Advertisement
Published: October 18th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Initially I was going to fly from Hong Kong to Hanoi. The cost of that flight made me reconsider. Instead I walked back across the border into China and took the train from Shenzhen to Guangzhou. It was the high speed train that I have seen in China, it is suppose to go over 300km/hr. The train I took only got up to 180km/hr. The trip still only took 50min. I then got on the next train to Nanning where I stayed a couple days before I went into Hanoi. Nanning really had nothing to do, I did one day go down to the Vietnam border and see the waterfalls that divide the two countries. It is the second largest border waterfall in the world after Niagara Falls. I can't really think of any others, but I'm sure being second best means something. The waterfalls were ok, I was told that it was going to be a 3.5hr bus ride. It actually took 5 hours one way. The bus waited at the falls for a couple hours and then came back. The day was 13hours just to see some water falls. I would not have gone had I known how long
it was going to take, but I am glad I went because otherwise I would have had to stayed in Nanning.
The night train into Hanoi went smoothly enough, the border crossing was at night which I usually don't care for, but I did not feel like taking the bus which would have gone across the border much earlier in the day. When I arrived in Hanoi, there really wasn't a train station, it was just kind of a building out in the middle of nowhere. I met a couple other travelers who were going into the city center and decided to split a taxi. A guy on the train told us that we should pay $2 for the trip and that $5 was expensive. The first guy we met wanted $5 per person. We said no and continued down the line of taxis. The first guy followed us shouting at the other taxi drivers not to take us or to charge us $5 each. It was 5am and 10km walk to our destination, I really did not want to do that. The last taxi driver agreed on $6 for the car so we took it. When we got
to the hostel he demanded $20 and wanted it in Dong (Vietnam's currency). It figures the only guy crazy enough to take us with a guy shouting at him not to take us was even crazier. After 1hr 30min of arguing we paid him $6 in Dong and left. The people at the hostel said that happens every morning.
Hanoi was a hectic and busy city with motorbikes all over the place. It seemed like everyone is trying to rip me off as I walked around the city. I went to prisons and museums and one could call them patriotic. I would probably describe them as biased, but maybe my opinion maybe isn't neutral either. On my way back from seeing the lake as they were setting up for their 1000 years of Hanoi being a city I fell in a manhole. The cover was on it, I just stepped on the side and my leg went down, it was very unsafe, but I shouldn't have thought anything else. I write this blog after the 10/10/2010 celebrations of Hanoi and it turns out that people were actually killed in the celebrations because of how many people stormed the stadium
trying to get in and see the celebration. There were parties every night and I was there a couple weeks early. After seeing the sights on Hanoi I went to Halong Bay.
Halong Bay was this beautiful area in the north of Vietnam, it reminded me of Yangshou in China, but underwater. It was a boat tour where I paid $45 for 3 days 2 nights. The hostel was offering $120 for the same tour, but it was guaranteed to be the same kind of people. Which I guessed meant westerners who want to drink. I had heard of people who went on the tour I chose and got placed with a Vietnamese family. I got lucky and paid less and had a great group. We all went to the bay where we swam in a cove since the bay itself had a layer of oil floating on it. We went kayaking and had good times at night. The second night we stayed in a hotel on one of the islands. It was just as fun and the national park we went to and Monkey Island were just as beautiful. It was really a great time.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.061s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0366s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb