Sukhothai, Thailand to Hanoi, Vietnam

Monday, March 4th 2013, noon, waiting in Bangkok airport
Yesterday afternoon we lazed around our guesthouse and took a few pictures before walking back into Old Sukhothai for dinner. There really isn’t much in Old Sukhothai except the Historical Park. The little town has few restaurants and none that are very good. There’s a market, a 7/11, a few other little shops and that’s about it. However, the “Coffee Cup” is a little restaurant that’s reasonably clean and has reasonable food, so we ate there. When we arrived, we ran into the American couple that we’d dined with in New Sukhothai the night before but they were just finishing so we took over their table right under the fan. It was only supposed to be a high of 92F yesterday so it wasn’t horribly hot.
We took a tuktuk back to our guesthouse and tried to get to sleep early. This morning we got up at 5:40 to catch our taxi to the airport at 6:30. We were surprised to discover that it was raining and actually slightly cool outside. The taxi took 40 minutes to get to the airport and cost 800 baht (about $24). It would have cost 600 baht to get an airport shuttle so we thought a taxi was worth the extra $6 not to have extra stops and maybe be crammed in.

As it turned out, the beautiful little Sukhotai airport had only staff there when we arrived about  7:10 am. There were free breakfast snacks and coffee, tea and juice for us. Eventually a few other passengers showed up but there were less than a dozen people on our plane. There are only 2 domestic flights per day from Sukhotai to Bangkok and back, once in the morning and once in the afternoon on Bangkok Airways. Apparently there are no other flights at all out of Sukhotai.

As we walked out to the little bus that took us out to the plane on the runway, the staff stood in a row holding big umbrellas so we wouldn't get wet. Great service.

We arrived at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi (pronounced “soo wanna poom”) airport at 10 am. This is the 5th time that we have been through this airport on this trip. It is a major hub.
It took only a few minutes to retrieve our luggage and go back upstairs to Departures to check in for our Thai Airways flight to Hanoi leaving at 5:35 pm. Security and immigration control also went smoothly so we were all set in the secure part of the airport before 11 am. We have a long wait ahead of us but at least it’s a huge airport with lots of shops and restaurants. All we have left to do is exchange the rest of our Thai baht for Vietnamese dong or American dollars and eat one of our snacks that Anita has brought. Among the many restaurants, there’s Burger King and Dairy Queen here in the airport along with a place called Canadian Pizza which bills itself as “the most popular pizza in Canada”. Never heard of it.
A few thoughts about southeast Asia while we wait:
Thailand is by far the most developed and most westernized country of the 4 that we’ve been in. That’s not all bad. There are good roads and very little litter and garbage. However, Laos, which is very poor, also had very little litter.
Cambodia and especially Vietnam are covered in litter. Every vacant piece of ground has plastic bags on it. People seem to throw garbage anywhere they can. However, you rarely see a plastic bottle. If you are walking down the street and finish a bottle of water, you can often just hold it out to a person who’s collecting recycling and they’ll take it gladly. Sometimes I think if you tossed it, someone would catch it before it hit the ground. Plastic bottles and cans have value to turn in for recycling and there are lots of poor people trying to make a living any way they can. I’m sure that if they were paid a modest amount per kilogram for plastic bags, a lot of the litter in Cambodia and Vietnam would disappear within days. At home people get all bent out of shape over the environmental horror of drinking water out of a plastic bottle that might be discarded. No problem. Just attach a return fee to it at point of purchase, like we do with beer bottles.
The canine population could benefit from some family planning.
Most houses and a lot of commercial buildings have a “spirit house” outside of them. These spirit houses are usually about 2 feet square and are set on a pedestal about 3 or 4 feet high, hopefully not in the shadow of the house. For bigger buildings, some of the spirit houses are about 4 feet square. Some are very ornate. Every morning people leave offerings of food and drinks and maybe burn some incense at the front of the spirit house. These offerings are to appease the spirits of the ground where the house is built and to remember the spirits of ancestors. This seems to be a little bit Buddhist and a little bit animist. People believe that everything has spirituality and that they are surrounded by spirits all the time. They want to live in harmony with that.
Whether it’s spirituality or superstition, people also seem very conscious of auspicious days to do things, lucky numbers and the effect of luck on life in general.
The air and water in Thailand don’t seem as polluted as in Vietnam, especially, but all of southeast Asia has a ways to go in terms of environmentally sound sewage treatment. Many canals and little creeks reek of sewage. There are also a lot of vehicles that just spew black smoke so air pollution in any traffic is a lot worse than it would be in Canada. Plus, unlike Laos or Cambodia, some areas of Vietnam are really heavily populated so the problem is even worse. However, to build effective sewage treatment and to impose emission standards costs money that they don’t have (Thailand is a bit luckier that way). It seems inappropriate to pontificate to these countries about our idea of acceptable standards unless we pay more for the goods that we get so cheaply from them or somehow contribute the money that they need to upgrade and maintain better systems.
Tuesday, March 5th, 2013 Hanoi
We passed the afternoon in the airport pretty well. Anita found us a couch and 2 chairs that she made into a little nest and I even slept for 1/2 hour. Finally we got to our gate and boarded our plane. There was quite a crowd going to Hanoi. The plane was fairly big and it was full.
Arrival in Hanoi went smoothly. For some reason, the visas we had arranged cost $45 each this time but there was no hassle and we got through immigration in about 15 minutes. Our luggage arrived quickly and we went to the info desk to arrange a taxi to our hotel. There are signs in the airport and in the hotel and restaurants here to be very wary of the taxi scams. There are 3 reputable companies with metered taxis and then there are a lot of scam artists. So, it's safer to get a cab from the desk at the airport, not outside. It cost $30 but the service was excellent, and it is about 35 km.
We're staying at the Rising Dragon Palace Hotel in the old quarter of Vietnam. It's chaos on the street but calm in the hotel. \When we got to the hotel, all of the young staff fluttered around us carrying our bags, getting us drinks and making sure we were properly welcomed. Service here is fantastic. Our room is very nice, not too soundproof but otherwise good. Breakfast here is great.
This morning we followed the hotel map we were given and found the Indochine Junk office to pay the balance for our upcoming Halong Bay trip on the Dragon's Pearl Junk on Friday. Then we took a taxi to the Orient Express Office to pay for and pick up our tickets for the train to Lao Cai in the mountains on Sunday night. With the business of the day over, we took a taxi to the Temple of Literature, the first university in Vietnam, built in 1070.

 All the gardens and floral arrangements are really beautiful.

 This shrine is to one of the early directors of the university.

All the buildings are in a very Oriental style. The university is founded on the teachings of Confucius. It seems very different here. It's so much more influenced by China rather than by India as was the case in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.

 Now that's a big drum.

 More of the courtyards and buildings at the university.

After we were done touring the university, we went to a restaurant called Koto across the street. Here, they teach impoverished street kids how to run a restaurant and they sell great food. We both had bun cha, which is a barbecued pork concoction into which you dip rice noodles and herbs and greens. Anita also had a banana mint passion fruit shake.

 There's lots of motorcycle traffic here so crossing the street is a challenge but it's nothing compared to Ho Chi Minh City. We're somewhat used to this stuff by now. We walked back to our hotel, if you can call it walking. It's more like an obstacle course, dodging cars, motorcycles, carts, people and holes in the sidewalk, where there is a sidewalk. Half the time we have to walk on the street because any sidewalk is covered in parked motorcycles or products for sale. It's really not that difficult and is actually lots of fun to walk around. Lots of alertness tests.
The area we walked through today had few tourists or tourist establishments. Just seeing how people make a living is interesting. We smile and talk to them and they smile and talk to us. More often than not, we somehow communicate.
At least they use the same alphabet that we do, not like in the other 3 countries, so we can read the street signs and find our way around easier. And unlike Thailand, people here drive (mostly) on the side of the street that we're used to at home. It's not unusual to see motorbikes going the wrong way on a 1 way street though.It all works out.

These are some apartments on the edge of the old quarter. This is a calm street although these apartments are a little grimy. Life in downtown Hanoi can be a little gritty but it's certainly entertaining. And touring is not hard when it's sunny and 24C, a very pleasant temperature.