Hanoi and Beyond

On a guided tour, no matter how good the tour or the tour guide is (and ours are superb) it's wonderful to have some free time to explore by yourself. So after breakfast (which I have to say at the Medallion Hotel offers one of the best of the trip so far possibly because I have fallen for the huge crunchy dead-fresh Vietnamese rolls) we head off into the surrounding streets, map firmly in hand, plus hotel business card in case we need to seek directions back to it again.

A sense of direction is almost useless in the old city and as we dodge motorbikes (in my mind facing almost certain death or mutilation) and turn corner after corner, I am totally disoriented. Gordon is more on top of it and I follow him and soak up the colour and life of this place.

Once you get used to it, the pace is not as frenetic as you first think. The vehicles move at a reasonably slow speed, always considerate and fitting in with other vehicles or pedestrians like us. There is a huge amount of tooting, but we learn that the message is "I'm here" not "get outta my way!!"

We track down a few restaurants I had spotted from the 'green' electric bus the night before and a whole street, almost all cafes, selling the beans too. One variety has a disturbing picture of a weasel on it. I don't have the language skills to ask if this is like the Indonesian coffee, kopi luwak, in which the beans first have to pass through the digestive tract of an animal.

In fact we don't stop for coffee anywhere, as the next corner, the next shop, the next intersection beckons us on. Some streets are so narrow that parking is impossible and I watch amazed as people cycle up, call out to the shopkeeper and load up with anything from noodles to toilet paper, then pay and zoom off again.

One place fascinates us - an artist sits painstakingly copying photographs and rendering perfect portraits. You could be sure that all the world's famous people had posed for him, yet he is using only pens and brushes and his fingers.

We lunch together as a group at Ha Hoi Restaurant (down a tiny laneway off Ha Hoi Street). The menu is in French except for

The French Colonial style extended to French wines and a pretty place to eat - white cloths, a garden at the front, terracotta tiles on the floor, ceiling fans.

As the capital, Hanoi, has many museums we visit next Museum of Ethnology built by the French and opened in 1994. It is set beside a Cham compound with mud buildings and farm implements, a water puppet show and Khmer racing boat designed to carry 52 rowers.

The main building is built in an open and airy atrium style showing craft and artifacts, colourful costumes and objects of daily village life from the various tribes. Strangely there is also a large walk through area that deals with the dangers of HIV.

While this is all fascinating and should take us hours, we have seen something else we are interested in. The Hoa Sua project aims to provide employment and careers in the hospitality industry for disadvantaged youth and the project has already assisted 4000 youth. There is a training restaurant in the city and several other places around Hanoi. A café run by this group and staffed by the young people is on the museum grounds so we take a break to have the coffee we have been longing for all day.

As we sit on comfortable lounges with a cappuccino and a Vietnamese drip coffee (my current passion) we marvel at the standard of the service. There are pastries and baguettes too, quiche, pizza, tartines and sandwiches for sale, but no time to snack as we have been promised a short stop at the Museum Shop in the grounds near the entrance steps and the word from Tuan is that it has good quality items for sale. He's right. There are some wonderful silk scarves, embroidered bags and purses, jewellery and more - and it is here I buy (very quickly) most of my take-home gifts for friends. Oh, and a few things for myself too.

By now it is late afternoon and with a train to catch this evening we are watching our the clock. Just enough time, though, for our bus to take us by West Lake, and for us to see in daylight where we dined last night. It's a lovely relaxed area, with the road forming a causeway between two parts of the lake. There are swan-shaped paddle boats for people to hire and take out on the water, and a memorial on the spot where Sr John McCain was shot down.

As a special treat, we stop at a large supermarket. This is not such a strange inclusion on the itinerary. Because we are travelling overnight on the train, some of the group want to stock up with provisions. I always just like to experience a supermarket in another country too, to get a feel what the locals buy and use.

Here, it seems very familiar as there are many Sydney suburbs with Asian supermarkets, although here I find just-baked fresh baguettes, French wines and imported liquors, and tropical fruits. I buy some kitchen implements (spoons) including a textured 'rice spoon' which is said not to allow the rice to stick to it. I now know that was a good claim.

On then to an early dinner at La Lua Wild Rice Restaurant where we soon wonder why we'd felt a need for extra food for the trip! The location in a converted home is French colonial elegance-meets-contemporary Vietnamese at its best. Smoked glass with bamboo showing through from behind makes a feature wall, and we dine under delicate art deco-style flower-shaped lights. Black and white photographs are all that is needed for the walls and other pictures are projected on a rice paper screen.

The meal is one of the best and deliciously different ones of the trip. To recite the menu does not do it justice. The crab and baby corn soup and prawn and banana fried spring rolls (different and wonderful) set the tone. Grilled chicken comes with the piquant accents of chilli and lemongrass, and while the fish is fried and battered, it is accompanied by pickle apricot sauce.

After a send-off like this, we feel a pang at leaving Hanoi, but we're told our overnight transport will be leaving soon. Any train with an excitingly romantic name such as the Fanxipan Express could not be kept waiting!