Sohs I'm back.We stayed in the old quarters part of Hanoi, a very tourist saturated part.And very overpopulated also.More motorbikes than cars.Walking on the 5 foot ways is a bit of an adventure. They park their motorbikes there, then there are the people selling food in all available spaces, and when we were there there was a lot of road works going on. On top of that there's all the pedestrians, trishaws, women selling things from bamboo baskets and handbag dogs belonging to shop owners running around on the pavement.crossing the road, you have to just walk out in front of motorbikes and let them dodge you, if not you'll never cross.The driving style in hanoi is the dodging technique, they don't follow road rules. Luckily they drive slowly and honk a lot so i didn't see any accidents while I was there(although i always expected someone to die sooner or later)
Btw my camera was a bit spoiled so I don't have many good pictures. Most of the good ones are taken indoors or at night. For some strange reason my camera makes white lines on the pictures if there's too much light.To try to take as many good pictures as possible i used the lowest ISO setting, and that made my pictures blur instead.
OKehs...
Day1: Flight to Vietnam.Arrived very late, so not much to tell.I was pretty freaked out with my first encounter with Vietnam style driving though.( the taxi driver kept dodging into different lanes and driving bumper to bumper with motorcyclists and honking too much)
Day 2: Travelling around the old quarters. There's where we stayed. The old quarters is full of family run businesses, street vendors and low cost hotels. So that's where all the tourists are saturated.At the edge of the old quarters are the government buildings.Vietnam was under communist influence and now they call it a socialist republic. So it was interesting to see guards in the communist uniforms and propaganda posters near the government buildings.
One of those patriotic statues. FYI it's so deserted because the whole street was closed to traffic to make way for a night market.At the time i was there the stalls were only just opening.
Dinner old quarters style. Vendors cook on the 5 foot way and have tiny stools for you to sit on and eat.
Day3: Halong Bay
We took a tour to Halong bay, 3 1/2 hours drive away from the city. It's well known for it's rock formation and caves.Unfortunately the air pollution was bad even in such a rural place, so the view wasn't as clear as i hoped.But the fisheries nestled between steep mountains were interesting, it would be nice to swim there in the summer.
The roof of one of the caves
The hole through which the guy who found the cave fell through. If it were me i'd run away and never mention the cave to anyone, but this guy was convinced he'd found the Palace of Heaven in the cave.
Rock formations.Sorry a bit blur.
Day 4:Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and 1 pillar pagoda.
No pictures for the 3rd day, cos it was all outdoors=white lines amok=practically cannot see anything.And indoors we're not allowed to take pictures.But anyways we saw Uncle Ho's preserved body. The security there is very high, cannot take in cameras and any liquid in case you bomb up the mausoleum. And there's only one entry point eventhough the mausoleum is surrounded by a huge field, so we spent a lot of time just looking for the entry.Strict looking guards who don't understand English doesn't help much, but they pointed out the direction anyways.The 1 pillar pagoda is actually a small shrine in the mausoleum compounds, we spent so much time walking all around looking for it.
Day 5:Temple of literature, Water puppets theatre.
This is another temple we visited in the morning , but i like how the altar turned out.Vietnam is mainly Buddhist.
The Temple of literature is an ancient university that trained men like how they did in ancient China, learning religious scripts, Chinese writing and memorising literature.But it was very interesting, the architecture is not really the same as other Chinese temples, it looks more like Korean architecture.
The giant turtle statues on which they engraved the names, place of birth and award of the graduates.
The stork standing on turtle statues.Supposed to symbolise something but I didn't eavesdrop on the other tourists' tour guide clearly enough to know what it symbolises.But i see it often in their temples.
Lol...those red cylinders are the paper containers used by the scholars. I guess it's something like our portfolios or better known as 'bazooka' containers.
Water puppet theatre is unique to Vietnam culture. People stand in a pool of water and hide behind bamboo blinds while controlling puppets in front of the screen. The performance is a series of stories about Vietnamese folklore and daily life. I think the stories might be standard because there's a specific set of characters used , like the boy riding a buffalo, the dragon, phoenixes and asian fairies.
The singers
The musicians. The musical instruments are quite similar to chinese instruments.
The stage in a pool of water.I only have videos of the puppet performances though(taken illegally ahahahahaa.....)
Day6 :Museum of ethnology
In the morning we went hunting for Vietnamese green tea and found this stall in the market near our hotel.It seems to cater for tourists because everything's labelled in English. Other than that, it's rare to find any English signs or labels anywhere.Apparently they are well known for their coffee as well, but I don't drink coffee, so I don't know.
One of the traditional clothes of one of the Vietnamese races
One of the traditional long houses. Looks like something found in Sabah right?
Day 7: Museum of art
Err...no pictures to show. Photography is not allowed inside the museum and outside, the sun is too bright for me to take clear pictures.Vietnamese art in recent decades basically has a lot to do with the Vietnamese war. Other than that, they also do a lot of painting on silk , laquer painting and clay modelling( I like the clay modelling, they're very creative with it and can make a lot of cute pottery).Earlier art has more to do with culture and religion, especially Buddhism and somehow, Hinduism.
Random shop in the old quarters. They sell only bamboo products. Looks nice.
Vietnam popiah. This version that I tried has some crunchy thing deep fried with prawns and meat. Then you wrap it with salad in a piece of rice paper and dip it in sauce.Very oily but it tastes damn good.
The last two days we were more adventurous with the food and tried pau, all kinds of mixed rice, something that looks like chee cheong fun(sorry, dunno what it's called) and some local kuih muih. And then I got food poisoning.I think it was the pau.Most of the food looks quite familiarly Chinese.
But whatever you do, if you are in Vietnam, you have to eat their beef noodles. Yes, ask for the beef with the flat noodles(I didn't really like the one that looks like a fatter version of mee hoon)They call it pho bo. Don't ask me how to pronounce.But it's very easy to find, just don't mind that it's mostly sold on the 5 foot ways without proper seating and with motorbikes inches away from you.
Day 8:
food poisoning and I stayed in the hotel room =_=. But it's the day to fly back to Malaysia, so it's the best time to be sick if at all.On a side note, mineral water costs rm4 on air asia flights, and it's not even the standard sized bottle.Such an evil thing to do to me just when I had a sore throat...
