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Published: July 11th 2009
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HANOI AND HUE
I left Laos and for some crazy reason I decided to take a 33 hour bus ride to Hanoi, Vietnam. My God.. that was a long trip! It took me 2 hours to cross the Laos/Vietnam boarder! Everyone was pushing and shoving trying to get there passport stamped, but apparently they hadn't met me yet ;-) Buses were searched for drugs and a girl on the other bus had her phone stolen while waiting to get her passport stamped. So not a great first impression of Vietnam. Finally we all got to Hanoi and this minibus we got on to get to the backpackers area tried to promote his hotel. He got a bit grumpy when we said we already had reservations somewhere else we got kicked out and had to walk a bit to our hostel. Luckily when I got to the hostel my friends were staying at, the receptionst gave me a free beer straight away.. very nice! Me and the boys (3 Dutch guys) decided to go out for a drink after I finally had a shower and we found a few street bars where all the foreigners were sitting and bought beer for
The vendors
Woman coming up to the boat selling their stuff 3000 dong (0,12 euro!) but it was horrible!
The guys booked us a tour to Halong Bay for the next moring. It was a 2 day 1 night boat trip and it was amazing! On the boat we wanted to know straight away where the bar was and at what time happy hour was (it was Erik's b-day after all) and these Irish girls on the boat were surprised that we would drink beer before we went kayaking.. boring! It was a beautiful place to be and surprisingly I was quite good at the whole kayaking! We all jumped off the top deck of the boat (very high) and then noticed that there were jellyfish in the water! Another guy jumped from the the top deck and he couldn't even swim. During the day there were woman in their little boats trying to sell us stuff they were still there in the early hours of the morning...
Once I got back to Hanoi I wanted to do some sightseeing with the guys. We wanted to see the mummified mr Ho Chi Minh (he played an important role in the Vietnamese war) We were told you had to be
there before 11.00. We were there at 10.20 and all of a sudden we weren't allowed in although the Vietnamese people behind us were.. very annoying of course! We went to the War Museum and Temple of Literature instead (yes, sometimes I do some cultural stuff!)
The next day was my last day in Hanoi and unfortunately the people I was with all had to go there own way.. so all by myself again I got one the sleeper bus to Hue. The bus is made for Vietnamese people so the beds on the bus were too short for me! Luckily I did manage to sleep a little bit.
Hue used to be the capitol of Vietnam and it's a very intersesting place to visit. A lot of battles were fought out here and today I saw tunnels were people lived in for 6 years during the war.. very claustrofobic and hot! Yesterday I rented a scooter and if your seriously thinking about suicide.. rent one!!! There don't seem to be many traffic rules here and if you want to cross the road you just honk your horn and just hope that no one runs you over.. but
I survived!
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