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Published: January 15th 2007
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Oreos for two dolla!
Even hundreds of miles from shore, they will find you! From Siem Reap, I flew to Hanoi, because time was not of luxury and I had to skidaddle. When I got out of the airport in Hanoi, there was a huge, loud Korean tour group. One of the guys came over and asked me if I was Korean. I said yes, and since I met his racial profiling (j/k), he invited me to ride in their luxurious Hyundai tour bus into the main city. It was pretty funny being in the bus with them, and I kept thinking to myself, "This is hilarious! I'm hitch-hiking on a Korean tour bus!" I should have asked to join them at their luxurious hotel too.
HANOI
My night in Hanoi started out rotten b/c my a$$hole of a moto-driver stole my MP3 player right out of my backpack! He didn't speak basic English so we had big-time communication barriers, he kept going to the wrong place, and he tried to charge me $10, when $2 was well enough. LP did me wrong—the guesthouse listed in their book was no longer in business! But the night quickly turned better when I finally was able to find an awesome hotel with a super duper king
size bed. It was so big I could lay ten of me on there. I splurged and paid $20…I think I got a little spoiled on the Hyundai bus.
I spent two nights in Hanoi, which is a busy, bussling town with absolutely beautiful French colonial architecture adorned with the Vietnamese flag, that screams out communism. The traffic is quite the site, and I think I can sit on the sidewalk and watch the traffic for hours, trying to figure out how it works. The city has obviously never heard of signals, and they all have just one mutual traffic understanding: Don't hit me; I don't hit you. It's quite the rush being on the streets, and I was pimping all over town on the bicycle taxi's.
During my time, I went to several museums, ate great Vietnamese food (and didn’t even get food poisoning, hah!), went shopping, and watched Hanoi’s famous "Water Puppet" show. It's quite cute... the performance is on top of water and these puppets are not the ordinary ones that are controlled by stings from the top, but from the bottom. My lame attempt at explaining this is not doing the show any justice,
Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum Complex, where his embalmed corpse lies
I ended up missing it b/c I didn't know the place closed at 11 a.m.! So I technically missed this place to go to the Women's Museum! Egad!!! so click
here to read more.
HA LONG BAY
On my third day, I went on a 2-night/3-day tour packet from Ha Long Bay to Cat Ba Island... it was awesome! Ha Long Bay, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and includes 1,600 islands and islets, forming a stunning seascape of limestone pillars.
Our group was pretty diverse, as it was comprised of four young Europeans, six retired Singaporeans, one American (me), and our friendly Vietnamese guide, Hwi. The first night, we ate lunch and dinner on the boat and drank beer on the roof deck. We kept pinching ourselves because we couldn't believe we had the whole boat to ourselves at a fraction of the cost in any other western countries. We slept on the boats that evening in the bay, surrounded by a 360° view of scenic beauty, and other boats anchored under the moon night.
The next day, we boated to a cave, which was pretty neat. There was a penis-like formation protrudding out of the wall and a hole in the ceiling, five meters away. Yea, imagine that, nature is funny sometimes. Later, we went kayaking and swimming. I gathered up allllllllll my
Our crew
We don't discriminate! guts and willpower to jump off the rooftop of our boat. Swimming in the bay was fun until I noticed that there were poo-poo looking thing floating towards us. Scarier than Jaws.
We got to Cat Ba Island and went trekking in the mountains, which wasn't too bad. It was actually a piece of cake, but with all the puffing and drinking I've been doing, I was out of shape, so I huffed and I puffed my way through. During the trek, we stopped by a local's home and chilled out with the family. I asked the older daughter what she did for fun, and she answered that her family goes to town to sing karaoke. So I asked her to sing, and she did so beautifully. The song was about a father who works hard in the field all day to support his family. Now, talk about coming from different worlds.
We went out that night and had local rice wine that got me f-ed up. I thought it would be like soju, but it was more potent.
After I got back into Hanoi, I went shopping to get my mind off of the upcoming horrendous
20-hour bus ride from Hanoi to Vientienne.
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