Hanoi

back to tell the tale. the 4th day at Hanoi, we had not much plans up our sleeves. so, we decided to go to Hoan Kiem Lake early in the morning to see the locals up and about their morning exercise as well as to see the pagoda & bridge.

in all travel guidebooks, the lake will be described as a 'romantic' one. when i first saw the lake, romantic definately didnt come to mind. Near the lake was this big roundabout where traffic was heaviest. rowdy was more it. then you start to see the families there, the vietnamese women in their pajamas, the couples. Vietnamese couples kuchimo in parks & lakes at anytime, at night or in broad daylight, right on their motorbikes. i guess now you can use the word 'romantic'.

my sleeping abilities

i wake up at 10am. sleep again at 1pm. then again at 10pm. and when im awake in that 9 hours, i am eating, watching tv, online, trying to get myself a job. pretty amazing huh.

ok, i need a job.

Halong Bay

Halong Bay - "Vinh Ha Long" means "Bay of the Descending Dragon". The bay consists of a dense cluster of 1,969 limestone monolithic islands. Several of the islands are hollow, with enormous caves where numerous stalactites and stalagmites are found. The bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site. (Vietnam is full of UNESCO world heritage sites)

USD$18 to get us into a tour group of a rather cute guide ( i cant seem to find the video i took, must have deleted it by mistake), Singaporean uncles & aunties (which reminded us of our parents), a Japanese (who read picture books). Stalactites & stalamites werent exactly in my field of interest, so when the guide pointed out breasts, cats, male, female lookalikes - it was just "oh" and "click" went the camera. The only recognizable one i have is this. See the cat looking up as if awaiting some prey?

but it was great spawling out on the deckchairs with the wind blowing on our faces.

and the many junks at sea!

snapped this while on the bus. the sky is beautiful over there, stretches on forever.

Places of Interest - Hanoi

our 2nd day at Hanoi, we visited the major places of interest. The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology where we learnt about the various ethnic groups in Vietnam & the Temple of Literature where Vietnamese offered prayers to Confucius and the many other great teachers. Enter!

Liz, someone from a club we managed to befriend from Couchsurfing.org, was our guide for the day. Without him, we would be cabbing instead of taking the public bus which cost us 30cents.

Liz said that these turtles bring goodluck to our academia. so there we are touching its head and mumbling, high gpa high gpa. i just checked my grades, i am finally a 3.20 zunzun, a high merit. cum laude, byebye.

that night we were supposed to have a home dinner at one of the club member's house, but due to some miscommunication, it was cancelled and neither us nor Liz knew about it. (Due to unforeseen circumstances, we also didnt manage to go to the mausoleum nor the HCM musuem.) We waited at the hotel lobby for 45mins or so, till we got news. we decide to head out for a meal. I've learnt that it is important to have a good guidebook which does good recommendation for food, else we will always be just eating pho or other familiar food. or just places with English Menu (which tends to be more expensive most of the time). That night, we ate at a road side stall for the 1st time, eating this plate of fried fritters. the key to getting the best experience is to watch the locals, we watched the local dip their fritters into this bowl of sauce before eating and we followed suit. YUM =) (*pictures should be with fi)

how things look like

this is how the public bus looks like. there is a driver and ticket officer on duty. so you get on the bus and the ticket officer will approach u so that u can buy the tickets from them.

this is how the policemen look like. very communist. and Vietnam is a relatively safe country, you see these policemen often especially at places of interest. They have their own platform thingy that they stand on.

1st Day - Hanoi

too many pictures. fi & i had 3G of memory space each, so go figure. so i'd do this selectively here. May 10th... TigerAir. No arrowbridge, so its straight up to the aircraft, pretending its your private jet. 3 hours later, its *Xin Chao Ha Noi!

the 1st coffeejoint we visited and it overlooks the Hoan Kiem Lake. Had my coffee and couldnt sleep that night. my sleepless night in Hanoi... i think i almost drove fiona crazy.

shops/houses in Vietnam are narrow, tiny and stacked up. so if you have more money, you add 1 more layer of space in your house. So there's always these steep & narrow staircases. one of those few occurances that I have to watch my head. Same goes for our hotels, the amount of stairs we have to climb! by the time we reach our room, we are panting. hahaha

* xin chao is hello in vietnamese. read as xin jiao. yes, like 'new bird' in hokkien. repeat after me, xin chao!

home

the last night at HCMC before we head home, i stirred at 4am thereabout, thinking i was home in my own bed. not that the hotel bed has taken my shape and i feel so at home, but because i was having a familiar dream. then i heard the honking downstairs. i am so not at home.

and you would think i would receive a hearty welcome when i get home after 2.5 weeks. my mum is like experiencing menopause twice over, and nothing i did/buy/say is correct.

to think i blabbered something like 'home sweet home' when we touched down. haha

all in all

since im such a bloggerholic, let me start this one off.

May 10th - 13th (Day 01 - 04)
Hanoi
Bodega hotel with their nice staff, dorm stay, hoan kiem lake, learning vietnamese, vietnamese walking in their pajamas, "very far very far", this was referring to Lenin Park, superb massage!, meeting vietnamese friends, not meeting vietnamese friends, learning about the ethnology of Vietnamese, pagodas, Temple of Literature where we touched turtles and asked for good GPA (haha), water puppet show, day tour to Halong Bay, 4th day was bus ride to Hue (14hrs)where in the midst of sleeping and waking up on the bumpy ride, we woke up and saw roasted dogs (thit cho).

May 14th (Day 05)
Hue
At Hue, we had good cheap food, first experience at cycling in Vietnam and rebelling against traffic rules if any exists. Cyclo day tour. Hue pancakes. Visiting the Forbidden City.

May 15th - 17th (Day 06 - 08)
Hoi An
Travel from Hue to Hoi An, where we drove throught Hai Van Pass which separates North and South Vietnam. Pitstop at LangCo Beach, which was BEAUTIFUL. tailor made clothes, My Son, cao lau & white rose (both of which are hoi an's speciality. and they taste great. hoi an is one of the few places that actually has their own local speciality), alot of walking around and shopping, for books/scarves/teeshirts. Day 08 was a cab back to Danang to catch our 12 hour train ride to HCMC (soft sleeper $41usd/pax)

May 18th - May 19th (Day 9 - 10)
HCMC
train ride to HCMC was comfortable enough to read, get decent sleep. weird train food. sharing a cabin with australian travelers-1 of whom has been traveling for 9 months, polluted air, expensive cabs which we have to hail selectively cos some of their meters jump so fast, spending a day just to check out travel agencies to get to Cambodia, being sian cos their elections screwed the bus schedule and our schedule, and finally being able to find a solution and get to Cambodia without having to waste time and doing a night stopover at Phnom Penh. best part of it was eating roadside seafood, crabs, clams, SNAILS (my 1st time), all of which cost $14? Notre Dame Cathedral, Post Office (Buu Dien), going to Cholon (HCMC's chinatown) but disappointed with the many shops closed early. Going to Cuchi tunnel and the Cao Dai Temple the next day. Getting caught in the rain and experiencing first hand how life was like in the tunnel where we took cover from the rain.

May 20th - 23rd (Day 11 - 14)
Cambodia
clearing customs, getting mobbed by tuktuk/motorcycle/taxi operators, by children, asking for money/food/candy/to buy their stuff, food peddlers carry their goods on baskets atop their heads, dirt roads, minivans operating as buses with people sitting on top of the vans, (that means they actually have to breathe in all the dust flying up from the road), being dumped in the middle of the road, no rooms available at the hotel, to having 1 last room (thank goodness) because someone checked out 2 hours ago, feeling relief that we are still alive, Angkor Wat, HOTHOTHOT, climbing steep stairs, taking unglam videos, slacking out the next day at a bubble tea place, giving out chocolates to kids, buy more teeshirts, another 12hr back to HCMC (what to do, budget traveling, got time but no money)

May 24th - 27th (Day 15 - 17)
Back at HCMC
typing all these. and realizing i got my dates all mixed up. hahaa.. ok will have to refer to our travel log. now i will go upstairs to get fiona. she will fill in the other missing details of our trip. we are rather broke so we decided to scrap the tour to Mekong and slack out. Visited the Ben Thamn Day market, did final shopping, and left with only.... a miserable 50cents after dinner. We had dinner at a vegetarian place called 'The original Bohdi Tree' (recommended in Lonely Planet) because it was cheap. we were so broke. hotel with no tv (and fiona freaked out) and we started making each other hysterical by singing, acting to ourselves. we settled down for reading and then having an early night. Spending $4 at a bar on beer, which was the equivalent of our dinner just because we dont want to go back to the hotel where we had nothing to do.

2 countries. 17 days. 6 cities. Hanging on by a shoestring of $1000 (airtix included) it's a good 1st backpacking trip. =) definately returning for Sapa, Dalat, Nha Trang, Phu Quoc Islands (the highlands & the beaches!) and yes sunrise & sunset at Angkor.

p/s: edited after referring to travel log

Angkor

greetings from Siem Reap! fi & I reached Siem Reap after a 12hr bus ride with an hour break in between last night. Our first thought upon reaching our hotel was relief that we are not dead yet. our bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap consisted of less than 10 people out of which only 2 of us are girls and the rest of non-english speaking men. the bus stopped at some godforsaken place in a middle of the road, the only civilisation nearby was a roadside stall. we were then mobbed by a group of motorbikers who wanted to give us a lift to our hotel, and we have no choice but to trust and take 1 of them else there is no way to get to our hotel at 8pm at night. I was on one bike with my haversack and fi on another with her hugeass luaggage. we are talking about a motorbike here, mind you. We managed to get a last room in the hotel so after all the drama, we are now safe at a touristy area.

We visited Angkor today and busted our memory card space. Our pictures will come will a disclaimer that says "taken with our blood, sweat and more sweat". weather is blistering hot!

p/s: I'm totally abandoned by my own race, Vietnamese think I am Vietnamese. And in Cambodia, under the disgusting sun, I am çonverted to a Cambodian. Put me in the sun somemore and I'd become a bengala soon.

Angkor is spectacular, you have to see it for yourself really. Rather wiped out from all climbing and walking.

We are running out of money, trying to enjoy our time in Siem reap which is much more peaceful than ho Chi Minh which is really chaotic and not a single inch of clean air for us to breathe.

Heading back to HCMC day after tomorrow, spend another day there and its home sweet home.