We were on the road again (sing it donkey) and had landed in Hanoi, Vietnam. We had signed up to have our hotel send someone to pick us up. We were grateful, as there is a Taxi mafia operating in Hanoi and one of their major scams is taking taking tourists to the wrong hotel. Even as we stood waiting for our guy to bring the car around we were asked if we needed a cab, and when the guy left another local pointed to him saying "mafia" and shaking his head.
The drive from the airport was very.. interesting. Firstly, about 80% or more of the vehicles on the road were motorbikes (scooters), and that number increased as we got closer to the city. Our driver would pull up behind someone, and if they didn't pull to the side immediately he would honk and they would move. This is how all drivers drove. Almost like the person behind you had the right of way. Also, the lines on the road are just a suggestion really. We saw the aftermath of one bike accident that day, and would see a few more during our 10 days in Vietnam. As we drove and looked out our window we could tell we were not in Japan any more, and it was back to the realities of Southeast Asia. Homes and buildings made from scraps of corrugated tin and all around things were under development. The traffic in the city is simply unbelievable. We had seen a video on youtube.com before coming, but to see it in person was something else.
There are very few traffic lights or signs at intersections, and again they are just suggestions when they are there. People just move in and around each other like a choreographed dance. To get a feel for what it looks like go to youtube.com and type in Hanoi traffic. It was midnight by the time we arrived so we went straight to bed after hiking to room 403, on the 5th floor of our hotel, without an elevator. lol
The first day we slept in late; if you could call it sleep. I mentioned the crazy traffic, but should have really stressed that they drive more with their ears than their eyes, they honk constantly, and signal rarely. So we were awoken by the constant honking, then at 7:45, just like every morning we would find, a voice over loud speakers placed throughout the streets of Hanoi boomed for what seemed like forever. We learned later that it was the government telling the Vietnamese news. Propaganda? Nope it's the free government news, welcome to communism!
After pulling ourselves out of bed we had breakfast, used the internet, then ventured out into the crazy streets of Hanoi. It didn't take long for our first cyclo to find us. Cyclos are bicycles that someone rides with a scoop like seat in the front for the passengers to sit on. We were experienced in bartering by now, so we did fine, and found most of the cyclo drivers to be extremely friendly, often singing or making jokes as they pushed us along. As we enjoyed our first ride a guy selling books came up and asked if we wanted one. It just happened that he had a Lonely Planet guide book of China, how convenient we though. We bought it for what we thought was a good deal, new in packaging and all. While stopped, we were surrounded by people trying to sell us other goods such as hats, lighters, wallets, etc. We each bought a hat and finally told our driver to go on. As he left we noticed the the book guy gave him a tip (for bringing us by that corner we assume). Our guide book had recommended a restaurant called Pepperoni's. We went there and enjoyed a cheap Italian style meal. We promised we would be back.
Our cyclo driver waited outside as we had dinner, then aboard his cyclo he took us back to the place we had left a pair of Jesse's shorts to be repaired. The poor driver, he asked us if we wanted to go shopping, saying he could drive us around for an hour. We said no, back to where you picked us up. He agreed but as we were pushed along we were sure he was taking us in the wrong direction. We kept telling him back to tailors, to the clothing shop, etc. He would say "yes shop shop". We thought he was taking us to shops where he would get coupons for bringing tourists. Jesse even threatened to jump out at one point. Boy were we surprised when we turned the corner in front of the tailor and the cyclo dropped us off exactly where he had picked us up. We tipped him well for the inconvenience of arguing and doubting him.
Later that day we walked to a book exchange. Inside we found the same Lonely Planet China guidebook that we had bought, the same edition and all, except this one was a fraction of the price we paid. It was then that we learned that these guys selling books on the street were selling photo copies of the original book! With a color cover that looks exactly the same as the real deal, so for the unsuspecting foreigner who is used to paying a lot, it's a big money scam. So we had been taken, at least we had a guide book for China. The info is all there, although the maps are a little unclear.
That night we went to a water puppet show. Like many things in Vietnam (and most of Asia) the seats were quite small. Even my legs were touching the seat in front of me. Jes and many other foreigners had some real difficulty in the chairs. A band of 7 people played traditional instruments, while from behind a bamboo curtain set in a shallow pool of water, puppets would come out and act. There were 17 different scenarios, all done to live music. The show was really wonderful. We enjoyed it so much that we decided we would come back and see it again, maybe in better seats. We made it back to our hotel without getting hit by any motorbikes, phew.
The next day was a Friday in which most things around the city are closed. We learned that the temple of literature was open, so decided to get a taxi there. We thought we would be smart and asked the taxi driver to use his meter. He happily agreed and we had a lovely chat all the way there, then when we were about a minute from our destination (a 5 min drive) the meter suddenly sped up like crazy. When we had arrived the guy wanted the equivalent of $10 for the cab ride. It may not sound like much, but it should have cost about $2-3. When we started to argue, he suddenly did not speak any English. We gave up and paid him with a large bill, and then he had the nerve to attempt to not give us back proper change! Jes wouldn't have it, he sat there until the driver finally gave in and gave us proper change.
So once again we had been scammed in Hanoi, and it was only our second day! As we talked with other travelers we learned that you never go by the meter in Vietnam, as many of the meters are fixed. They just push a hidden switch and the meter speeds up. We also shared the general feeling like we were being ripped off at every chance more than in any other country we had visited, sadly.
The Temple of Literature was nice. It was a university that trained doctors for years, then turned temple. It had been bombed during WWII, but had been rebuilt to look exactly the same at before. As the name suggests there was a temple on site. As well, there was a huge drum and bell, a few ponds, large statues of turtles with the names of graduates on their backs, information on the university and a few gift shops. Once finished wondering around and hitting the gift shops (Jesse's weakness as of late) we started to walk outside. It was too far for a cyclo to drive us and we did not want to take a cab so we decided to hop on a local bus.
We had no idea where we were going, but Jes kept the map out and I told him each time we turned onto a new street. Then with the help of the driver we eventually got to our part of town again, and for a fraction of what we paid the taxi. Next we were looking for some of the places our guide book had recommended to eat at, or anything that we could find that looked affordable. We could not find anything after looking in at least three restaurants, apparently we had stumbled upon a rather expensive part of town (prices like at home). So looking at the map, we found we were not far from.. you guessed it, Pepperoni's! So we headed back there for another tasty meal. We met a nice Irish couple and tried to convince them to join us on a 2 day tour we had signed up for. No luck but they invited us to join them at a pub that night.
Later that evening we went to a cinema that played French movies with English sub-titles. The movie wasn't great, but it was interesting being in the old theater, watching a black and white flick. Afterwards we headed to the pub where we hoped to meet the Irish couple, it was called Red Mao's, but they were not there. So we stayed a few hours listening to some great tunes and enjoying cold drinks.
We got up at a decent time the next day and went to the Ho-Chi-Min Mausoleum complex. The Vietnamese have solved the "no photo" problem like no others. They simply confiscate all cameras/video equipment after making everyone go through airport style security. Then they return you camera or cell phone at the end. We joined hoards of people to see the dead body of Vietnam's national hero, Ho-Chi-Min. There were armed guards all along the way, and once inside where uncle Ho himself lay there was a guard at each corner of the casket, as well as many others pushing people along as not to hold up the line. It was an interesting cultural experience.
After getting our camera back, we went over to see the outside of the palace. On the grounds were also a simple small house where Uncle Ho had lived in, beside it was a garage filled with cars he had owned. By then it was 11am and the museum closed until 1:30pm for some reason. So we decided to take a cyclo to the museum of Ethnology. We found a one armed cyclo driver to take us, and as he did his smile slowly faded, five minutes into the ride he started asking Jes "how many kilos you". We laughed and told him, then Jes agreed to pay him more for his troubles. After another minute or two later and he dropped us off and said the museum was just around the corner, but no cyclos were allowed down that street. We paid him and went where he pointed. What we found was not a museum however, but rather an amusement park for kids. We had been scammed again! I guess he was just too tired and decided to get rid of us.
We found a nice place for lunch then started to walk in the direction the locals pointed us. After 10 min of uphill we could see why the cyclo gave up. lol We found a man with the oldest cyclo we had ever seen. It was covered in mud and looked like it could fall apart at any moment, but we were far from tourist areas, and had not seen a taxi or cyclo since leaving the amusement park. He took us and another 5 min up the road we turned into the museum. As we did the group of cyclo and taxi drivers laughed at our poor old cyclo driver and kept pointing at his pitiful cyclo. He didn't seem to care though as he took our agreed fee with a smile.
The museum was very interesting and talked about the many different hill tribes that are in Vietnam. There were displays showing the kind of dress they had, musical instruments, weapons, ways of making money, style of houses, forms of transportation, etc. It also talked about how their lives are changing as Vietnam becomes more modern. Things such as going to school rather than learning how to farm are becoming more important. Kids are also spending hours and hours in internet cafes rather than playing outside. Seems it is happening everywhere. After the museum we decided a cyclo would take too long to get back to the Mausoleum, so we took up the offer of 2 guys who would drive us on the back of their motorbikes. This was a much more scary way of traveling, but more efficient as we got there in about 2 minutes.
As we walked into the museum at the Mausoleum we were approached by a guy wearing an ID badge that said he worked at the museum and would give us a tour. The museum closed in just over an hour and he said the tour would take 45 min then we could walk around. We learned a lot about Ho-Chi-Min and what he did for the people of Vietnam, as well as some of the wars and history of Vietnam. It was a very well done museum. Then our guide led us outside. When we said we wanted to look around some more he said we were not allowed in once we left. He also demanded double the price as he said the price he quoted us was per person. Did I mention it came up during the tour that his name did not match the badge and he admitted that the I.D. badge was his cousin's? lol Anyway, we only gave him what we agreed upon and left. We had enjoyed the tour but not the extortion attempt at the end. Some luck we have been having.
We went to look at the famous one pillar pagoda, which was nice, but we had seen many pagoda's, so one sprouting out of a single pillar wasn't at the top of our list. We enjoyed a walk around the lake in the center of the town that evening, before heading back to our new favorite dining spot since Dukes in Chiang Mai, yep, Pepperoni's.
J The next day we left the busy city to do a day trip out to a national park. We went with a company called ODC, which had a few reasonably priced excursions, I mention this because many of the tour companies we looked at were crazy expensive, obviously Hanoi sees a lot of tourists and the locals want to squeeze every single last dollar out of you, if they can. Anyway, we signed up for Halong Bay tour, but then we started thinking about what we were going to do with our remaining days in Hanoi, and the next thing we knew we signed up for a two day trekking + boat package. Our first tour took us to the nearby Cuc Phuong National park which had a primate rescue centre on site. It was an odd adventure as not a lot of people go on it, so we had a driver and a tour guide to ourselves for two full days! Needless to say this cost quite a bit of money as we had to pay the salary of both of these guys and the cost of the vehicle, gas, etc. Although we did had the opportunity to find other people to join us and get a reduced fare, but we blew it, being so anti-social and all. lol
We met our driver and guide, who almost had the same names, the guide was Phong, and the driver was Phung. lol The drive out was a bit tedious, we slept for a lot of it, watching the traffic on the busy highway was a bit frightening (even for me). After 2 hours on the road we arrived at the park. The primate centre was very neat, we saw at least 6 different species of primates. Apparently when the (lets just call them monkeys for simplicity sake), when the monkeys arrive they stay in cages for a bit, before being put into a bigger community cage. The monkeys we saw were in big outdoor cages with others of their kind, and they were being fed a steady diet of what looked like boring leaves, but they seemed to enjoy eating them anyway. There is a part to the rescue centre where the monkeys live in a semi-wild enclosure, much bigger, no visible cages but an electrified fence on the perimeter. We were not permitted to enter the enclosure but we saw monkeys swinging from tree branches and giving us looks from the safety of "their"Jungle.
Although we didn't get close enough to touch or interact with any of the monkeys (bummer), I did almost get bit though. As we left there was a large dog that had been following our group, obviously he lived at the primate rescue centre, and when I went to pet him he snapped at me! Apparently he thought I was out to get him, as if man's best friend might become lunch or something.. only in Vietnam I guess. lol Seriously though, they do eat dog meat in Vietnam, we stayed away from it of course, or so we think.
After lunch we headed into the park itself, and we went on a decent hike. The path was nicely cleared and it really wasn't that difficult, however it was terribly hot. Our first hike took us to the "ancient tree", which was a pretty big tree, no big deal. The jungle was impressive though, we didn't see any animals unfortunately, but we saw bigger leafs then the ones we had seen in Laos. There were also tree roots that turned into vines that wrapped around trees and really made you believe you could swing through the vegetation like Tarzan, if you were so inclined.
I think our tour guide had us pegged as wimps though, because the path to this tree was quite easy with minimal climbs, and he was rather hesitant when we got back to the car and told him we wanted to go to the "1000 year old tree" too. He explained it would be another 2 hours of hiking to which (after discussion) we said "lets do it!". He complied and off were went. It was a tougher hike for sure, but an hour in we made it to the bigger and cooler looking tree. Although upon further inspection it seemed like the bottom of the tree was really 3 trees that had joined together after 20 feet. It's footprint and roots were huge though.
Back to the car and we started heading out of the park, we had discussed earlier that we wanted to visit a cave we saw as we entered the park, but our guide fell asleep as soon as we got going, and by the time we woke him and mentioned the cave it was too late. Oh well, apparently we would be seeing caves the next day.
We stayed overnight in the small town of Ninh Binh, and the next day started out on a beautiful boat ride at a place near town called Tam Coc "three caves". Our guide stayed behind which was fine, as there were two ladies who paddled the boat for us (luxury!). The one lady was quite a bit older, and just paddled with a single oar, the younger in the back turned out to be her daughter.
The mountainous limestone karsts of the area give it the name of "Halong Bay on land", and it was truly beautiful. As we rode we heard traditional music being played live by locals in a tent, we learned later that this music was funeral music, recognizable instantly by any local.
The three caves were really cool to go through, we had to be careful of our heads as we rowed through them. We started feeling sorry for our elderly woman in the boat and offered to paddle, taking turns as we went. Once we got to the turn around point however, we stopped feeling bad for her as she broke out souvenirs she wanted us to buy.
Poor Michelle sat beside her as we took the 40 minute ride back toward the starting point, and all the way the lady pleaded with her to buy scarfs or other embroidery. We had agreed to give them a tip anyway, and so we thought we would do it then instead of waiting until the end of the trip. This didn't persuade her to stop trying and when we got to the end of the trip she even started pleading for more of a tip! lol We were used to this sort of treatment from vendors but it was fairly annoying that we could not get away from it, especially for Michelle as she was as always overly polite.
After lunch we took a short drive to some ancient temples at the nearby Hoa Lu. The temples were still in use, and there were Vietnamese tourists there to pay respects to the stone sculptures of these kings who ruled a century ago during the Dinh Dynasty. Some of the folklore was interesting, but we were not overly impressed with the buildings itself. I think we were simply confused as to why the locals (who are Buddhists) would worship old kings, ones that had been dead and buried for over a century. Our tour guide didn't seem to understand our questions and we didn't want to insult his culture, so we chose to ponder these mysters ouselves. We were also growing a bit frustrated with our guide, who was difficult to understand, and who seemed to be hurring us through, and not taking the time to let us explore the ruins.
We headed back to Hanoi, and once again despite asking to be taken to an ATM we were not and simply dropped at our guest house, we had a hard decision to make as to wether we should tip our guide or not, we were only barely happy with his performance. So we tipped him with the money we had, as we were low on funds (hence the ATM request). Hopefully we would have a better experience the next day when we left for Halong Bay.
One funny thing about Hanoi that I think we should mention. Many companies enjoy benefiting from the success of another. For example, there were a few tour companies, hotels, etc. That had made a name for themselves, and usually they were mentioned in the guide book. Many other companies would simply "adopt" the name as well. So you had to be very careful making sure you were going to the "legitimate" company and not a rip-off. This was especially true for one tour company called "Sinh Cafe" who had no less then 20 storefronts in the city, 19 of them probably not the original. lol
We used the rest of the afternoon to check into a new guest house, get to an ATM, and then head to the small island called Jade island, which is in the middle of Hoan Kiem lake, the centerpiece of Hanoi. There is a small temple still in use on the island called Ngoc Son. Despite being a nice place to take some pictures of the decorative bridge and treed edges of the lake, there is a giant mummified turtle on site! Apparently these turtles (the same as the mummified one) used to occupy the lake, although sadly these days they have all disappeared.
There is a legend surrounding the lake, and these same giant turtles. You see back in the 15th century king Le Loi met a large turtle that apparently came from heaven. This turtle gave him a sacred sword that then helped him defeat the Ming army, and then while back on the lake after the war this same turtle returned to take back the sword. So the king did the right thing and gave back the sword, and the turtle disappeared into the murky green waters. So the king named the lake Hoan Kiem or "Lake of the Returned Sword". We had read about this legend in our guide book, and were happily surprised when it showed up in the water puppet show.
We enjoyed the cool evening by stopping for a quick dinner at an outside restaurant, before walking to the Hanoi Opera House where we enjoyed the Hanoi symphony orchestra conducted by Pierre-Andre Valade. We were recognized as riff-raff upon entering (as I was wearing shorts and not trousers, my only pair being dirty) so we had to sit on the balcony with others wearing jeans and shorts. We still throughly enjoyed the evening, and the tickets were quite affordable.
M Bright and early the next day we met our guide for the trip out to Halong Bay, his name was Son. He turned out to be a very funny guy and entertained us with singing as we drove out to the Halong city. We were with a group of 19 people heading to the world famous area. We met a couple from Germany and a couple from the Netherlands who we hit it off with and spent a lot of time with. After a 3 hr bus trip stopping once to use the bathroom and to have people try to sell us handicrafts we arrived at the port of Halong. There must have been a hundred boats (which they call junks). We boarded our Junk and got settled in our tiny little room. Everyone relaxed on the top of the junk in reclining chairs in awe of the scenery. Out of the water shot mountains, for lack of a better word.
Our first stop was the "amazing cave" as our guide called it, and it truly was amazing. It was huge inside and they had it lit up with colorful spotlights. It was well done, not cheesy at all. Our guide kept pointing out rock formations and telling us it looked like a dog or a dragon or something, but we could generally not tell what he was talking about, plus the place was crazy busy with other tour groups. After the cave we did some more lounging on the boat (and took many pictures of course), then we pulled into a beach and quickly disembarked so that our boat could pull out and let other junks come in. We swam for a while, but a few times I felt something jelly-like and got scared, we found out there was indeed jelly fish in the water! Jes didn't believe me at first until he started feeling them in the water. Luckily no one seemed to get stung by them.
After swimming our Junk found its spot for the night and set anchor in the middle of a bay, surrounded on all sides by the limestone mountain tops sprouting out of the still water. Our group of 19 included 2 families with kids. Our guide, the kids, and one of the fathers jumped from the top of the boat into the water a few times. It was great fun to watch, but we had had dried off after the swimming and chose to just soak up the sun and enjoy reading our books while watching the others. Jes took our our ipod and played some music on the top deck for everyone, but the battery on our portable speaker didn't last too long. We watched the sun going down and wished the tour lasted a week, what an amazing day in probably the most beautiful place had ever visited.
After dinner we brought out our little travel Monopoly game that we had bought in Japan. We played against team Germany and team Netherlands (as we called them, lol) until 11pm, when we finally ended in a tie as the boat crew slept on the bench chairs in the dinning room, and they had turned their t.v. off and were all laying quietly, so we thought we should take the hint.
After another 90 minutes we were headed back to Cat Ba town on the big boat. Our bus dropped us off at the charming hotel Two Princess and were were happy to hit the shower and put on some clean clothes. After dinner that night we talked for a long time with some of the people in our tour group. Dell turned out to be a pro-Bush, pro-Republican American. He had a lot of opinions which we found to be pretty biased, such as his view on how great the health-care system is in the U.S.A. We also heard about how the Bush gov't tried to help the Katrina victims ahead of time by telling them to leave the area, but they didn't want to listen. We bit our tounge and let him do most of the talking, but we could tell that the other members of our group were growing tired of the conversation, and even after offering to break out the monopoly game again, most of the group decided to go head to bed.
The next morning we met our new group for the return home, and surprise surprise, our friend Phong who took us to the national park four days earlier was our guide. Once again, as with the last time we were with Phong we were quite disappointed. We were were told we would be stopping the boat to go snorkeling in the morning and before we knew it we were back at Halong City, stopping for lunch. We weren't too upset though as Jes had the foot injury and once again it was a little cold and overcast outside. We enjoyed looking over the pictures were had taken and finish up some books we had been reading.
The next day we joined a Thai guy from our hotel and shared a taxi out to the airport. We had a fun filled and interesting 10 days in Vietnam, although we wished we had more time to see the rest of the country.
Next stop was Bangkok for their new years festival.
All our Vietnam pictures can be viewed online at our Picasa web album.
Unfortunately we got a little lost (common on this trip) and ended up taking a lengthy detour on the way down, and on top of it the hike down was pretty intense with some steep parts. We did get to see a lot of the locals out for jogs or walking their dogs which was cool. Once to the mid-levels we missed the entrance to the mid-level escalators, but we did get to see some swank apartments and lots of expensive cars driving down the streets. We made it to the area known as SOHO by the time we finally found the famous worlds longest elevators (the mid-level escalators), and boy were we dissapointed when we found out they only go in one direction, yep, up. So we followed them down taking the steps. lol
We spent another day at the national museum. It was very well done and we learned a lot about HKs history. We also spent a morning at the space museum which is very similar to the one we have back home. We watched an imax there on Greece, which was very neat as we had been there earlier in the trip. We also spent a lot of time looking for a laptop as we had heard HK is a great place to buy one as they are on the cutting edge of new technology, although slightly behind Japan, their prices are much more reasonable. Finally on our last day in HK and after much looking and price comparing we decided on one. Then we had more trouble as we wanted a black one which everywhere seemed to be sold out of, finally after what felt like half a day we bought a little white Asus EEE PC. We affectionately call our lap top Al to remind us of where we bought it from, and our friend from the bathroom.
Seam Reap
