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Published: July 17th 2008
We awoke early and were downstairs in the lobby of our hotel at 6:30 in the morning, ready to eat breakfast and check out, off to the next adventure. We ordered pho or chao or wonton soup (wonton being a type of noodle here, not wontons like we’re used to) and ca phe sua da (which hasn’t been really good since we left our village café) for breakfast. We assume that the hotel actually ran out onto the street to buy things like pho - isn’t that convenient? Anyway, we left and started to head out of the city of Hanoi.
The trip was long, filled with pictures taken out of the side of the window of the moving car. About halfway to our destination we stopped for a restroom break, snacks, and a little shopping. There was a place with great pottery (you could see the people making it in the back!) and very reasonable (for the US) prices, so we bought a few things before getting back in our van taxi.
Our first real destination was a mountain top with temples. The king, back in 1200-something, came here to meditate on the Buddha. He told people to
start building temples there, so there are a lot of temples and our guide told us that every holiday it is packed with people. One can see why - it’s absolutely beautiful there. We took a tram up the mountain (which Peter was not okay with - his eyes were closed because he has a bit of a height issue; understandable because we were so far up and in a little car), and then hiked up even further to see the sights. The good news for those of us hiking was that it was overcast, so although it was warm and humid, it wasn’t so hot as to be unbearable. The bad news was that since it was overcast we couldn’t actually get a good picture of the view down the mountain to show how high up we were. After walking around for a bit and taking pictures of what we could, we returned to the tram to go down the mountain. We had to wait at the sight for a bit, which put us in a good spot to buy a few little trinkets from the venders there. Thu and I bought fans from a vender at this tram
Food!
Stop at a snack place for yummy goodies.stop and it was a good thing we did - we’ve used those fans all day.
For lunch we ate at a little restaurant at a temple. I actually hoped for vegetarian cuisine, but apparently people assume that we want to eat meat/seafood, etc., so that’s what we get. It’s good food, but I would be very happy with rice and green veggies. I end up eating mostly that with a few bites of other things for good measure, but the humidity makes it so I am not extremely hungry.
Upon leaving the temple area, we continued our journey to Ha Long Bay City, taking more pictures out of the car window. As we drew closer to the city we could see just how beautiful it is - and how touristy. They actually have shops that say “souvenir shop,” which I haven’t seen anywhere else. No McDonald’s yet (whoo hoo!), but a Tony & Guy Salon (weird) and “MTV Massage” parlor (scary). We checked into our hotel - another three star place with a beautiful view but rooms that were not as nice as in Ha Noi (okay, the furniture looks nicer but the room wasn’t as clean
and the toilet didn’t work initially…) - where we had a bit of time to nap before the evening’s festivities.
Around 6PM we drove across a very long bridge into the other half of the city, the half that’s not very touristy because it’s where most of the people from here live. We just drove through then headed back to the tourist side for our dinner. The restaurant (I think it was called Kim Huong, but I’m not sure) was a great place for those who like seafood. Thu was in heaven, Peter dutifully tried most things, and I just kept wondering how much food people expect us to eat - every place brings out multiple dishes and usually we are hard-pressed to get through most of it (although I must say that things were pretty cleaned when we left this place). From the restaurant we drove across another bridge to Tuan Chau Ha Long, a place that offers a water music show. Even though water music shows are common in the States (even Enchanted Forest has one!), this is a big deal here because it’s the only one in the country and people save up for a long
Far!
Some of the stairs we had to climb AFTER the tram ride. time to come once in their lifetime. We didn’t actually go see the water show but we walked around and took pictures and then headed back. One of the funniest things while we were there was the reaction people had to seeing Peter. Tiny women would look and then look again - and a couple groups even turned to walk close to him, we’re guessing they did that to see how tall he really is. I missed the funniest episode but Peter told me about it - one guy ran up, grabbed Peter’s arms, and tried jumping up to see if he could jump as high as Peter is tall. We decided Peter needs a shirt that says (in Vietnamese) that people can take pictures with him for 20,000 dong (about $1.25).
Before returning to the hotel we decided to go to the outdoor market. Bac Phuc wasn’t too happy about it because he considers all of the stuff there cheap, which is may be, but we liked it. We bought a few things, bargained a little bit, and then started walking back. We had ca phe sua da at a little (cute!) café by our hotel and
then returned for bed. We have to get up early in the morning to be down at 6AM for breakfast to start another long day of sight-seeing. Fun, fun!
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