired.

Hanoi awakes as the Shines look on…

We chugged past skinny houses which resembled tall, Georgian mid-terrace houses in England in their dimensions if not their architecture, but standing all alone rather than in a terrace. Presumably the skinny nature of these homes is to protect against flooding when the Red River bursts its banks.

Slowly the sun rose, casting more and more light on the comings and goings of Hanoi life and then we were there, deposited on the platform and instantly collected by a driver from the Sofitel Metropole.

The black-liveried driver had brought fresh coffee, croissants and pains au chocolat in his minivan, and we could have thrown our arms around him.

Follow the Man in Black…

Ga Hanoi

We deposited our bags at the hotel, had loooooooong showers and hit the capital’s streets, heading straight to Ba Dinh Square and Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum.

The queue to see the embalmed body of the man who helped secure independence from France and who inspired the fight to see off the might of the U.S. Army was hundreds of people long, and snaked around the square.

It moved quickly in the drizzle, though, and within half an hour we were in the chilly central hall, where Ho’s body lies in a glass chamber. A yellow light illuminates his famous white beard and face, as the snake of viewers shuffle past.

“A bit strange,” was Ben’s verdict.

That was kinda weird

We followed a delegation of what I can only imagine were Vietcong veterans into the mausoleum. They had been ushered ahead of us to the front of the queue. All white-haired but none stooped, the group — both men and women — wore dark green combat clothes, some with gold-coloured medals adorning their chests. An aide carried a large yellow wreath of flowers which was laid at the door of the imposing granite building as the elderly visitors entered.

The rain continued to fall, and we took refuge back at the Sofitel in the Hoan Kien District, just a 10-minute taxi ride away.

A stately resting place

Lunch, a swim and an all-too-brief snooze were taken before we ventured out into the Old Town, a labrynth of winding streets lined with cafes, restaurants and small shop houses, and settled on a recommended restaurant — Old Hanoi — to feed the Shine troops.

A Franco-Vietnamese mix of Pomelo salad, mango salad, croques monsieur, Hanoi beer, G&Ts and Sprites were just the ticket and, as we waited, Mrs S ambled over the road to take a look at some lanterns on sale.

A swim and a sorbet – the perfect combo!….

Before even the first ice cube in her G&T had melted, a crestfallen Mrs S was back, having
been ejected from a shop by a very rude woman for questioning the quality of the (shoddy) lanterns (for which she wanted more than double the Hoi An price). “This is capital city,” she said, explaining away the mammoth rip-off and presumably her over-reaction.

I may be a little partial here, but Mrs S is fair and she is honest and if she says the lanterns were ridiculously overpriced then they were. And if she says they were tatty and old, then they were. And that, I guess, adequately explains the over-reaction of the con-woman running the shop.

Our shock/gloom was lifted in Old Hanoi by the arrival of my colleague Martin Petty, formerly the senior news correspondent in Bangkok, now acting bureau chief in Hanoi for Reuters.

Characteristically, he arrived on a scooter clearly designed for a teenage girl (both in scale and in colour) and instantly confused the restaurant staff with his off-piste choice of drink.
Here comes the nice man on a girl’s scooter…

A friendly face in a strange town can never be underestimated, however, and it was a real joy to catch up on his news.

In fact so joyous was the opportunity to exchange old war stories and talk shop, that, having taken the children home, I jumped on the back of his ridiculous moped and we whined our way down the road to Hanoi’s latest hotspot like two giants on a sewing machine.

Bar Betta is in the Ba Dinh district, has been only open for a week and was filling up slowly when this old reveller called it quits. Not a bad spot, I guess, but betta than what?

More images from Day 11:

Nice uniform, shame about the wellies…

Wherever you turn, he’s there…

The Shines head back to their hotel…

Badminton everywhere…

Take my picture… Kitty popular with the locals. She not so impressed…

Hanoi…

See the sights, hear the sounds, (be thankful you cannot smell the smells)…

Video

Danang Railway Station — and the Beast arrives…

July 10 Danang to Hanoi (or what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger)

Posted on July 11, 2013 by ossianshine

SOME DAYS you just have to grin and bear it, right?

Which explains why, for most of Day 10, I resembled a grinning simpleton powerless to prevent the horrors of Vietnam Railways’ SE4 Danang to Hanoi train looming large for the traveling troupe of Shines.

In fact, so appalled by the prospect of another night with the cockroaches were we, that I, while chest deep in the turquoise waters of Hoi An beach, uttered the unthinkable to Mrs S.

“Why don’t we just stay here for three weeks and then fly home,” I mused. “We must be mad,” I added needlessly for good measure, as the cooling water lapped on the white sands and palm trees swayed in the breeze.

Bliss in the South China sea

Jasper and Ben were balancing with various degrees of success on boogie boards in the surf — it would be the easiest of sells to them — and Mrs S smiled a wistful smile and dipped down into the sea.

Three weeks of massages and lazy bathing on sun-kissed beaches, or a heavily stained, malodorous, cockroach-ridden rackety diesel engine up to Hanoi…

Of course just two hours later I was jammed into the waiting room at Danang Station, sweat dripping into my eyes, a lazy fan barely turning overhead, surrounded by those Vietnamese too poor to fly and by pimply, sweaty backpackers.

Sweatsville

Of them, almost universally the girls’ deliberately-so-therefore-unsuccessfullly insouciant faces were shiny with grime; while the boys’ scraggy, patchwork beards failed to adequately cover red spots and boils poking through their adolescent skin.

Their chat was as cliched as their appearance: The cheapest meal they’d found; the most secluded spot they’d discovered away from tourists (they said this word like it was a swearword, as though they were hill farmers whose crops had been ruined by tramping visitors, as though they were *not* tourists themselves), the most authentic experience they had, uniquely, uncovered and so on.

All sported slightly threadbare and sweat-stained clothes — peasant chic, I guess. Not a good look, though. And not a good smell.

The beast arrives

And then there was us. The fragrant Mrs S, an English rose occasionally dabbing her upper lip; Jasper, warm but unruffled, his blond hair in hot demand by locals for a photograph; Ben, freckled and sunburnt but squatting down sitting on his heels as our Filipina helper in Singapore had taught him; Kitty, red-cheeked and drowsy in her mummy’s arms; and me. Hot, sweaty and impatient, like a soggy wicker man towering above the locals, my volume rising with each unanswered query.

It hadn’t looked good. Our train was late; the noise coming from the announcement speaker resembled a Dalek with a sore throat; the women in flowing blue dresses responsible for locking people into the sweltering waiting room until seconds before the trains pulled away would not look me in the eye, nor answer my questions with any degree of conviction.

But then the noisy, smelly iron beast loomed into view; we detected the word ‘Hanoi’ in the garbled tannoy announcement; a blue-dress nodded and we were on, clambering up and aboard the monster.

And do you know what, it wasn’t half bad.

Whether we’d become inured to the horrors having gone through painful aversion therapy on leg one, whether it was boarding on a sunny afternoon in a relatively small station rather than at night in Saigon, whether it was having enjoyed such a pleasant time with locals the day before… whatever it was, this time none of us were fazed. In fact, we were relaxed.

The Kit-Kat kicks back… nice and relaxed…

Yes, our neighbours were just as noisy, yes we had to crush just as many unwelcome guests both in the air and underfoot and yes, the same Vietnamese cigarette smoke wafted into our carriage, but none of it mattered this time.

The boys were more self-sufficient, even Kitty seemed a little hardier, and we were able to laugh at things that had perturbed us just days before.

Ben’s request to fire his Hoi An souvenir Spiderman spinning top (yes, really…) around the less-than-clean floor within seconds of hauling our bags into the carriage was met with what can only be described as an uncharacteristically calm rejection. A stoic and instant nod from son number two at the time suggests this might be a more productive method to employ in future, rather than my erstwhile more robust approach when under stress.

We laughed along when the guard and her male equivalent from carriage 8 fell into our cabin mid play-fight, we waved and smiled at the hawkers on Hue Station whereas days before we’d avoided eye-contact… this was much, much more fun.

Our new best friends at Hue station (who inexplicably aren’t waving and smiling in this picture)

And with the renewed sense of fun came a pang of pride and of happiness at what we were attempting and, so far, achieving. This really is a mammoth trip with three small children but if they get even a fraction from it that we are, it will be worth every fetid waiting room and cramped train cabin.

(Speaking of which, a big shout out to the fantastic Melissa Tan of Lightfoot Travel who helped tweak our Trans-Siberian plan today, after we decided to ditch the four-berth cabin from Beijing to Moscow and swap it instead for two “deluxe” — I use that word advisedly — adjoining two-berth cabins. We figure that for six days non-stop, a little more space might be a good thing as might the grandly-titled shared shower that comes with the “deluxe” version. Melissa, back in Singapore, responded to my emails and texts immediately, and sent a colleague down to the railway station in Beijing to swap the tickets. Thanks, Melissa, you’re a star)

The train ride itself from the central coast up to the north was a breathtaking slice through the most beautiful countryside, with hills on one side, azure sea on the other. We balanced on a precipice, gripping the rails as the jungle flew by below and forlorn railways workers stood outside isolated huts holding flags.

Marvel at this picture – it involved balancing in the loo and waving my camera out the window…

Our bottomless picnic bag once again offered up its wares to the hungry travellers (actually Mrs S had been told to harvest a packed supper from the Victoria’s breakfast buffet when she requested a take away picnic, and she had done a five-star job). Ham baguettes, fruit and pastries were all plundered as we rattled northwards while Kitty had me shell pistachios for the best part of half an hour.

Supper time

And it was goooooood, mummy…

Even a gymnastically yogic tantrum from the two-year-old before bedtime was not enough to shake my good spirits. Nor were the antics of the seemingly deaf pea-brain in the corridor bellowing at the top of his voice and rattling the door handle as the children tried to sleep and I peered into my laptop screen.

In the morning we’ll be in Hanoi. But today… today was a good day.

Other images from Day 10:

Are we there yet?