This being our third time in Hanoi, I wanted to expand our horizons a bit outside of the historical museums and Old Quarter. We typically only stay in a small radius, and this is a huge city with modern highrise buildings and tons of different neighborhoods. We’d started the exploration already by walking to the Temple of Literature on our first day here, but today I had organized a bike tour of West Lake, the largest fresh water lake in Hanoi. It is supposed to quieter and more relaxed around the lake’s 17 km circumference, and we’re ready for a break from the horns and noise. I’d been communicating with a bike shop that runs the tours, and the tour guide had actually emailed late Sunday night asking if we still wanted to go, telling us to call her to confirm. I replied in email, then went downstairs to have our ever helpful friends in the hotel make the call for me.
This worked out well, as I got Chao, our tour guide, on the phone, and after some back and forth convinced her that we did still want to take the tour today. I had proposed possibly switching to Tuesday, as I thought the weather might look better, but Chao was busy, so Monday it was. We proceeded to breakfast, another wonderful omelet accompanied by meat and cheese from the buffet, then bundled up as best we could (I had on 4 layers and a scarf) and took an Uber over to West Lake.
It’s about a 20 minute drive to the lake, and we timed it so we would be a bit early. We pulled up to The Hanoi Bicycle Collective (THBC) at about 9:20 to find it tightly closed up. Well, we’re 10 minutes early, so no matter, we’ll just hang out and take some pictures of the lake scenery, even though it is a cloudy and misty day.
As we wait across the street, an older gentleman from the hotel next to THBC sidles up to us. He comes across the street very tentatively, then sort of stands next to us and looks at us, then at the bike place. It’s a little odd, but he finally points at THBC and then to us, to which we nod our heads. He then says “finished” or something like that and shows me his phone with the calendar to indicate tomorrow’s date. Aha, he’s telling us they are closed today, not open until tomorrow. Very thoughtful, but we’ve talked to Chao so we know (at least hope) she’s coming, so we try to tell our helpful stranger this – but our pantomime, watch pointing and pretend phone calling to indicate we’ve talked to THBC doesn’t get the message across. He walks away and we hang out a little bit longer, hoping Chao will show up. We’ve decided we’ll give her until at least 10:00 before calling it quits and heading back to the hotel.
A few minutes later, helpful man is back with a younger guy in tow. The younger guy speaks enough English to tell us the bike place is closed today. But he at least understands when we tell him we have talked to our guide this morning, and she says she’ll here for us. I show him the email from her, with her phone number and he decides to call her. She doesn’t answer the call, but the phone does pick up and we can all hear the background traffic noise – of course – those horns! He tries again with the same result, and we all just shrug at each other. Within moments though, Chao finally shows up, much to our relief – and the relief of our helpful strangers. How nice was that though? Not leaving 2 farangs stranded out there on the sidewalk? Pretty impressive, we’d have to say.
Crisis averted, we wait while Chao opens up the store, gets us our helmets and bikes, then talks to us about traffic (basically asking if we’d visited here before, had we experienced the traffic, did we understand it – yes, yes and yes). We’re finally ready to head out on our tour of West Lake. The first little bit of the ride is rather peaceful. We’re circumnavigating the lake, on a small 2-lane road without much traffic. We ride past the back of the water park, that is now, of course closed for winter and stop a little ways up the road in front of all these abandoned dinner boats. The government shut down all the dinner boats about 2 years ago due to safety and pollution issues. Many boats were operating illegally as well, and with the forced closure, the owners just abandoned the ships to sit here and rot. There were about 15 or so boats, floating just off shore in various stages of disrepair – with some enterprising locals fishing off their decks!
Here we stop for a few minutes to talk about Vietnam, Hanoi and different aspects of life in the city. Chao explains more about Tet preparations, the Kumquat trees, the cherry blossom sticks and the burning of offerings. We talk about her plans for the holiday, living with her parents, her bike riding (she doesn’t own a car, just the bike, much to her mother’s chagrin) and just general chatter until we are off on the road again.
Now the traffic is picking up, and we are picking our way around scooters and parked cars, trying not to get knocked over by passing cars. We’re still skirting the lake,but we’ve fallen so far behind Chao that we lose her at the worst possible place; an intersection that splits from the lake. Crap! Chao rides really fast, and occasionally will look behind for us – but not very often. A couple of times we’ve had to hurry up to catch her, but this time we were cut off by scooters and a cleaning supply vendor with his little cart that we just couldn’t get around. We pull up on the sidewalk right at the intersection and try to make sense of the map. We have half a mind to strike off in what we think is the right direction, because God only knows when Chao will turn around and realize we are missing! But, as in most situations, staying put is probably the best solution. Since she knows the route, she’ll be able to back track to us way better than us to strike out and try to find her.
After a frustrating five minutes, Chao finally appears from around the corner. Wonder how far she got? She’s all smiles and laughter, and we are too now, as we continue our way around the lake – trying to stick as close to Chao as possible. We traverse up a narrow lane chock full of people, restaurants and vendors, then around past the Tran Quoc Pagoda, one of the more recognizable temples in the city. We aren’t stopping here either, which I thought was included in the tour, but there’s no asking Chao as she’s pushing forward, and now we are actually crossing one of the bigger streets around the lake – 6 lanes of moving traffic, with a large divider in the center. Yikes!
But you know? We’re getting to be pretty good at this, and we successfully navigate around the traffic and veer off into a much quieter section of town ringed with restaurants, cafes and bars. It is here that we are stopping for lunch, at Pho Cuon Hung Ben. We’re eating on the street again, on those ubiquitous little plastic stools and teeny tables! Chao tells us this is her favorite restaurant, and we have to agree the food is great. She told us what it was, but we can’t recall! But whatever it was – it was delicious. The spring rolls were fresh and filled with a wonderful meat filling, the pork dish was excellently prepared with a great brown sauce and two different types of deep fried pho noodles, pressed into different shapes that end up being both crunchy and airy – and utterly addicting!
And wow – Chao can eat. She is teeny, tiny, but she can pack away some food – let me tell you! She’s really surprised we aren't’ eating more, even comments that normally for 3 people they can finish all the plates. But its an enormous amount of food – really – the pictures only show you the one plate of the pork – there was a whole other plate filled to capacity just as that one was. Crazy. But Chao has the answer, out of her pack she pulls a reusable, environmentally friendly container to keep her leftovers. So smart. She packs up what’s left of the spring rolls and takes them home with her. I’m impressed!
Lunch and rest over – we hit the busy streets again, this time navigating away from the lake and heading to the B52 Lake. This is the little lake where a B52 bomber crashed after it was shot down in the Christmas bombing campaign in 1972. In order to get here though, we have to traverse through some interesting intersections, traffic flow and a little vegetable market that is set up around the lake. But we make it through successfully and end up staying a while in this quiet little Ba Dinh neighborhood, taking photos and trying to imagine being here during the bombing at the end of the war.
Onward we press, back through the hurky jerky traffic, down little narrow side streets, making our way back to the main lake. We have to cross quite a few large roads, but end up doing this while walking the bikes – which is far simpler than trying to ride across. Finally back on the lake road, we’re forced back up onto the main 6 lane highway by military police who won’t let us continue down the lake road. Crap! Now its getting dicey. It was a little crazy before, but this is super crazy with tons of cars and scooters and people. To make matters worse, we are passing by hundreds of Kumquat and cherry blossom sales stands. Which means more people and cars going every which way, stopping, bargaining, negotiating, loading kumquat trees onto scooters. Insanity but fun!
We finally turn toward the lake and ride right through a huge kumquat sales area – an entire traffic circle has been taken over by various kumquat tree vendors – and now we are slaloming our way through the trees. What fun! You’d think being back on the 2-lane lake road would be a huge relief, but for some reason, this stretch of road is just as crazy as the 6 lane road. We get stuck behind cars trying to get around scooters, scooters trying to get around cars, and I even get scraped up against a parked car by another car coming down the road. If only I had a horn…..
Finally we are back at the bike shop, where we congratulate ourselves on successfully completing this bike ride without and spills or scrapes. Chao even compliments us on our riding, and I think she was really sincere, making a comment about people who don’t know what to do in traffic. We’ll take it! It was a great day, and we saw a lot and explored a completely different area for us. The biggest regret we had was that we didn’t have a GoPro to record all this. It was seriously nuts. And while both Ed and I thought about taking our phones out to take pictures or videos, no way in hell was either of us taking our hands off the bike handle bars and brakes in order to hold the phone. So this is all you have, our words trying to impart the serious craziness of riding a bike through Hanoi traffic right before Tet.
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