Advertisement
Published: August 24th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Zuzka and I caught a flight from Bangkok in unholy hour. We almost froze at the airport – I don’t see the need to use the air con and freeze in building. I felt like walking into a fridge where it was about 15°C while outside it was nice 27°C and instead of staying inside we prefered sitting outside.
The weather in Hanoi could not be different in was only 10°C so my cardigan and long trousers came handy because it was raining in Hanoi.
Well everything what I had in my suitcase proved to be very handy during the stay since almost all the time I had everything on 😊
Soon after arrival we changed money – well we became millionaires in very short time. I changed 3000 Baht which gave me almost 2mil. Vietnamese … whatever they use. Felt pretty good to be a billlionaire eventhough we had almost nothing.
The ride from the airport was an adventure since the taxi driver did not know where we were going and in stead of driving us to the Thai Embassy he drop us off somewhere in the middle of the
city. Since it was raining the experience was not very nice.
Some nice people from a nearby hotel offered assistance and called taxi for us which finally took us to the embassy.
Story of the embassy is one of the downsides of our trip – the staff was not nice and very rude. Saying they take only US dollar (I had all other currencies apart from that in my purse) and told me to come later since he wants to go out for a smoke. I (completely angry) exited the embassy but I realized that I have not asked when to come back when I saw the men exiting as well so I asked him where to find the closest bank which he refused to tell me at this point I entered the embassy again and there was this lovely Thai lady who arranged the visa for me and I paid with Vietnamese money.
There is nothing nicer in the world then a Thai person.
With my application out of the way we went to our hotel to get settled and defrost (100% humid does freeze you fast). Our hotel
was right in the city center only 10min away from one of the lakes. We took hot showers and tried to stay warm and unpack.
After we unpacked we went for a walk and were hungry but couldn’t find anything suitable to eat until we found a nice restaurant where they spoke English. They offered us local food which was frog (the legs looked like human babies and we felt like we were eating them) and some noodles (they takes quite nice but ordinary).
We went to the museum at the island and went to the hotel where we relaxed before Zuzka´s friend contacted us when to pick us up for some motorbike riding and night sightseeing.
With this I would like to thank Tien for guiding us around the town during our trip and taking us to the most amazing cafes.
The dinner with Tien was much better then the lunch we had earlier in the day so us being hungry went nuts with ordering and enjoyed the meals.
Next day we went sightseeing and booked a trip to Ha Long Bay for 3
day.
We did not start the day early (we needed sleep) we put almost everything we found in our suitcases on. Our tour took us around town – which was not very exiting but it might have been just because of the weather.
The colors of the city were not very exiting apart of the French styled buildings in crazy colours.
We meet some more of Zuzka´s friends -enjoyed nice dinner and went to another amazing secret café.
We also visited Ha Long Bay – the most beautiful place in the world (according to several websites) and even with the bad weather the place looked extremely mysterious. My mum visited this place when she was 18 and played chess with her cousin on the beaches here. For me it was like traveling after my mum.
We visited the Cat Ba island where we stayed 1 night as well as the typical boat in the middle of nowhere.
If I ever come back I would like to visit Sapa and Ha Long Bay again.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0441s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb