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Published: June 15th 2011
We crossed the border without any trouble, there was literally no one else there other than the French couple who had been on the bus with us so it felt a little freaky, but at least we didn’t have to queue!
Once on the other side of the border we were handed over to a bus driver who wanted $35 (US) to take us to Hanoi. He was our only option as the border crossing was so remote there was no other way to get anywhere! We ended up paying $45 for the two of us, still a complete rip of but we had anticipated this. We were told the bus would take 8 hours to get to Hanoi and the bus started filling up with locals. One old lady sat next to Debbie and at first was a bit wary perched on the end of her seat as far away as possible. Within 5 minutes she had decided it would be quite ok to lean on Debbie while chatting to her mate on the back seat for the next two hours. We have learnt Vietnamese people don’t have any concept of personal space.
We eventually made it to
Hanoi about 11 or so hours later, caught another bus to the old quarter and began the hunt for somewhere to stay. After an hour or so of looking we found the newly opened Hang be hotel and managed to get the price down to $10 a night – one of the cheapest we had found – for a sparkling clean double room with air con, mini fridge, cable TV and wifi.
By this time it was around 10pm so we grabbed a takeaway sandwich and got ourselves to bed.We got up late and decided to head the lake, we were surprised it happened to be just a 2 minute walk from our hotel. There’s a temple on the lake which was an interesting visit. We were heading back in the direction of our hotel when the pineapple lady struck. If you are planning a trip to Hanoi – BEWARE OF THE PINEAPPLE LADIES! – these ladies will try and sell you pineapple and then when you get close enough throw their don ganh (pole with a basket suspended at either end carried over the shoulder) over you shoulder and their conical hat on your head “picture, picture, no
money”. When you then tell the lady you do not want to buy pineapple from her the picture turns out not to be free after all. As it happens we actually wanted to buy some pineapple but this didn’t stop the lady throwing her don ganh onto Debbie’s shoulder and holding it there until we agreed to take a photo!!
We were feeling pretty lazy so after a little wonder around town we went and sat in a bar, catching up on blogs and getting a wee bit tipsy on Bia Hanoi. We had booked tickets for the 8pm Water puppet show, a north Vietnamese tradition. This time of year it likes to rain up in the North so we had to make our way to the theatre in the pouring rain and ankle deep water in the street which was actually quite fun . We enjoyed the show even if we didn’t quite understand what was going on the whole time.
Next morning we were up early for a group tour to the perfume pagoda. We drover for 2 hours, took a rowing boat in the blistering heat for 1 hour, had lunch, climbed a load of
stairs then took a cable car to see a temple cave. We thought it was a lot of effort to see something a little less spectacular than we had hoped. Then we spent 35 minutes climbing back down to the bottom where we visited a much prettier temple. Then it was back into the boat, back into the bus and back to Hanoi. We enjoyed the day but thought the sights were not really worth the money or the effort as most of the day was spent travelling in some way or another. In the evening we went to a late showing of the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, which we found a little disappointing but it was an interesting place to observe Vietnamese people.
The following day was our last full day in Hanoi and we headed over to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum where you can see uncle Ho’s embalmed body. We waited in a queue for about half an our just to have our bag briefly searched, Vietnamese people pushing in front of us the whole time as they like to do. Then we queued again to hand over our camera so we couldn’t
A very wet angelo..
He decided he would throw his waterproof poncho as it was not "cool" in Thailand. He paid the price! take any photos, and finally joined the queue to get into the mausoleum. Inside you are not allowed to talk, wear a hat, wear glasses, put your hands in your pocket or look American (ok we made that last one up). We couldn’t say for sure whether it was really him or a Madame Tussauds jobbie but it was interesting non the less. After a quick look round Ho’s house and a museum/art gallery we found our way to the Temple of literature and then back to our hotel. In the evening we took a last stroll around the old quarter and the lake, we like Hanoi, and would have liked to spend more time here to get to know the city a bit better but were also looking forward to our next destination – Cat ba island and Halong bay!
Unfortunately due to our laziness we didn’t make it to the bus station until around 9am the next morning and as a result had to wait 2 ½ hours for the next bus to cat ba which we killed by watching a movie on the laptop and surfing the web - surprisingly the crappy looking bus station had
free wifi!
Deb & Ang
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