Good Morning Vietnam - bustling streets of Hanoi, bustling seas of Halong Bay and another great escape!

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Sorry guys we've been pretty slack at the blog, mainly due to being pretty busy and also due to lack of internet resources.



Michael:

21st October: The bus ride to hanoi was easy, we got dropped off for a free lunch and then taken to the boarder crossing. we passed immigration with great success and we're now in vietnam!! we got our bus at the border which took us into Hanoi.

We arrived in Vietnam and were greeted by numerous people shouting "TAXI" we ignored them said our farewells to Bruce and Jody and flagged down our own. After being ripped off by the taxi driver who pretended he got lost and forgot what street we said we checked into our hostel and headed out into the very hectic streets of Hanoi. Crossing the street was our first task and the traffic is very similiar to china only with narrower streets. On our wander we bumped into jody and bruce and went for dinner with them, it is very nice not to have food covered in oil!! After dinner we look at a few bars and there prices and decided that the pub-shops were the best option as it was cheap and busy. Pub-shops are just shops with plastic seats outside them that end up having ppl sit in the middle of the road. After a few beers and relaxing in the road we were ordered by the big fat lady who owned the place to get up and move, we did as we were told (i aint messing with her!!) we moved our chairs to the side and 30seconds later the police drove past as soon as they had gone she ushered us to sit back down. the pub shop is a great idea only there is a lack of toilet facilicties i.e none. dont worry tho jus pay the woman 2000D and pee down the alley! simple. We left the "pub"to head back to our hostel and when we got there it was shut and locked up. another couple was waiting outside trying to ring them and looking very annoyed but old mighty?? miller katie spotted the night guard asleep and shouted v.loudly "hello mr man" and he woke and let us in straight away. The other couple weren't very impressed as they had been there for 20 minutes banging and shouting with no success. We like Hanoi!



22/10/2011

After a amazing free breakfast we decided to spend the day with Bruce and Jody. we wandered around the streets of Hanoi and seeing some sights. we walked around the lake and went to the temple of literature we also took a look at the old catherdial- v.impressive buliding- very european inside. The Vietnamese seem friendly and smiley. crossing the road is extremely entertaing (and slightly terrifying). It appears that the rules are- walk in a straight line, look straight and keep a steady pace and motorbikes will go round you. Never Run!!!!- the locals are very smooth at this we are not. In the evening the 4 of us went to a place were again sat on primary school chairs and were given a huge plate of beef with veg and a small BBQ with a simple dip of lime, chilli, salt and pepper this was a great meal and great fun. We wandered the street market at night which never ended and we gave up half way down. the markets are very good with stalls running down the worlds longest street altough haggaling doesnt really happen as there is so many people they can always get a sale. we later said our goodbyes to Jody and Bruce as they were off to halaong bay tomorrow.



23/10/2011 Fairly relaxing day in Hanoi. we visited Hoa Lo Prison or "Hanoi Hilton"as US POWs had called it. It was orginally used by the French for detaining Vietnamise prisioners, it was pretty grim espically the cells where ppl were held in prior to being excuted, there was also lots of torture equipment on display. Later the prision was used to detaind american Pows. Now as michael said the information provided "seemed to be missing a bit" Having read info about the awful conditions the vietnamese were kept in we were then shown a video of americans that were smiley (well false smiles e.g smile of i will shoot you- they also had a look of terror in there eyes) and enjoying xmas dinner and playing games. there was also a part were the americans were realesed and given sovuniers. The writing next to where the film was shown told us that the americans had been kept "in the best conditions possible in the difficult ecomnic period" ??? In the video the americans were told in the generals speech that they were lucky to have been detained by the Vietamese. By this point even the Vietmense in the museum were laughing. Rest of the prision info was dedicated to how strong and resiliant the vietnamese are, which in all fairness seems to be true-they really have faced bad v.difficult times. but the propaganda has all been a bit too much. From what we've heard we can expect a bit more of this to come!



Katie:

24/11/2011

Up bright and early ready to see Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and museum. Just about to leave when we were told that that it is closed on Mondays...oh and pretty much all other museums wtc are closed on Mondays...Damn! We managed to find a museum which was open and then had a wander around the bustling streets of Hanoi's Old Quarter - enjoying the sights sounds and smells!



25/11/2011 - Halong Bay

This morning we were greeted by our room mate in the hostel, a middle aged American guy living in England who told us some lovely tales about people he had met in Vietnam. He told us that he had met lots of people who had contracted Dengue fever and that there is an "epidemic" in Southern Vietnam and that we would probably get Meningitis if we swam in the sea as well. He told us that we needed to be very careful about how we put our mosquito repellant on. He then went onto demonstrate how to put on mosquito repellant. Apparetly you start by spraying your feet very carefully and make sure you get inbetween the toes, spray your legs thoroughly on back and front, then your arms, hands and fingers one by one then chest stomach and back "don't be afraid to use too much, I have 5 bottles with me" Then you have to shut your face and spray your face then spray your backpack too as there may be some mosquitoes in there just waiting to attack. Don't foget he was also demonstrating this physically to us, thankfully he didn't show us how to spray your crotch, but he was only one step away from this!

We got picked up from our hostel to head to our boat at the bay. We were informed by our tour guide that this would take us about 3 hours. However, she hadn’t banked on the fact that some people would be fixing(?) a railway line in the middle of a busy road and that this would cause all traffic in both directions to be at coimplete standstill for over an hour. Some police did arrive at one point and wander around lazily with whistles and batons which they used occassionally to instruct drivers to move their vans/cars to move into impossibly small spaces…pretty sure they did not help the situation at all! Anyway we did get moving eventually and when we arrived at Halong Bay we were shepherded onto a small boat to be transferred to our big boat. We were shown to our rooms and then told to vcome for lunch. We sat down and were joined by 2 /ozzies (Hayley and Jannine). Our first dish came out and we ate it then a 2^nd dish came, follwed by a 3^rd, then 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 7^th…we lost count. They were all lovely, fresh seafood and meat gorgeous!

After the huge lunch we were taken to the amazing cave, which was quite cool. The tour guide spent the whole time there trying to convince us that all the different rocks looked like different animals/body parts etc. Most of these were really not very convincing at all! However there was one which she asked us what we thought it looked like. We were all thinking ït definitely looks like a penis” but weren’t brave enough to say it as Vietnamese are generally very shy about such things, especially then women. She finally put us out of embarressed misery by telling us that it looked like a finger…it didn’t….it looked like a penis, but no-one corrected her!

After a few pictures we got the chance to Kayak both in the same boat (one of many firsts for me and Michael). Which was amazing, Michael says especially when I stopped rowing and Katie continued most of the way around Halong Bay. We got back to our boat after and hour and then headed off to an area where we could swim and anchor up for the night. Michael, Jeannine and I were the only nutters to go swimming in the cold dark night. After a quick shower it was time for another HUGE meal (we were certainly making up for the food we’ve been missing out on before this). That night the four of us were informed of our upgrade to the “Calypso Cruiser” which we would be getting the next day (woop, woop). After a few beers and lots of laughs we headed off to bed.

On our way back to bed a woman in a rowing boat was waiting next to our boat trying to sell us beer/pringles etc. Poor woman sat there in the dark hoping to make some trade. That night I had a crazy vivid dream (been having a lot of those whilst we've been away) that a boat vendor got into our room through the window and wouldn't leave until we bought ten boxes of Pringles.



26/11/2011

Up for a small 5 course breakfast and then we swapped to a smaller boat for the day. Today was our day so we mainly spent the day kayaking through caves filled with bats, had races with Hayley and Jeannine and jumped off the boat into the water. We were all upstaged by an Australian woman diving extremely elegantly into the water whilst we all belly flopped in! Had a yummy BBQ seafood lunch and met up with the poeple on the Calypso cruiser who were all a lot miore fun than those on our previous boat. In the afternoon we did some more swimming until Michael cut his foot and needed looking after. We were taken to see how pearls were farmed and Michael didn't buy me a $2000 necklace 😞. We headed back to the Calypso cruiser and Michael jumped off the top of this (even higher than other boat) and he got told off by the tour guide. I was obviously brave enough to follow him in, but couldn't as we had been told not to now!! I did join him for the swim though and as were swimming around we had one of our many moments of realisation of where we were and just how lucky we are!

Then for a 20 course dinner and then onto singing karaoke loudly and badly!! In the ensemble of singers were:

2 irish girls (Becky and Mary) screaming and shouting in each others'faces

2 Ozzy girls (Hayley and Jeannine)singing a romantic duet

1 male Canadian (Matt) singing Take on Me and hitting the high notes

1 Brit singing like an angel

1 Brit not really singing cos he is too cool!

We were all completely shown up by two of the cabin crew who sang amazingly

After we had been embarresed enough we headed up to the deck so that the cabin crew could sleep as they were sleeping on chairs in the dining room. (another sign of inequality in Asia)



27/10/2011

The next morning we visited "Tiptop" island for a few hours before heading back to our boat for another 20 course lunch. We got dropped off at the harbour and took a very bouncy bus backto Hanoi.

That evening we headed out with some of the singers and went to our now favourite restaurant and then to our favourite "pub/shop"on the road. We were aproached by the usual street vendors selling photocopied books/fruit/donots etc and also by a woman with a huge contraption which turned out to be some scales. Mary decdied to give it a go - unaware that when it weighed you it screamed out your weight. Mary quickly tried to cover the speaker but there was no stopping it's happy shouting! As we were all pretty tried and feeling a bit wobbly from our sea legs we said our goodbyes as we were heading off the next day.



28/10/2011

We were getting an overnight train in evening and it was raining ALOT so we decided to tak it fairly easy. We walked to the Women's museum - Michael bought a beautiful pink poncho from the hotel reception (really embracing his feminine side on this day - which is no bad thing as we found out at the museum!). In the heavy rain it took us a bit longer than anticipated dodging the traffic and negotiating huge puiddles. The women's museum was really good -Vietnamese women are pretty amazing. Many of them fighting in the hundreds of wars Vietnam has endured. There was a film about the ladies who sell friut flowers etc on the street's of Hanoi carrying their merchandise around in contraptions which are made of a big stick with two bowls hanging at either end. See photos! The film was very moving and made us want to buy from every seller we see again! There was also a section dedicated to single mothers and a charoity which has been set up to help these women and try to reduce social prejudice. We came away from this feeling partly sad for what these women have been through but mostly anazed and impressed at their resourcefulness/ One of the women who had been through an awful time and had pretty ,much no money witnessed a young girl being sold as a slave. After this she vowed to save this girl from slavery. She then some how managed to save up the money to buy this girl out of slavery and tracked her down and then raised her as her own daughter.

We were due to leave the hotel at 6pm to het to the train stration for our overnight train to Hue, so we asked the staff to call us a taxi as the rain was horrendous and it was quite far away. We were told we could share with another couple who were also headed to the same train. However due to the heavy rain they were unable to get us a taxi and told us at 6.30pm (train left a 7pm). We were told we would have to walk, we didn't know the way so they triued to show us on a map. So we kitted ourselves up in raincoats/ponchos and were about to leave when the staff told us that they would be able to take us on the back of their motorbikes, but that they only had two so would have to take two at a time. Michael and I were rushed onto the back of the bikes with our backpacks. I was given a helmet without a chin strap so it just kind of reted on my head, then we headed off on a rather hairraising ride in the rain and dark, This was also Michael's first time on the back of a bike - good way to be introduced! Anyway we made it in time (although not sure if the other couple made it??!!) and off we went to Hue in the smallest sleeper train beds ever!

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Photos

Cathedral
They are not all Buddhists!!

Tortoises at the Temple
Tortoises of knowledge!!

Beautiful Vietnamese girsls posing for photo shoot
This is a very common sight, they are always doing photo shoots, usually for weddings!