Day one Vietnamn; Confucius and me

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Light Star hotel, Hanoi overcharged me in the morning. They added VAT and internet which hadn't told me about and I qucikly got to understand the cynic factor that afflicts Vietnamn travllers as mentioned in the Lonely Planet. After about few minutes waiting I spoke up "Why didn't I get change?", I asked. He had left me additionally short a couple of dollars. "I don't have any", he attempted to excuse himself...

I had the good fortune to meet a German/Vientnamese couple (who amazingly were of similiar age), who I spoke German to and they brought me to faboulous New World Hotel (woman was very honest and always smiling) where I got a bedroom with sitting room place for 8$..


I went a walking and got a Cyco driver down one street...towards Ho Chi Minh's maousoleum complex. A guard on duty went apeshit with his whistle when I crossed some yellow line...(As Confucsious would say, ""Don't sweat the petty stuff ... and don't pet the sweaty stuff".)


The complex was closed but I teamed up with Vicky and Soren, a Danish couple to visit the Temple of Literature dedicated to Confuscious in about 1070. They'd never heard about Confucius not to mind his jokes. Entrance to the temple included some Trad music (it gets as monotnous as our own after a while).

I was pissed off being overcharged for a coke. (But as
Confucsious says, ""Better to be pissed off than pissed on")

We finally stood by the man himself his great words written on our hearts (Confucious says, "War do not determine who's right, but who's left")

Then we met the very pretty "Dung Pretty" (God knows she woudn't get very far with that name at home) who, like all nice girls that hang out at temples on hot days all around the world, was doing a tourism survey (and yes, it was the obligatory 5 pages long)....

Later in the Ngoc Son temple on Hoan Kiem lake, a street vendor pestered me for about 20 minutes to buy a plastic bag of fruit, actually physically grabbing me at one point and thumping me in the arm at another. When all that didn't work she tried to interest me in her daughter nodding her head and pointing at her and then saying things in Vienamese which I didn't understand and her daughter got embarrassed to...

Another tenacious young girl and book vendor, sold me the story of the girl in the picture (Kim Phucs book) you know the one that has a naked girl running down the road after getting hurt in an American Napalm attack....I paid 10 dolllars for it and Graham Greene's "The Quiet American"....

As Confucsious says 'Man with one chopstick go hungry.' I joined a couple of Aussies for a quick bite and then on to the Than Lang municipal theatre for some water puppetry.....'twas very entertaining and somewhat philosophical...at one point the fishermen are catching fish over and over again when one of the fisherman themselves is "caught" captured in the basket....what I took to be a culmination of the symbolic depiction of the wheel of life and intricate web of nature.....

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Comments

[Peter]

I was cheated by the same trick. Don't go to this hotel anymore