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Published: October 29th 2008
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(Day 206 on the road)My first impression of Hanoi: Loud and full of touts constantly hassling you for your money. They met us at the bus stop where the bus from Nanning in China dropped us, and haven't left since. One guy followed us for a good 30 minutes, despite us repeatedly telling him that we don't need a taxi. I had heard a lot of bad stories about these touts (and quite a few scams and theft) being present all over Vietnam before coming here from fellow travellers and from travel blogs I had read, and it seems that they were right. To a much greater extend than in China, I feel reduced to being a walking wallet, with everyone just after my money. I am planning of giving the country a fair chance, but if this doesn't improve considerably, I think I will not spend too much time in the country and head over to Laos sooner rather than later. No point of spending my hard-earned money here if there is a country just as beautiful and much friendlier just around the corner.
Crossing the border from China was comical in a way: On the Chinese side, the
passport control was efficient and orderly. On the Vietnamese side, it was absolute chaos, with people everywhere and completely clogging the small checkpoint. What the Chinese and most borders around the world typically accomplish in one go and with one check, the Vietnamese somehow managed to divide the simple task of passport control into three obscure and completely random steps. At window one, everyone pushed and shovelled. When we finally fought our way to the front, we were told it was the wrong window, and sent to window number three. There, we got a form to fill out, with which they then sent us back to window one. After queueing again and waiting for quite a while, we got the now stamped form and the passport back, to take them to window two. There I had to pay a fee of 5.000 Vietnamese won for something I didn't understand. The Swedish guy I was with got ripped off here the first time, not even in the country yet, as he had somehow paid 10.000 won. Nice. After that, we were sent to window three again, where they relieved us of the form that window one had stamped earlier on. After all that, we could finally leave this madhouse. Welcome to Vietnam.
As mentioned above, busy Hanoi seems full of people just after my money, and I am not enjoying it at all. I had a walk around the famous lake at its centre, around its Old Quarter and a beautiful Confucian temple called The Temple of Literature, but apart from that tried to escape the hustle as much as possible. I am typically not too bad with big, hectic Asian cities and their way of handling western tourists, but at the moment it just all feels a bit too much.
For the next few days, I will thus try to find a more tranquil place on the island of Cat Ba near Halong Bay. After that, I will hopefully feel a bit more relaxed than I am at the moment so that I can explore Vietnam feeling more at ease. I guess I just need a break away from it all; after being on the road for almost seven months now I feel a bit worn out.
Next stop: Cat Ba Island (Vietnam).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
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Waseem
non-member comment
Nice trip
Hey, I'm teaching in China at the moment, I finish in January and will be travelling overland into vietnam, laos, cambodia and thailand. I came across your blog about your vietnam experience, doesn't sound all too great, any advice you can give me, especially about the border crossing, would be much appreciated. Good luck with the rest of your travels. Waseem