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Published: September 16th 2008
Cyclo girl!
This was so much fun. Although you anùt tell I had the biggest grin across my face.So here I am 4 days in and loving pretty much every second of it. I've already done so much I dont know what to tell you about without rambling on too much, but I guess the obvious place to start is at the beginning and I'll TRY to keep it as short and sweet as possible.
The flight out to Vietnam was good because I slept pretty much the whole way. When I arrived in Hanoi I got a taxi straight to the hotel, which all went off without a hitch. The first thing that struck me was that Hanoi is a lot like how I remember Philippines was about 20 years ago. Lots of greenery, colourful buildings, tricycles dicing with death on a regular basis and a distinct lack of your usual chains, so basically what I'm trying to say is, I haven't seen a McDonalds, Starbucks, Burger King etc...YET.
After checking in, I met Debbie Fisher from Lancashire who is now my room buddy. She's really cool and we got to talking straight away and decided to explore Hanoi together. We had our first meal in Hanoi, which was 'Chicken with 5 tastes'at Little Hanoi. Absolutely delicious. We then kinda copped out after lunch because it was too hot so we went to a spa and had pedicures. So relaxing! and so CHEAP!
On Saturday we toured Hanoi in more depth and did your basic sight seeing starting with Hao Lo Prison aka The Hanoi Hilton. This was sobering to say the least. After, we visited Ho Chi Min's Mosseleum or 'Uncle Ho'as everyone calls him. All the structures are so grand. They are amazing. In the afternoon we walked around the grounds of the Palace for a few hours. The highlight for me was the One Pillar Pagoda. There was such a calming atmosphere around that place, I just felt drawn in by it all. Check out the photos.
So, with all this happening in the midday sun, sufficed to say I was pretty much melting and I was finding the humidity intensely difficult to deal with. By 3pm we were back at the hotel with a couple of hours to kill before catching our sleeper train to Hué. A group of us, made up mostly of Ozzies, headed to the lake in search of sustanence and succeeded at this beautiful little café/bar which had us seated right on the lake. Vietnamese spring rolls are now pretty much my favourite dish in the world!
At 7pm, we were on a sleeper train from Hanoi to Hue. I was warned that the sleeping conditions may be difficult to deal with, so I had a picture on my mind of a cockroach infested, dirty, scummy, smelly, cabin...but, although there were cockroaches, as there are in many places, I was nicely suprised that the cabin was quite clean. I found it quite hard to sleep on the train. I seemed to go from boiling hot dripping with sweat one minute to shivering in my undies the next and this went on all night. Nevertheless, it was an experience and I dealt with it. In the end I probably managed 4 hours kip.
8am this morning we arrived in Hué and checked imto the Duy Tan hotel. We took Cyclo taxis all over the place today, which has been the highlight of my trip so far. I had a good laugh with the driver on my cyclo, screaming 'GO FASTER, GO FASTER!' I think I scared her :o) poor thing. So today, we took a boat on Song Huong river aka perfume river and visited the Thien Mu Pagoda where I met some very cool Buddhist monks. Later in the afternoon we trekked up a small hill before visiting more Pagodas. It's only 4 days in and I'm starting to feel all 'pagodaed' out!
Tonight, a few of us are going out for dinner at some place where they put on a royal feast and they encourage you to wear the royal garments. All I keep wondering is if Vietnamese spring rolls will be involved....
xxx
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Vinnie
Vincent Magallona
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Nam_Quoc_Dan_Dang