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Published: February 20th 2007
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Happy new year
The street of Hanoi filling up before midnight A crazy few days since my last blog so here goes -
Train to Hanoi was crazy as its coming up to Chinese New Year (which is a huge celebration for three days in Vietnam) the trains are over crowded and so most of the beds in the sleeper carriages where now designated as 3 uncomfortable seats so that its worked out 8 people in a tiny little room rather than the comfy seats we had on the way from Saigon to Hoi An, in our carriage all the seats where taken by a family of around 8 Vietnamese people so squeezing in there didn’t look fun at all, thankfully we found an empty carriage with only one English guy in who let us go in there and we all had beds for the night, the dream!
Arrived in Hanoi at 5.30 am very tired and would agree to anything so when a local tout offered us a room for four (Laura has picked up a traveler called Dave at the moment so for Vietnam and Laos we are a four) for $12 dollars we happily agreed and they covered half the taxi to the place (only 5
mins away though in the old city, backpacker part of Hanoi) and they also gave us a free breakfast and mototaxi to see Ho Chi Minhs body and museum we were very impressed. Then came the hard sell, the guy at the hotel wanted us to book a trip to HaLong Bay, something we were planning to do, through himself as he doubled up as a travel agent like most hotels in Vietnam, having looked through the different trips he had to offer he was pushing a 3 day trip for $80 each, which was good value however we decided to shop around and found a similar trip for 3 days for $45 elsewhere and promptly booked that. When we came back to the hotel in evening having spent a day doing the tourist thing and exploring the city he kicked off massively that we hadn't booked through him and that we had to leave the hotel before Chinese new year (the next day) as we would bring him bad luck. The Vietnamese believe that you have to start the new year with good luck or you will have bad luck for the whole year and have to stay happy
Legend
If your ever in Hanoi stay at the Phu Hoa hotel on Luong Van CAn for the whole of the new year celebration, this custom is fair enough however I'm skeptical and think its much more to do with the huge commission he would earn from four people booking a trip through him! And so we were thrown out of our first hotel, thankfully Hanoi is a busy city and we found somewhere else immediately which was even nearer to the centre and just as cheap, it was also run by a legendry old Vietnamese guy, but more of him later.
The old city part of Hanoi where we stayed is also fascinating, basically a huge market it has 32 main streets each designated to a different product - there’s a bar street, shoe street, food street, watch street etc etc so really fun to walk around, the buildings are really old and just bursting at the seems with people and motorbikes! Again I had a few random purchases a fake watch, sandals, sunglasses (which in fairness I needed) and a Vietnam football shirt (I didn’t need but was only a pound!). It's also all based around a central small lake which is nice to walk around and take in the atmosphere.
The
next day being New Year’s Eve was very interesting to see, the streets were packed all day and around the central lake in Hanoi lots of little performances and parades were going on. We found a bar with a balcony over looking the lake and the streets and just sat back with a few beers watching the world go by and chatting to both travelers and Vietnamese locals in this bar. It was best we were safe up here as in the streets you couldn’t move at all by this point it was so busy. At midnight there was a huge firework display on the lake, some of the biggest fireworks I have ever seen although there seemed to be no pattern or organization to the fireworks just randomly letting them off!
When we returned to our hotel around 1.30 the old Vietnamese guy was still up with his family and invited us to come join him for traditionally New Year food! Chatting with him and some of his old relatives was weird but also very good fun; they were so friendly and couldn’t do enough for you bringing out loads of stuff. He then got out his photo
Trekking
I'm using this blurred picture as I look too sweaty and knackered in all the other ones! album and took a picture of us to put in it and proceeded to show me the most random collection of photos I have ever seen, there were some from when he was 20 years old, some of his wife, then him skydiving last year and finally a picture of him in Bangkok with some stunningly beautiful women who he then pointed at and said in broken English “she used to be a man.” It was very good fun and I really felt part of the new years celebrations, we made a point of staying with him again when we came back to Hanoi.
The next day we headed to the coast on our trip to HaLong Bay, a series of spectacular islands just off Vietnam. For the first day and night we stayed on a boat which was really good for sailing around the islands, exploring some of the massive caves and climbing to the top of some of the high islands. The next day we went to Cat Ba, the largest of the islands with a few large hotels on, here we had a day trekking through the jungles and kayaking around some of the coast. The trekking was amazing although very dangerous and hard work up and down large rock faces most of it was like rock climbing without ropes rather than a trekking which I imagined to be a glorified walk but great never the less, kayaking was good fun too. In the evening we headed out to the only club on the island and bumped into a few more travelers on the way. The club was the most random place I have ever been too; there were loads of locals although they all left by 11 as everything winds down early in Vietnam (except where the western travelers are!) but there were also young kids (I mean 3 or 4 years old!!!) running around the place like it was a family wedding and they played the worst Euro pop you can imagine, also instead of bouncers they have fully uniformed military police man in there for security who kicked off massively at every little thing (Mike P would have loved it, for those who worked at the union). Still we got into it and we all had a really good night. The next day was more a chill out and back to Hanoi for one more night before a bus over to Laos
Vietnam has been brilliant, really friendly people and really enjoyed it. We are heading to Laos now for a week, which kicks off with 24 hrs on a coach which should be fun. Laos is the most bombed country in the world! And so much more like Cambodia than Vietnam but still were looking forward to it and should be another great experience. For those who are interested the blogs of the girls I'm traveling with are www.travelpod.com/members/Barbarabryson and http://www.travelpod.com/members/lauramills if you want a different view on the stuff we have been doing.
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brysona
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Happy New Year
What a fantastic time you are all having. Integrating with the locals must be great and they all sound like really nice people. You've seen more of the real world in 3 weeks than most see in a lifetime. Good luck on the bus. Les