eye-opening trip to Hanoi (part 1)

By ginchan  |  Location: Vietnam  |  09/24/07

It was really a great trip! i mean the environment over in hanoi is totally different as compared to s'pore and pple there are also much much poorer and they live in worse condition. but it was really a great eye opening trip!! =D


Only on my 3rd day in Hanoi, then did i know that till now, Vietnam is a communist country.... yup... and indeed u're able to see signs that its a communist country. On the streets, u'll be ble to see rows of cable poles with lots of cables hanging on them. besides the cables, there is also an additional thing and that's a loud hailer!!! Yup!! a loud hailer, and u can hear broadcast from the loud hailer on every morning...this was wat i noticed. and i only asked abt the governing of the country on my 3rd day there... hahaha... (u can say i'm a little slow) and also u can see posters all over the place with the vietnamese flag accompanied with the Soviet Union sign that is a hammer and a curved thing... anyway these are signs tat tells u the country is under communism.


and the most memorable thing was we went to a famous padoga 'Perfume pagoda' in the hills and to reach that place, we've got to be rowed in a boat (4 pple in a boat) for 1hr on a river.

on our way there, the weather was very good, in fact it was super hot & sunny (hhahaha... i got pretty tanned after that day). however, when we leave the place (we've got to be rowed back to the mainland), we met with a huge monsoon storm. and this happened when we were in the midst of the river (we still had another 40min before we can reach the mainland)... the rain was just slashing down and the wind was super super strong. and in the midst of the storm, we sort of were trapped in the water weeds, coz during this time, the lady who rowed our boat was putting on her raincoat. with no one to steer the boat, it juz drifted for awhile according to the direction of the wind and hence, our boat got caught in the weeds. and the lady who was rowing us had to try to get us out of the weeds so that we can proceed down the river... my 2 friends brought their umbrellas along and they immediately wipped out their umbrellas when the rain started pouring...they held up the umbrellas wanting to shelter me & my sis, but it was not much use, coz the rain & wind were simply too strong. after a while (in fact it was jus sevearl min) both my sis & me were drenching wet and we saw that quite a bit of water was on teh bottom of the boat. fearing that the boat may move slower or dipped a little due to the additional weight of the rain, the both of us were scooping water out frantically. hahhaha...it was exciting but at the same time scary & cold.


we also went to one of the famous world heritage sites in Vietnam -- Halong Bay. wow!!! the scenery u see there totally blow u off... its juz super super beautiful. and we also got to spend 1 night on the junk deck. and at night, wow... u can see so many many stars in the skies and we woke up to catch the morning sun rise.

totally beautiful... but this does not means that all was well throughout the boat trip at Halong Bay. hahaha... u've got to live with the filth (coz we saw a couple of cockroaches) and also the numerous sandfly bites (they only come out & feed on our blood in the middle of the night, til now i'm still scratching myself non-stop... urgh) but it was great! this time round i did not try any weird stuffs but we did eat some of the vietnamese street food. they may not look nice but they tasted great!! =D

in fact i wanted to try those 1/2formed chicks in the egg. hahaha... dun kno why, but i juz like to try things that the locals eat. anyway, a small little girl of about 4yr old took the last egg, so i was not able to try it. hahaha... perhaps i will try it the next time that i'm there... =P


i'v also managed to see Ho Chin Min's body. the Vetnamese pple kept his body in his mulsoleum in Hanoi. amazing tat so many vietnamese pple actually queue up to see him in his glass casket.

photos were not allowed so i did not managed to capture his body. The Vietnamese really really respect 'Uncle Ho' (that's how Ho Chin Min is addressed by the Vietnamese) we also managed to buy quite a lot of things there.... hmmm... the guide bk told us that one of the very famous market 'Dong Xuan' market is a very good place to shop. But when we were there, we tried to bagain for the prices, the pple there were super rude, they told us to go away. they were not willing to sell us the price that we asked for. Coz even a kid also kno that the pices that the shopkeepers asked for are way sky high and its really daylight robbery. and pple juz kept pushing and touching u. urgh... i felt as if i've been molested lots of time tat day. Anyway seeing that we were not able to purchase anything there and we've still got lots to buy, we decieded to head for another market 'Hang Da' market. arh...over here, the pple are super nice... its like as if they've never seen foreigners shopping over there... hahaha... and we've managed to get all our stuffs at resonable prices there and best of all, I've managed to purchase an 'Ao Dai'!! hahaha... this is the Vietnam traditional costume for the ladies. =D


hmmm... but one thing abt Vietnam taht i'm not very pleased with is the pple manning the guesthouses & hotels. I mean those cheap accomadations. My friends and I booked our accomodation on worldhostel.com. however, when we reached there, they told us that there were no rms available at that guesthouse and brought us to another guesthouse that was susposedly a newer place but the rms were more expensive. and they wanted us to pay a higher price for the rms when the rms were not the ones tat we wanted. we were pretty fed up with this. anyway after telling the boss off & comign to a consensus, he gave us a cheaper rate at the new guesthouse (as compared to the original price) but was $6 more per night if we were to stay at the older guesthouse. anyway we took it. and also the day tours.... urgh... we were sort of cheated by the guesthouse. coz after booking then we realised that the guesthouse charged us 2x more than if we were to book our trips thru the cafes or tour agents there... we were pretty fed up abt this... but anyway the day tours tat we booked turned out pretty ok and enjoyable.. else we'll be cursing & swearing. hahaha.

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