Advertisement
Published: January 29th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Today was more of an admin day more than anything else; we had ideals of going to a whole bunch of tourist sites like the mausoleum and some museums, while at the same time we needed to book airline tickets and a tour to Halong Bay. It ended up that we didn’t get to any of the tourist sites, but we did book tickets to Hue, Nha Trang and Ho Chi Minh by plane, it ended up being about $125US for all three flights which was pretty decent, and each flight saves us between 8 and 12 hours on a plane which is nice. Vietnam Airlines office seemed very westernised compared to lots of places we’ve seen and the lady who served us spoke good English. We also booked a tour to Halong Bay - were going on Tuesday and coming home Thursday afternoon. Basically we go out and spend a night on a Junk in the bay somewhere, visit some islands, do some kayaking, spend another night in a hotel, all that plus transport and 3 meals a day for $35US each.
By the time we had accomplished all that we had wasted a big chunk of the day,
so we had a late lunch, just garlic stir fried veggies and went out for a walk to a market. By the time we got there it was 4.25, giving us a whopping 5 minutes to check out all three stories of it before it closed! It didn’t seem like we were missing too much, it seemed to be a market more aimed at the locals, particularly those who are tailors - there were rolls and rolls and rolls of fabric.
On the first day we were here, we passed a woman in the street that was painting peoples fingernails and toenails with designs, and offered to do Bianca's for 50,000d ($5), but we didn’t have time. Since then, each time we've gone out, Bianca has looked for this little lady to do her nails for her to no avail. Today was no exception as Bianca's femaleitis kicked into overdrive and we had to go out looking for somewhere else to get her nails done. After some interesting language barrier crossing by Bianca she managed to find herself a little boutique that specifically catered to nail designs. The lady inside painted her fingers with flower designs and we were
both pretty shocked at how quickly and intricately she could paint - her nails look pretty cool (and now she’s afraid to touch anything in case she breaks them!)
We had an interesting dinner at a street restaurant - literally, the motorbikes were zipping past about 1 metre away from us, but the meal was nice, maybe exhaust fumes add to the flavour? We had Vietnamese style fried rice, which is plain rice stir fried in garlic, ginger and oil, and had some vegies and a beef dish. It cost us a whopping $2 each, but the dodgy kid serving us tried to convince us to pay nearly double what he'd originally quoted - guess you can’t complain too much when the food is that cheap.
After dinner we went back to a local night market where Bianca gorged herself on French bread/donut/pastry things...they’re kind of like a long jam donut minus the jam on a skewer, covered in sugar. Bianca wanted to buy one, but ended up being suckered into buying 3 (of course she had to eat all of them!) for about 40 cents. She also bought new shoes in the market for $7, but we
reckon that was a rip-off compared to what the locals pay.
Tomorrow we might get around to seeing those sites we didn’t see today, but we'll see, most of the time our plans change at the drop of a hat because there are so many distractions around our hotel.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0352s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kat
non-member comment
HOT thumb nail Bianca!
Hey guys! I have only managed to read a bit of your blog since getting back from holiday but so far its great to see what you guys are up to and am glad to hear you are having fun! Just thought I'd post a quick comment before I head out to say that is such an awesome nail decoration Bianca!!! Very beautiful! Expect more comments in the future and live it up over there..as I know you will! Kat ps. my frogs are ALIVE!! and WELL! And GROWING!! :)