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Hanoi - Halong Bay - Hue (27.11 - 3.12)
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| Hanoi - Halong Bay - Hue (27.11 - 3.12) |
| 12.02.04 (11:30 pm) [edit] |
Hanoi is just a crazy city! Everybody beeps the horn for absolutely no reason most of the time (perhaps the Greek taxi drivers are Vietnamese :)), they drive like mad and everything they've ever told you about how difficult is to cross the streets is true! In the end I think we found the way, just keep a steady pace and they drive around you. It's absolute madness but also extremely interesting to see how the traffic just flows and no accidents happen. We spent 3 days here just wandering around, eating and drinking coffee in pure Vietnamese coffee shops in true Greek fashion :). Coffee here is the same as Laos and it is excellent, one of our favorites in SE Asia so far. I also visited the Hoa Lo prison, where Vietnamese kept American pilots as prisoners of war, some stayed there for 10years. They have 2 rooms with pictures and articles and other artifacts trying to convince how well they treated the Americans while imprisoned.
In most parts of Hanoi people practically live on the sidewalks, they eat there, have their businesses there, everything. Those with a proper "shop" also sleep in it at night. It was a truly amazing situation, like nothing we've seen before. People in Cuba are equally poor if not more but do not live like this. We were really amazed. The weather has been a bit bad as well, it has been raining all this time (apparently it is the raining season now in North Vietnam, they even had a major flood a few days before we arrived), which makes the whole sight even worse.
After Hanoi we went to Halong Bay for 2 days. This was truly an amazing place. Thousands of small rock-like islands spread accross a bay, it is really magnificent. We took loads of pictures there.
After coming back to Hanoi from Halong Bay we took an overnight train to Hue, the "ancient" capital of Vietnam. It is so funny that everything that's 200 years old here is "ancient". In Hue we're staying at the same place that our Czech friends did (guys it's great, the old couple that own the place are sooo funny!) for 5 dollars a night!! Today we did a tour to some major attractions around Hue with motorbike which was very nice. We visited some "ancient" emperor tombs and a Buddhist monks university, we saw them praying there as well, very interesting!
Tomorrow we'll take a bus to Hoi An, a small town in central west Vietnam, where we will stay for 3-4 days. Next update from there!
And to satisfy my crazy brother in law's curiosity, yes we do eat a lot of rice and noodleshere. I have to say that sometimes I do get fed up with the Asian food, but you can always find a place with western-like food, so you can take a break. We have not eaten dog yet and we do not intend to :). We have our clothes washed more or less once a week so far, and we try to bathe once a day :). This does not always work however especially when we are travelling, you do not want to be near is those days :). Vassilis has taken some pictures of my filthy feet after our bus trip from Laos to Vietnam, they will be published once we manage to find a place with USB. It seems that USB has not reached Laos or Vietnam yet. Vassilis's backpack is a big mystery. He is supposed to have less stuff than I do and yet it is extremely heavy. I have to have a look one day and see what on earth he has in there!! Also, it is a total mess and I can't understand how he finds his things in it! :D
In general, everything we've seen so far is truly amazing, beyond description. There is so much poverty, you cannot imagine. And I am sure Vietnam or Laos are not the poorest countries on earth. People live in unimaginable conditions and I keep wondering if they realize this fact. As a tourist you do have to be careful of the few nast people that try to rip you off in any way they can, give you fake money (thankfully we have not been victims of that yet :)) etc. Which is bad as it creates a bad image for the country. In general however I think that normal, non-tourist-related people here are nice and generous. The whole experience so far has been great and definetely a major culture shock! :)
Thank you for all the comments so far it is great fun reading them!
Pinelopi
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posted by: Micha (reply)
post date: 12.03.04 (6:31 am)
Hello travellers!
Once again I'm printing your story and will read it with Martin on the way to town. We are going to see some weird Danish movie with A+L in IFI. Very very weird... You know those Danish p......:-)But we love weird stuff so probably OK for us. Talk to you more on Monday when I read your story... We are having a charity week and it starts with a cake sale on Monday - yummy&yummy:-)
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