Vietnam: in the north, the marvellous country

Hanoi, 5 o'clock in the morning. In the lane reserved for two-wheelers on the Long Bien bridge, formerly known as the Paul Doumer bridge, an emblematic monument of the Vietnamese capital completed in 1902 from plans by Gustave Eiffel... in short, on this bridge spanning the Red River and several avenues, a compact stream of scooters rushes from the suburbs towards the city centre. Elbow to elbow, front wheel to rear wheel, everyone at the same speed, all to the dull hum of finely tuned engines. It's so dense that you wonder if it would be possible to slip anything between two motorcyclists. It's a surreal atmosphere, but it's all the more understandable when you realise that Hanoi has three million scooters. That's one for every two inhabitants.

But it's moving... Slowly, staring straight ahead, barely less concentrated than a Formula 1 driver at the wheel of his machine, because we all know that the slightest touch of the handlebars would lead to a bloodbath. But there is almost never any bloodshed, because the system is so well honed - a citizen, we might say - and works so well in this Hanoi perched on two wheels.

 

A nod to elegance: the men's plastic caps, which are supposed to be helmets, all have a touch of fashion about them, some even verging on the extravagant. On the girls' side, on the other hand, glamour is worn in a very loose version, with almost all of them wearing a kind of flowery pyjama jacket, with a full bonnet barely open at eye level and very long sleeves that they extend with gloves. Even though it's humid and 38°C... They say it's to protect them from the sun...

 

Hanoi, 5am. On the banks of Lake Hoan Kiem, literally "the restored sword", everyone is doing their gymnastics, jogging, tai chi and even aerobics, next to the statue of Ly Thai Tô, the emperor who established Thang Long - the future Hanoi - as the country's capital in 1010. There are men, women, young people, old people, and even some very, very old people in traditional costume... There are fat people, thin people... But on the tonic side, there are almost exclusively women, apart from three or four young expatriate males who are also there, in shorts and bare chested, sweating profusely.

 

Hanoi, 5am. Right in the heart of the city, the old quarter that used to be known as the "Quarter of the 36 Guilds" is bustling with stalls, lanterns, flowers and miles of fabric. For the moment, supplied as before by porters in conical hats, we have a hearty breakfast of a bowl of pho, the traditional soup, squatting rather than sitting on tiny stools on the pavement. It's going to be a long, tiring day, sweltering in the heat, made up of endless chatter, bargaining and haggling.

 

As you can see, the city starts early. In fact, a legacy no doubt borrowed from the rural world still very much alive in Vietnam, Hanoi rises and goes to bed with the chickens... which is unusual for an Asian capital. But this is a very special capital. It's almost harsh, and doesn't smile at the first person who comes along, as the cliché would have it. But we understand her, we know she's seen it all. We know that it has been invaded, colonised, occupied and bombed many times in its modern history, but we also know that it has never really given up. You can feel it, you can see it, both in its monuments and in the reserve of its people.

 

So it's only natural that a visit to Hanoi in particular, and Vietnam in general, should begin with a trip to the National History Museum. The museum is renowned for both the richness of its collections and the splendour of the building that houses them, formerly the École française d'Extrême-Orient, built between 1925 and 1932 by the architect Ernest Hébrard, who created an aesthetic that combines Chinese and French elements. The building is so beautiful that it is rented out to receptive agencies who organise sumptuous gala evenings...

 

In a completely different genre, without gala but just as edifying, the prison museum is not to be missed, within the very walls of the former Hoa Lo prison, built by the French in 1896. It was held with an iron fist by our compatriots - who had not forgotten the guillotine... - until the end of the Indochina War, then used by the Vietnamese themselves to incarcerate American pilots who, not without humour, nicknamed it the "Hanoi Hilton". Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential election against Barack Obama, was one of its illustrious prisoners.

 

On the lighter side - and in the open air - there is another museum that is a must-see in Hanoi and one of the most beautiful in the country: the Vietnam Ethnography Museum. This institution presents the 54 ethnic groups that make up the nation through objects, costumes and jewellery, but above all through reconstructed houses, even those brought back from remote regions, spread across a three-hectare park. Here too, you can enjoy a cocktail and a demonstration of water puppetry, a magical traditional Vietnamese show.

 

Among the musts are two other places, which have little in common, but which each belong to the great history of Vietnam: Hô Chi Minh's house on stilts and the Temple of Literature. So let's start at the beginning, and walk through the doors of this building, erected in 1070 and dedicated to Confucius. In short, it was Vietnam's first university, intended for the sons of the high nobility. There are pavilions, courtyards, a pagoda housing statues of the sage and his four closest disciples, gardens and a pool known as the "celestial clarity" pool. A great sense of serenity reigns in this place, miraculously spared by war and time. This is something that is very rare in Vietnam.

 

That leaves the mausoleum and the house of "Uncle Hô". As for the mausoleum, about which so much has been said about its "Soviet" plastic, we won't dwell on it too much, except for its famous plastic, which is actually quite beautiful in its own right. But this is a mausoleum, full stop. Nonetheless, a huge crowd throngs the site, lined up hundreds of metres in a row, all in an almost religious silence. There are schoolchildren, war veterans and peasants on pilgrimage from their distant mountains. We'll find them again a little later, visiting the house on stilts built on the edge of a pond where the father of the nation lived. A simplistic, almost Spartan place, uncluttered by the slightest embellishment. The soul of the man is there, as is his working power, and certainly a touch of self-sacrifice and nights spent studying.

 

Outside, Hanoi is living the life of a third-millennium capital, criss-crossing its shady streets with the sound of horns. Oh, the horns of Hanoi! They would exhaust a thousand playgrounds put together. Alongside some prestigious sites, such as the Museum of History or the Museum of Ethnography, which we make private for cocktail parties or gala dinners," says Mathilde Met, head of the business tourism department at Phoenix Voyages, "Hanoi is a fantastic playground for treasure hunts. We organise some memorable ones in the old town on cycle rickshaws... Participants are given a small budget and have to bring back a certain number of objects, passing through specific points. Apart from the challenge, it also gives them a chance to get in touch with the locals".

 

The old quarter, to be precise. A labyrinth of exotic alleyways, a former Asia with a touch of the West, reminiscent of Indochina, where late afternoon strolls end on the terrace of the Hôtel Métropole, built by the French in 1902 and still in its original state. Time for a beer or, better still, a glass of Chablis, said to be a literary wine, perfect for a hotel once frequented by Marguerite Duras.

 

In the 13th century, 36 guilds were established in this district, each on a different street, giving it the name "36 streets". This is no longer the case today, where everything mixes and mingles, where a T-shirt shop rubs shoulders with a bird seller, where a drinks shop stands next to a silk seller, where a street restaurant overflows onto the stall of a wicker seller... Without doubt, this is the most charming of Hanoi's neighbourhoods. You can wander through it endlessly, strolling along its improbable tarmac, or better still, criss-crossing it at the speed of a slow-moving horse, slumped in the basket of an antique rickshaw. You move from one alleyway specialising in lanterns to another in funerary urns, from a succession of stalls drowned in mounds of plastic flowers to stalls smelling of unknown spices. Then you raise your head, linger over the two- or three-storey houses - Hanoi is in fact a flat city - and discover architectural marvels, balconies and terraces, corbels and macaroons, all inevitably entangled in the usual mass of electric wires that streak the skies of every Asian city.

 

We will still take the time to stop off at the traditional house of 87 Ma May. Built in the 19th century and admirably restored as part of the cooperation between the cities of Hanoi and Toulouse, it offers a glimpse into the colonial atmosphere of the former capital of Tonkin. The two-storey building is long and punctuated by courtyards and terraces. In case you haven't already noticed it elsewhere in the district, this house, which was once inhabited by a succession of merchant families, is, like all the others, incredibly narrow. This was the trick the town's inhabitants found to get round a law that taxed them on the width of facades. The result was the birth of 'tube houses', some of which are no wider than the corridor of a Haussmann-style flat.

 

Suddenly, at the end of a street, the clatter of a train crossing the Long Bien Bridge. That's the train we'll be taking as night falls - and even better, as we climb aboard a car belonging to the Victoria hotel chain, in the grand luxury style of trains from the turn of the century - for a journey that will take us to Sapa, in the north of the country close to the Chinese border, to discover ethnic groups that have stayed away from everything. This is the land of the Black Hmong and the Flower Hmong, nicknamed after the dominant colours of their costumes. They live around Sapa, a health resort built by the French in 1922. The climate station? A main street, a main square, a church still ringing the angelus, a lake, staircase streets hosting the ethnic market, and, topping it all off with its imposing silhouette, the Victoria Hotel... It's certainly not the Himalayas, but at an altitude of 1,650 metres, the evenings can be chilly. The famous luxury hotel makes no mistake, lighting fires in the cooler months and serving up plenty of mulled wine and Savoyard fondues... As well as the village markets and their debauchery of colourful costumes, the ultimate treat is a walk through the rice paddies - short and easy enough for groups, sportier and much longer for experienced trekkers - through the English green fields which, until 1986, were almost exclusively reserved for poppy cultivation.

 

You take a path that is beautifully powdered, you skim over rice terraces with tiny streams gurgling along them, you follow a few peaceful buffalo that children climb on, and you pass through villages - or rather groups of houses - that are clearly not rolling in money. And then, at the turn of a bamboo grove, you come across a bistro-grocery serving hot tea and, from time to time, a makeshift shop selling beautiful weavings made by Hmong women. Thank goodness the clatter of quad bikes hasn't reached here yet... All is quiet here, with only the sounds of the old countryside, chickens cackling and voices calling out to each other from one hill to the next. Only occasionally does the sound of a moped disturb this peace on earth. But for the moment, they are still very rare.

 

Groups generally spend two days in Sapa," says Sébastien Rodriguez, manager of the Hotel Victoria. It may be a bit short, but it's more than enough time to get to know the region and, above all, to discover, even in part, the riches of Hmong culture. The groups arrive at night by our private train, where they are served a sumptuous dinner, and leave the same way. This way, they don't waste any time and arrive refreshed and ready to go. So back in the sleeping car, arriving very early in Hanoi and leaving immediately for the wonder of wonders, one of the most fabulous landscapes in the world: Halong Bay, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983, under the criterion of "natural beauty".

 

To say that Halong Bay is beautiful is an understatement. With almost 2,000 sugar loaves spread over more than 1,500 km2 of jade sea, it forms a veritable labyrinth from which, it used to be said, you'd never come back if you got lost. Today, numerous cruise junks and peaceful fishing boats have taken over the site, without detracting from its beauty. Oh yes, they have! The latest move by the regional government has made it compulsory to paint all the boats' hulls white, which is traditionally Basque red. Despite vehement protests from cruise passengers, travel agents and a few aesthetes and intellectuals, nothing has been done. So since this spring, the junks have been horribly immaculate. And it doesn't suit them at all...

 

In the meantime, the rocks are still there, imposing their masses straight into the water as the fog rolls in. They come in all shapes: slender, jagged, lopsided, hunchbacked, plump... all within a stone's throw of each other. The popular imagination has guessed baboon, dog or dragon silhouettes... which, to be honest, are not always easy to identify. However, on the evening of a grand dinner, on the deck of a luxury boat, with a glass of champagne in hand, anything is possible...

 

"Our company, Paradise Cruise, has nine boats in four categories. For business tourism groups, we primarily offer the Paradise Luxury, 17-cabin vessels that are perfectly adapted to their needs," says Caroline Thomas, Marketing and Communications Director. But for groups looking for exclusivity, we have some very top-of-the-range boats with eight cabins of 40 m2 each. They all have a library, fitness centre, spa, sauna and, of course, a bar and restaurant. Our cruises generally last two days and one night. So there's hardly time to get bored. All the more so as a host of excursions are planned, from the discovery of one or other of the countless caves hidden in the rocks, to a stop on a beach, a visit to a floating fishing village or a canoe-kayak exercise.

As well as the fabulous scenery," concludes Mathilde Met, "the highlight of these cruises is undoubtedly the gala evening that we hold in a cave, or rather in a cave-tunnel that is open at both ends, allowing the air to pass through... Illuminated by hundreds of candles that we perch one by one on the walls, the whole event is flooded with rock, traditional or classical music. Take your pick." And it's true that the voice of Callas, rising up there, in the middle of this fantastic sea, in this cave that has undoubtedly hidden many dramas and adventures; with this sublime voice escaping under the full moon, we almost touch eternity.