Hanoi Escapade - Day 4
DAY FOUR / 31 December 2006, Sunday
Since coming to Hanoi, we became more of a morning person. We woke up at 8am to watch the famous water puppet show at 9am! Breakfast at Camellia 2 was not not different from Anh Dao, not too spectacular. We later heard from Lena (the lady whom we met on the cruise to Halong Bay) at a dinner gathering on 01/01/2007, that her hotel, Majestic Salute, served excellent breakfast buffet! There was even a chef around to cook some stuff (forgotten what it was) on the spot! Sigh, they had wanted to give us the extra breakfast vouchers they had but we met them too late. So they gave them away to the chambermaids. :-(
On our way to Hoan Kiem Lake where the theatre was, we spent some time looking at the fresh market! I have always loved to look at the colorful fruits and funny-looking vegetables they are selling!
Look at that big durian! I found it rather amusing to find the stall only having one durian and it was put in a basket like any other small little fruit! We didn't get the chance to try the King of fruits but Tempest's dad who went to Ho Chi Minh said the durian tasted horrible! "You give it to me free I also don't want!" He said.
On the other hand, I learnt from my Thai colleague that Thais love their durian a bit harder and less pungent, unlike Singaporeans where we want them sweet, creamy and even bitter!
We had originally wanted to watch the water puppet show yesterday evening, but the seats were all booked for the night. That showed how popular this traditional act was with tourists! This was also the one & only water puppet theatre around the Hoan Kiem area.
When we entered the theatre, more than 80% were ang mohs. The rest were tourists from Asia; the two girls seated next to us were Japanese; a row of Chinese were behind us, and I thought I heard some Koreans too.
The 1-hour play was in Vietnamese. A lady was singing in the background with some members of the orchestra drumming and playing away.
We enjoyed ourselves with trying to differentiate one scene from the next by consistently refering to our english version of the programme brochure. Overall, the singing was good, and I did enjoy it. Try not to miss it! Haha, afterall, there is nothing much you can do in Hanoi. :-p
How could we miss a thorough visit round the Hoan Kiem Lake when we stepped into Hanoi? The lake is considered a major attraction for both locals & tourists. Locals can be seen jogging and 'pak tor'-ing in the parks while tourists tried to get their fair share of fun by strolling round and round the lake.
We were one of the latter; we found our way to the entrance of some temple on the lake, which by the way, charges a token sum for entrance fees.
Not much of a sight to admire, but the red bridge is really stunning, especially with softened lighting effects (or was it the mist?):
There was a display of a giant turtle, the main character in the
legend of the lake.
We chanced upon the statue of
Emperor Ly Thai To on our way to the Post Office. Check out the link to find Vietnam's history - seems to be plagued by wars, one after the other.
I still remembered how CF, Emu, and myself were playing around at the Post Office in Brunei. Hehe, yes, it was pretty plain in Brunei too so we amused ourselves with sending postcards to each other's addressses in Singapore. We even joked that we might reach home faster than our postcards, given the slow mailing system in Brunei.
So happened that Tempest wanted to send one to his friend in America, we decided to have some fun to ourselves too. This time round, we sent it to each other's parents. And one to Lena, Huy & Kim at their Australian address!
A lady holding a bag of postcards approached us before we we walked into the Post Office. She showed us a variety of scenary-based postcards. Though the selection was not as great as the Post Office's and even looked a little old, the price was somewhat cheaper.
So we bought 3 smaller postcards at VND$2,000 (SGD $0.20) from her and 1 bigger one from the Post Office at VND $4000 (SGD $0.40). When we checked with the office clerks for the postage fee to America, Australia & Singapore, we discovered that different clerks gave different quotes. Sigh, we probably paid a price of VND1000 - 2000 for the wrong info!
On the Halong Bay Cruise, we often exchanges information about food with Huy & group. Like us, they planned their own tour and sourced info from the internet. As food-loving peeps, it was not difficult to get engrossed in a common topic easily. Huy recommended us to visit Quan An Ngon. The concept is similar to that of Marche or The Marketplace; there are varied stalls selling different foods, and there is common seating within the compound. The food was pretty cheap. We ate 6 - 7 dishes at only a total of VND 126,000 (SGD $12.60)!
Quan An Ngon - many locals love to dine here too.
With a full satisfied stomach, we trodded on to Van Mieu, Temple of Literature. The site used to house the first university of Vietnam, solely for the purpose of nurturing scholars. The temple was segregated into 3 or 4 compounds, with a lot of lush & greens.
We tired ourselves by walking back to Hoan Kiem Lake for dinner. Throughout the Hanoi trip, we relied a lot on our two feet. Most of the tourist sites and foodie places are within walking distance. The cooling weather made walking a breeze (unlike the sweltering one in Bangkok!) but the smoke & all the polluted gases stuffed your nose and throat all the time; very irritating!
Motorcyclists were everywhere, asking us to take a ride from them. They knew we were tourists because the guy usually does not carry any pouch or bag in Hanoi; realising that, Tempest happily passed the sling pouch to me. :-| True enough, no motorists bothered about us again.
It was difficult to buy souvenirs. We wanted something that is unique to Vietnam. Tempest and I weren't shoppaholics. It didn't help that Hanoi has few malls. We turned to their chain of stores - Hapro Mart - to purchase our 'souvenirs'. Vietnamese coffee & coffee filters! No haggling. No unreasonable mark-up. Satisfied! I also bought some chips which I thought was local and not found elsewhere, but they were actually being exported & sold in all NTUCs in Singapore. Felt so cheated.
Carrying 2 to 3 bagfuls of stuffs, we returned to our hotel to unload first before going to find Huy , Kim and Lena. We had made a promise to meet them for dinner when they came back from Cat Ba island. Majestic Salute, like its name suggested, looked much grander than the numerous little
hotels that lined the streets. Bellboys at the door, big reception, nice sofas in the lobby. Well, for USD $50 a night, I guess the service and furnishings were justified. We left a note for Huy after waiting 10mins in vain for them.
Maybe we were over-reacting, but we thought there was a dubious character following us along a dark alley. The thin, dark-looking man followed us for some distance before he left, after we walked back to the crowded streets.
After our street side feasting yesterday, we were at a loss at what to have for dinner. More street side food? Not really; besides the seafood, I was put off by the hygiene in most of the noodles (Pho) stalls. Other foods in little cafes were either normal burgers or expensive french cuisine.
Initially we wanted to have the famous fried fish dish, Cha Ca La Vong, with Huy & group. As Huy & Kim are Vietnamese, we thought they were the best persons to teach us how to eat the dish. Hee, so we took to mimicking our neighbours:
Tempest finally found what he had been searching for:
Weasel Coffee! As its name suggests, weasel coffee has been eaten and regurgitated by rare Vietnamese weasels! We bought 500 grams for SGD $3.00. Thus we supposed that it wasn't the real weasel coffee when internet sites showed the price of a small pack of coffee to be 15.95 POUNDS!) Nonetheless, no harm trying!
Lena told us about a stall that sells glutinous rice dumplings (tangyuan) that was selling at VND $5000 (SGD $0.50) per bowl! I was so glad that we chanced upon that stall near their hotel (Majestic Salute)! That was one of the best foods I had in Hanoi.
Packed with an oily dinner and refreshing supper, we walked down to Hoan Kiem Lake again! It was new year's eve; we could join in some of the celebrations! Besides, we had wanted to try out the Highlands Coffee, a popular cafe in Hanoi.
It was not easy to find a balcony seat in the cafe; everyone wanted to get a closer view of the acrobatic performances at the road junction right below the building.
Highlands Coffee is on level 4.The traffic conditions worsened at 9plus as crowds thronged the stage area. So much honking around as motorists were unable to progress more than a foot long each time. The traffic only eased when the performances ended at 11plus.
Strangely, there was no countdown at all! We returned to the hotel, switched on the TV. There was a broadcast of some new year celebrations programme; likewise, there was no countdown party. Hmm.. suburban.
Labels: hanoi, travel
Hanoi Escapade - Day 3
DAY THREE / 30 December 2006, SaturdayHALONG BAY - HANOI
BRRR.... freezing!
Haiz... the fog was heavy. No sunrise. It was terribly chilling to the extent that we had to squat behind the deck-beds in a weak bid to hide from the howling wind. We cannot tahan more than half an hour for such a torture and willingly resigned to the fate of not seeing the much-touted sunrise at the Unesco site.
After breakfast, it's canoeing! My first attempt. No guides. No training. Totally DIY whether you can or not. They only provide the canoeing equipment plus a life jacket.
Haha. I was trying very hard to listen to Tempest on how to steer a canoe and maneover the paddle.
15mins later, he kinda gave up. "Ok, you sit and hold your paddle up. I will do the paddling."
That was our last activity in Halong Bay.
Before Huy & gang left in another junk to Cat Ba Island, Lena gave us two banana-leaf-wrapped thingys.
Phuonc left with the group to Cat Ba. Another guy came along. We decided to tip the crew before we left the junk. After paying up all the items we had spent on the junk, Tempest made a count of the change and decided to give in all in as tips. It was VND $77,000, which was equivalent to SGD$7.70. We didn't think it was that big an amount for a crew of around 5-6. But the Captain was apparently ecstatic and gave Tempest a big hug! Hehe.
Lunch was at a seemingly well-furbished restaurant, though the food was similar to what we had on the boat, just a more generous serving and a better grade of ingredients. The next stopover was at Hai Phong City, at a little building which sells a variety of souveniers, local foods, paintings, ornaments and ice cream.
On our way back to Anh Dao Hotel, we visited a Vietnamese Airlines ticketing office to confirm our flight home. Deks Air had repeatedly reminded us to call up the airlines a few days before our departure lest there is a change in flight schedule. It was nearly 6pm; so the lady in charge told us to return next morning at 8am as the main office was already closed.
We walked back to Anh Dao, only to realise that they shifted us to one of their sister hotel, Camellia 2. No complains! Look at the bigger room & slightly better furnishings.
To dinner now! We set out to do a series of street food tasting.
We even had the opportunity to exchange a few words in Mandarin & Vietnamese with the waitress. She's currently studying Chinese in a local university. She had even wanted to exchange contact numbers, but we thought emails could be more appropriate. I don't want to end up with high phone bills too!
Labels: hanoi, travel
Hanoi Escapade - Day 2
DAY TWO / 29 December 2006, FridayHANOI - HALONG BAY
*Yawn* The bus leaving for Halong Bay will arrive at 8am. But we had to wake up at 7am! Why? Cos Tempest was eager to dive into the breakfast buffet spread. We chose Anh Dao hotel partly due to the free breakfast with every night's stay.
However the spread was pretty disappointing. Fried vietnamese spring rolls, plain yoghurt, bread, sausages, ham, butter, jam, pork pate, fruits, hard-boiled eggs, fried eggs, coffee, tea, orange juice, full-cream milk & some other local dishes that weren't memorable. I didn't think that the fruits were fantastically sweet but it kept attracting a stream of ants.
Nonetheless, we gobbled up the food (Remember the last entry? We were hungry!).
The bus took a while before it managed to swirl through the crawling traffic to reach our hotel lobby. In the meanwhile, we enjoyed ourselves with whatever we saw.
The sights reminded me of the computer game, Caesar, where the women will carry baskets of goods and sell to the nearby dwellers. Here, they sell anything! We have seen baguettes, joss sticks & incense paper, vegetables, fruit, flowers, peanuts, beans, peeled water chestnuts and dunno what others!
An old lady also tried to sell me boiled peanuts by passing some into my hands and asking me to try. I will love to buy some if the peanuts weren't cold or if we don't have a language
problem. The locals here just do not appear to be cheerful or friendly like the Thai.
The bus came & we trotted for another 3 hours before reaching Hai Duong, where we were to board the junk to Halong Bay.
Our guide, Phuonc (pronounced 'Fong'), procedurally brought us to the crafts centre set up for the victims of
Agent Orange.
Which one is ours?
Finally! To Halong Bay!
<-- Left: Look how strong the wind is on board! We had a group of about 16. Apart from us, there were only 3 other Asians. Huy & Kim were Vietnamese who have migrated to Australia. Their neighbour, Lena, was a Singaporean who too moved to the great outback. Being the ever bubbly Lena, we quickly made friends with them. Phuonc took us around, island & cave hopping.
We learnt that Huy & group are going for the 3D2N cruise, which will include a night's stay at CatBa Island. Seeing that they are great company, and Huy's exclamation of the beauty of the island, we were tempted to extend our cruise. Unfortunately, Phuonc told us that the tour group is already packed. :-(
Dinner was a simple affair. No fanciful seafood. All I can remember is having white rice, a few prawns, and those vietnamese fried spring rolls, which I later found out to be almost present in every meal I had in Hanoi!
Our bunks were situated on the upper deck whilst the rest of the group had theirs in the lower deck. They got us quite a nice room with a double-bed and toilet facilities. It was reasonably clean but we decided against bathing since it was so cold and a bit rocky.
We got to bed pretty early, for we need to get up very early the next morning to see the sunrise!
Labels: hanoi, travel
Hanoi Escapade - Day 1
The almost-forgotten entry... ...
DAY ONE / 28 December 2006, ThursdaySIN - HO CHI MINH - HANOI
As usual, Tempest reached the airport way before me. Our flight was scheduled to be at 1430 h. But due to the many changes Vietnam Airlines made, we decided to arrive at 1pm instead (me at 1.30pm though). Who knows, the plane might decide to land early after all the numerous change of flight plans to land at a later hour.
I ended up having to finish part of my lunch on the plane, thinking that we were going to be late. Then, the plane was delayed!
There wasn't much to do on the plane. No movie player. No music player. All I remembered was flipping through Today or Newpaper. Soonafter, lunch was served.
Pretty boring 3 hour flight.
The wait at Ho Chi Minh's Airport on transit to Hanoi was none the better. Clearing the customs was not as easy as were in Malaysia but
seemingly just as bad as Bangkok. The communist-style uniform-clad officers don't smile, dilly-dally, talked amongst themselves, and looked listless. Not very friendly fellows.
It was another 3 hour flight to Hanoi. The only gain was the extra airline food we got on transit to Hanoi. So 1 food deal in exchange for a total of 2 - 3 hours of flight delay.
We reached Hanoi in the evening, at around 8plus. Our first activity was to look for a money changer.
1 SGD = ~ 10,000 dong. A more "profitable" method will be to exchange SGD for USD in Singapore, before exchanging the USD for dong in Vietnam. This is because USD is more valued in Vietnam (means you can buy more dong with the same amount of USD or SGD in equivalence), and provided that the exchange rate of SGD against USD is 'high'.
We read that the minibus travelling from the airport to Hoan Kiem Lake, where our hotel was nearby, charges only USD$2 per pax, and that the local cabbies aren't an honest lot who often collaborates with unscruplous hotel owners to trick tourists, we opted for the former. But as unlucky as we could get, the minibus was unable to go off without a significant number of passengers onboard. In fact, we were the only ones in the bus, waiting for 30minutes before we gave a sigh and went off to look for an at least decent-looking cabbie.
Two 'headmen' serving different cab companies (or maybe syndicate?) were trying to encourage us to take their cabs. "Choose one", Tempest said to me. I took the one on my right as his cabbie looks more "tood". Hehe. Indeed, he was sorry for trying to trick us and took only USD $10 from us. Read Tempest's entry
here for the full story.
We stayed in Anh Dao Hotel which cost us USD $15 per night and came with free breakfast buffet. The hotel was small but decent. As per our Bangkok trip, we only paid for the first night; we thought that we could try to find other accomodation which might be cheaper and better! After settling down, we went out for a walk around the famous Hoan Kiem Lake. AND to get some food! Oh yes, and our search for hotels!
There were numerous little hotels around Hoan Kiem Lake, just like Bangkok's Khao San area. We made a few enquiries, and decided that we got a reasonably good deal in Anh Dao after all. We even chanced upon the Bamboo Hotel which Tempest's cousin recommended! It was a cosy & well-organized hotel; everything was in bamboo, even the bed frame! I quite like it, but Tempest felt that the woody smell was a tad too strong. So we moved on.... to the lake.
I was rather disappointed. The lake was neither clean nor stunningly big! It was just about the size of Bedok Reservoir, or so it impressed upon me. At a very leisurely pace, we easily covered the circumference of the lake in less than an hour.
Although New Year was approaching in a few days, there was no sign of celebration except some banners & red-colored material which wrote some "Happy New Year" lines or the like. Not exactly a spectacular sight.
Sigh... we found nothing to eat. There was no Mac or 7-11 like Bangkok. Upon returning to our rooms at 11plus, we munched on the little bun & butter which we saved from Tempest's pack of airline food. Heavenly!
Labels: hanoi, travel
Look at that big durian! I found it rather amusing to find the stall only having one durian and it was put in a basket like any other small little fruit! We didn't get the chance to try the King of fruits but Tempest's dad who went to Ho Chi Minh said the durian tasted horrible! "You give it to me free I also don't want!" He said.
We had originally wanted to watch the water puppet show yesterday evening, but the seats were all booked for the night. That showed how popular this traditional act was with tourists! This was also the one & only water puppet theatre around the Hoan Kiem area.
We were one of the latter; we found our way to the entrance of some temple on the lake, which by the way, charges a token sum for entrance fees.
We chanced upon the statue of Emperor Ly Thai To on our way to the Post Office. Check out the link to find Vietnam's history - seems to be plagued by wars, one after the other.
Quan An Ngon - many locals love to dine here too.
We tired ourselves by walking back to Hoan Kiem Lake for dinner. Throughout the Hanoi trip, we relied a lot on our two feet. Most of the tourist sites and foodie places are within walking distance. The cooling weather made walking a breeze (unlike the sweltering one in Bangkok!) but the smoke & all the polluted gases stuffed your nose and throat all the time; very irritating!
It was difficult to buy souvenirs. We wanted something that is unique to Vietnam. Tempest and I weren't shoppaholics. It didn't help that Hanoi has few malls. We turned to their chain of stores - Hapro Mart - to purchase our 'souvenirs'. Vietnamese coffee & coffee filters! No haggling. No unreasonable mark-up. Satisfied! I also bought some chips which I thought was local and not found elsewhere, but they were actually being exported & sold in all NTUCs in Singapore. Felt so cheated.
hotels that lined the streets. Bellboys at the door, big reception, nice sofas in the lobby. Well, for USD $50 a night, I guess the service and furnishings were justified. We left a note for Huy after waiting 10mins in vain for them.
Tempest finally found what he had been searching for: Weasel Coffee! As its name suggests, weasel coffee has been eaten and regurgitated by rare Vietnamese weasels! We bought 500 grams for SGD $3.00. Thus we supposed that it wasn't the real weasel coffee when internet sites showed the price of a small pack of coffee to be 15.95 POUNDS!) Nonetheless, no harm trying!
Packed with an oily dinner and refreshing supper, we walked down to Hoan Kiem Lake again! It was new year's eve; we could join in some of the celebrations! Besides, we had wanted to try out the Highlands Coffee, a popular cafe in Hanoi.
Highlands Coffee is on level 4.
Strangely, there was no countdown at all! We returned to the hotel, switched on the TV. There was a broadcast of some new year celebrations programme; likewise, there was no countdown party. Hmm.. suburban.
