Hanoi, Vietnam: Temples and thieves.

First off, I've had my sodding wallet and phone nicked, so forgive me if this blog is tinged with any leftover frustration and annoyance. I'll get to that later though.

To get to Hanoi, we took another sleeper bus which took 14 hours. We nearly didn't take it at all though following a spectacular display of rudeness by the woman in charge of getting everybody to their bunks on the bus. We'd reserved berths 9 and 10 in advance (bottom bunks) through our hotel, who had assured us the bunks were set aside for us. Good to be organised, so we thought.

A free taxi shuttled us to the bus, which was laid on by the bus company. We arrived a full 40 minutes before the bus was due to depart. A fairly chaotic scene greeted us inside the bus, and we noticed that our bunks were occupied by locals. Jacqui went to speak with the woman, politely enquiring: "Excuse me please, can you help us? We have reserved beds 9 and 10." The response was unexpected.

"You're late, people have taken your beds. If you don't like it get off the bus."
"I'm sorry?"
"Get off my bus."
"But we have reserved seats."
"Then get off and wait for another bus. There is one in 10 minutes."

We decided to just take a random couple of top bunks, not trusting the woman further than we could throw her. This was our first really negative experience though, generally the people here had been lovely. As it turned out, we could see out the window that no other bus ever turned up. She just didn't give a toss whether we ended up stranded in the street.

Once in Hanoi, we spent an enjoyable few days visiting the Temple of Literature, which also functioned as Hanoi's first university. It was founded in 1070 as a Confucian temple, and the names of graduates of doctor laureate tests from 1484 to 1779 are etched into 82 stone steles which stand on the back of stone tortoises. From there we took a cab to the Museum of Ethnology, a superb introduction into Vietnamese hill tribes and ethnic groups, including a great outdoor section featuring examples of traditional buildings that we were able to clamber about inside.

Next day we took in a temple sat in the middle of Hoan Qiem Lake in the Old Quarter of the city. An attractive footbridge takes you over to the quiet little temple, but the oddest sight inside is the embalmed remains of a giant turtle, supposedly discovered in the lake.

Hoa Lo Prison (now a museum), was known jokingly by American POWs as the "Hanoi Hilton". It was originally used by French colonialists to house political prisoners, and later by the North Vietnamese to house POWs during the war. Senator John McCain, who recently lost the election to Barack Obama, was imprisoned here and is unable to lift his arms above his head after being tortured during his stay at the prison.

We were a bit burnt out after all the sight-seeing and decided to have a quiet day before heading to Halong Bay the following morning. However, any semblance of peace was spoiled in the evening when my wallet and mobile phone were stolen from my satchel as we walked from a restaurant back to our hotel. A crowded area by a night market on our way home is where we think the theft happened. Neither of us even saw the thief. And how's this for the cruelest of ways to realise you've had your stuff stolen: we'd gone into a doughnut shop, picked out some of the most delicious looking doughnuts you could possibly imagine, and then I go to pay and realise my bag is open and my wallet and phone not there. The shop staff were sympathetic and understanding that we left without paying.

We headed back to the restaurant where the manager called the police. This turned out to be a couple of officers in uniform and a couple of 'heavies' brandishing sticks! They were more-or-less useless and said I needed to go to the police station. The manager sent a waiter to go with us as an interpreter, but when we got there the police just made dismissive hand gestures and said (something along the lines of) "There's nothing we can do, go away" in Vietnamese. This is causing me some hassles with travel insurance as you can imagine. I'm waiting to hear back from the British embassy in Hanoi to see if they can help.

Anyway, what we'd hoped would be an early night resting ahead of Halong Bay, turned out to be a frenzy of card cancelling, password changing, phone calls and such like. Thankfully, Halong would turn out to be one of the highlights of the trip and thoroughly cheer me up: more on that next time.