Fivimart

The Vietnam Diaries 2011: July 24th – Hanoi

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We arrive back to Hanoi shortly after 4:00 in the morning. Our cab ride back costs 50,000 dong, which is also the maximum price our hotel staff have instructed us to pay (and we obviously don’t want to look like schmucks in front of them). The cab driver speeds through red lights and breaks a couple of other traffic rules. But it’s early in the morning and there are few other cars, so that makes it legal, right?

It’s pitch dark inside the hotel and the doors are locked. We knock and wake a few of the hotel workers, who have been asleep on improvised beds assembled out of the lobby chairs. A male receptionist zombie-walks to the front desk and fishes out our room key. We’re given a room on the top floor with a good view over Hanoi.

Our room is on the 9th floor, but the elevator only goes to the 7th. This is because, according to an ancient Vietnamese prophecy, taking elevators to higher floors summons the ghosts of evil building contractors, which is a rather bad omen. The other possible explanation is that extra floors have been added after the elevator’s completion, but how likely is that?!

“Who dares travel up here?! Got spare change?”

The room is smaller than our original one and is almost fully taken up by a huge bed. We make full use of this bed, if you know what I mean. That’s right, we sleep like two bricks until 9:30.

We go down for breakfast. The hotel staff ask us about our impressions from the Sapa trip. They also tell us we’ll be picked up from the hotel at 14:30, so that we can make it to the 15:45 train to Hue. They continue to spoil us (and we’re loving it). After breakfast we return to the room. Katka takes a nap, while I surf the Internet to catch up on latest developments (most of them sombre – Utoja shootings, bullet trains colliding in China, Amy Winehouse is dead). After this refreshing look at the world of news headlines we plan our last shopping tour to stock up for the long train ride to Hue.

I have already told you about our futile attempts to find Fivimart, a big supermarket described in Lonely Planet. Since we’re both rather stubborn people we decide to go for yet another shop-finding adventure. This time we enlist the help of our receptionist, who gives us a detailed map of the area along with equally detailed directions. You’d think we should have no problem finding it now. You’d be wrong!

We run a full circle around the Hoan Kiem Lake without finding the store. Then we try again to follow the street indicated in Lonely Planet. We find a flashy place called “Civilize”, which is either a nightclub or a casino (or both?). We ask a man standing outside about how to find Fivimart. He points vaguely in the direction of where we came from. He may as well have told us it’s “somewhere in Hanoi”.

He also mockingly tries to sell us this sign as a souvenir…

At this stage we finally give up and decide to shop elsewhere. We find a small mini market and stock up on some canned food, bread, and hand wipes. Suspiciously, the lady at the cash register doesn’t use the product scanner and instead punches in some numbers into an old calculator, before presenting us with the total cost. She most likely overcharges us, but the end sum is modest enough to not warrant any arguments.

On the way back to the hotel we decide to walk a new street to mix things up. What can I say, we love living on the edge! Half way through the street we notice a giant supermarket ahead of us. As we get closer, we are shocked to discover that we’re standing in front of the infamous Fivimart. It’s like finding an oasis in a desert, except after having already drunk some ostrich blood instead (and paid for it).

Nevertheless, we want to use the opportunity to buy up more things for the trip. Inside we’re told that Fivimart rules demand that we leave our bags in a locker. At the same time a sign on the locker says that Fivimart bears no responsibility if our stuff goes missing. How convenient! I see they’re learning from the comparably bullshit coat-check disclaimers.

We buy some cold cuts, apples, instant noodles, yoghurt and yomost (uuuuhm, yomost!). We have definitely gotten more stuff than we bought at the mini market and we’re charged less for it. So the calculator-woman has indeed overcharged us, but I don’t care because YOMOST! Mind-blowingly good, see for yourself:

[youtube.com/watch?v=a_uKQEtmg8Q]
On the way back Katka starts feeling weak and dizzy. My guess is it’s Yomost-deficiency, but I’m not sure that’s an accurate medical diagnosis. We get to the hotel just as it suddenly starts pouring down. Katka drinks a lot of cold water, eats a yoghurt and some hastily made sandwiches and immediately feels better. Katka and I play doctor, if you know what I mean. That’s right, we browse some online medical advice sites to help us diagnose her symptoms. We conclude she has heat exhaustion. Decision is made to keep her well rested, cool at all times and out of direct sunlight (sort of like you have to do with Yomost).

At 14:30 we go down to the lobby to say goodbye to our friendly hotel staff. We give them a box of candy and leave a generous tip in the “tip box” by the reception. Mr. Son, the manager, gives us final walk-through of the trip to Hue and tells us to get in touch in case we need any help once we’re back in Hanoi. He hands us some business cards to pass on to friends and encourages us to give Rising Dragon III a review on Booking.con and Tripadvisor.com. His boss apparently bases the employee bonus on the ratings they get. We were planning to do so in the first place, so we promise we will. (CONTINUE TO PAGE 2)

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The Vietnam Diaries 2011: July 20th – Hanoi

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We’re up at 9:30 and go down to catch breakfast before 10:00. Before we’re able to make it to the restaurant we’re ambushed by the receptionist who starts telling us the plan for our evening departure to Sapa. She doesn’t get far before she is interrupted by Mr. Son (hotel manager). There’s some visible tension between them and the woman walks off muttering something in Vietnamese (if we listened closely enough I’m sure we could have learned a few useful swear words). I guess she’s not happy about Mr. Son “stealing” us, now that we’ve reached our VIP status. Mr. Son tells us that everything’s been arranged for our trip. We should be back by 19:00 to be driven to the train station where we’ll take a night train to Lao Cai as part of our journey.

We set out to look for a place to stock up for our homestay with the tribes in Sapa. We’ve done some research on staying with e.g. Hmong and the recommended gear is:

  • Toilet paper (a rare item in most homes of Hmong and other tribes)
  • Token presents for kids (pens, pencils, notepads, candy)
  • A gift for the host family

This kind of diverse shopping list is best served by a supermarket. One problem: there aren’t any supermarkets. It does not seem to be a very common store format around here. There are a couple of specialised stores selling toiletries and similar household items, but that’s not enough to cover the full list. Lonely Planet mentions a proper supermarket called Fivimart. What it doesn’t mention is that Fivimart will only make itself visible during the full moon in uneven months to those whose minds have reached a higher plane of consciousness. It’s entirely impossible to locate and the map provided by Lonely Planet points to a wrong location.

“So, can you see the final destination coordinates, marked with a giant “X”? Well that’s not it!”

After unsuccessful attempts at finding the elusive Fivimart we settle on a smaller hypermarket that has most of what we need (except pens, pencils and notebooks we thought of giving to the Hmong). We get a big and fancy looking box of candy for the host family and a few small packs of candy to hand out to kids. We go back to the hotel to pack and check out. We leave our bags at the reception and go out to catch a few more Hanoi “must sees”.

First stop is Lenin Park. Or, more Vietnamically (that’s totally a word, I swear) – Lê-Nín Park. Vietnamese have a compulsion about splitting multi-syllable words into smaller words or at least hyphenating every syllable, something I’ve already explored in my earlier posts. Lenin Park is clean and rather small. It’s full of people exercising and men playing that same mysterious game with long narrow cards that we’ve seen on our first day.

Right across the street from the park is the Flag Tower of Hanoi. It…towers…over 40 metres above the city. We turn onto a road to the right of the tower and make our way to the Presidential Palace complex. The streets here are much wider than in the Old Quarter and with far fewer people walking them. In fact, the only people around are stone-faced guards standing by giant gates to the Ministry of Defence. Katka wisely decides not to take any pictures here, because our travel plans don’t include a trip to prison on espionage charges.

To really teach you a lesson they use your own camera to take your mugshot

The whole area is filled with imposing government buildings and embassies. There are guards on every corner and guides by every building. What I’m saying is: there are quite a few guards here. Most houses have cars parked by them. Owning a car here is a sign of wealth and bad spacial awareness, since the majority of roads in the Old Quarter can probably accommodate around half a car at best.

We make it to the Presidential Palace, but finding a way inside proves tricky. There are many different gates, but only one of them is the “official” entrance, so it takes us quite some time to walk around and find it. Inside the “park” we find that we’re limited to exploring only a small area of the premises. We can look at the Presidential Palace but not come too close to it.

Essentially, we can only see the areas where Ho Chi Minh used to live. The dude loved the whole “keeping it simple” thing so much that he refused to live in the Palace itself. Instead he built himself a wacky Stilt House and surrounded it with bearded bush-dragons disguised as Santa Clauses:

Wwwwwaaaazzzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

We explore the area and check out the Stilt House, mango road, an older house where Ho Chi Minh lived earlier, a lake full of carp and a small museum with some Soviet cars Ho owned. “Pimp My Ride” wasn’t that big of a thing back then, so the cars range in colour from grey all the way to black.

Outside of the Presidential Palace enclosure is the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Here Ho himself lies in an embalmed state, waiting to spook faint-hearted visitors. We only admired the building from the outside. Not because we’re faint-hearted, but because we’re scared senseless of Ho’s ghost haunting us in the night.

Nearby is the One Pillar Pagoda, which is a small wooden temple built on a single stone pillar. It’s supposed to resemble a lotus blossom, but instead my brain conjures up an image of Baba Yaga’s Hut on chicken legs. I’m crazy like that. Right next to it is the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Again we only explore the building from the outside, since by now our brains are thoroughly ho-chi-minhified (also, totally a word). (CONTINUE TO PAGE 2)

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