Hanoi

I am in Hanoi! It's pretty much a Scottish summer as well ^^ Nearly everyone else is walking around in hats and scarves because they've been to Thailand first (<25° C), but with our Qingdao-hardened skin we waltzed around in t-shirts for a few hours. .. Then the reality of 12° C kicked in and we put on some hats.
The hostel was a backpackers hostel, catering specifically to westerners doing the South-East Asian tour (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos etc) and advertises itself by promising not to rip you off. This may not sound like much, but, in tourist areas especially, westerners are there to be screwed over. Although in China it's generally just scams (feign misunderstanding), the southern countries seem to be a bit more... violent... in their pursuit of cash (threats). I assume it's because many more tourists go further south and, from what we saw, they seem to be drunken, drugged weirdos :S
Friday-- We tried to reach Ga Gia Lam train station to get tickets for the Chinese border crossing. This didn't go well, because there's a large highway between the hostel and Ga Gia Lam, which turned out to be impassable on foot. On top of this we had to walk across a huge (no pedestrians) bridge, so we wandered back to the main railway station, which sold us the tickets but didn't give any indication that we would be departing from Ga Gia Lam. Whilst wandering from station to station it was nice to look at the buildings and little side streets. I've gotten used to the "Chinese style" wide roads and humungous buildings, it was brilliant to wander through tiny streets and have the buildings reach about 4 stories max. The buildings had been added to over the years, so it seemed that they'd grown over time with the residents, differing from the Chinese Sim-City method of building a city.
After obtaining tickets we attempted to track down the many places I'd been advised to see by my friends (cafés mainly :P) There's an ice-cream café called Fanny's next to Hoan Kiem Lake in the centre of Hanoi. It was the best ice-cream I've had in a long while {chocolate naturally ^^). Says something that my first info is about an ice-cream shop huh. Hoan Kiem Lake is a pretty area in the middle of a city. The name means Lake of the Returned Sword, which refers to thesword of Emperor Lê Lợi, who, after kicking the butts of the Chinese Ming Dynasty, “returned” the sword to the turtle god of the lake. The Tortoise Tower (Thap Rùa ) in the centre of the island is quoted EVERYWHERE as being linked to the legend. No one would tell us how it was linked though -_-
Saturday-- On Saturday we went on tourist over-load and visited the Temple of Literature (Văn Miếu) and Vietnamese National History Museum (actually reallllllly exciting). The Temple of Literature was originally a Confucian temple, then later became one of the first universities in Vietnam. Inside, the names of its graduates are inscribed on stelae (mounted on turtles' backs, naturally). Exit left from the Temple, there's a restaurant called Koto, which not only does brilliant food (and smoothies, nom), but also exclusively employs street kids as a way to get them off the streets, in to the restaurant industry. It's like goodwill training.
After GOOD FOOD (falafel wrap, nom), we headed for the history museum. The museum gives an entire history of Vietnam from prehistoric humans until the French occupation. As with all Asian countries, Vietnam claims to be in possession of the cradle of early human life. Most of the information wasn't translated in to English, so, call me a cynic, but I assume claims to have the oldest civilisation were in there somewhere. This assumption is brought about by Japan's recent claim to have found pottery in the north proving that it had civilisation way before China -_- To clarify, civilisation involves written documents and, although China says it has 5000 years of civilisation, it only has 3000 years of writing. A side-note in a 1000 year old history book about an unknown dynasty does not count as evidence for civilisation. *hem* ANYWAY.
There were lots of artefacts and images of dig sites, which were interesting just to see the different strata of ages of packed earth structures *freak* A lot of old bronze drums were also on display, apparently these are struck with staves by people walking clockwise around them. The Welcome to Vietnam magazine on the plane said that the Emperor Exhibition (An exhibition of the last Emperor's crowns and ceremonial swords) had ended already, but it was still on ^^ Very impressive swords. Royalty definitely had too much money... and gold :P
Turns out, Vietnam are pretty kick-ass. It's generally known that they beat off America and it's vaguely known that they beat off the French, eventually. But in addition, after one thousand years of Chinese rule, the Vietnamese got rid of the Chinese TANG DYNASTY, then beat off three MONGOL invasions, then repelled a Ming Dynasty invasion later on.
When we arrived on Thursday I had Carbonara, this evening I had it again, basically Vietnam does brilliant western food. It sucks not eating Vietnamese food, but Pho noodles sound exactly like Chinese mixian 米线, and I don't particularly like them. Also China doesn't do decent western food, whereas the western food here is not only cheap, but BRILLIANT. Nom. Carbonara. Admittedly my boyfriend does the best Carbonara... but this will do until I can flog him in the kitchen ^^