Hanoi Wanderings

My favourite part of being a tourist in the city is having the chance to explore it at random, with no clear destination in mind. I mean to the point of wandering down side streets, getting lost on public transit and then lounging around at a cafe  for hours ordering nothing but iced coffee, when we were actually headed in the direction of a highly praised museum.  

This post is all about meanderings and random photos that otherwise wouldn't have been interesting enough to phone home about.  The 'My Life Is Average' Hanoi photo collection, if you will...

On the day we went out to Hoan Kiem lake, we stumbled upon a small park with a few statuesque thingies and some notable shrubs arranged as figures.  At first glance (from the rear) this looks like a wonderful monument to world peace...

So the Vietnamese are patriotic then.

Oh...well from what I understand (just by looking at it and assuming) it's meant to symbolize the union of North and South Vietnam after the war with the US, but let me just say that if Australia was really that close, the plane journey would have been a hell of a lot faster than 10 hours.  With no lay over in the budget terminal at Singapore.

Rwoaarrr

This guy was in the same park.  Awesome.

A little while later - well a lot later, it took ages for us to cross this busy street - we saw this happen:

Oops, dropped the cooler off the back of my moped.  again.

 On this street. Eventually we got the hang of crossing at the crosswalks.

The following will just be a montage of some streets and alleys in the Old Town,

Another day we ventured out to French Quarter and the Hanoi Opera House.  According to Lonely Planet (I think...) building materials for the opera house were all brought over from France for that authentic feel during the French occupation of Indochina.  Some of the apartments around there are quite stunning in my opinion, and even in the rain the opera house is a stand out building.

We thought this was the opera house at first...it's not.

This one is though...that square was like walking into Little France.

Due to severe sleepiness, I'm going to leave the rest of the photos off until tomorrow.  This is what happens when I stay up late to watch Australian Open Tennis.  To be continued with scenes of West Lake, Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and me in monsoon gear.

- milly

Ha Long Bay: UNESCO World Tourist Site

Oh naive Milly and Mihai from the past, what I could preach to you about Ha Long Bay...

A little background on the Bay (taken respectively from my memory and Wikipedia).  It is a world heritage site recognized both for it's natural beauty and its geologically important limestone islands and ecosystems.  The name Ha Long comes from an old Vietnamese legend about a dragon that ended up living in the bay after it had saved the country from invaders.  Ha Long means 'descending dragon'.  The biggest island of them all is Cat Ba which contains a national park.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to experience it as independently as we thought, but nevertheless it was a beautiful side trip that I would go back to see more of.  To be honest though, most places on this trip I would venture back to.

After a delightful and somewhat long stay in Hanoi, we departed for a Ha Long Bay tour arranged via the hotel.  It was our first experience riding on a bus in Vietnam.  Although I didn't bear particularly high expectations for road conditions, this 4 hour journey set the tone for every subsequent bus journey we took in the area.  Plenty of crater-sized potholes, random and frequent bus-driver beeping, getting cut off by cyclists, overtaking slow motorbikes at the same time as a militaryish truck while swerving to miss the tourist bus about to head on collide with us...yeah...road safety in Vietnam (and pretty much everywhere else), I can haz?  I love it.

Anyway, we knew it was a tourist squeeze 2 hours into the ride when we pulled up at an indoor mini-mall crammed with souvenir stalls and several busloads of other tour-goers milling about outside.  The only memorable part of this stop (both there and back) was that it was the first time I'd seen Oreos in a couple weeks.  Later I found out that they were readily available everywhere, so that actually didn't turn out to be very memorable.  Except that I've just remembered it.

Looking out at the tour boat we spent the night on.

Although I wouldn't choose to do this tour again, I have to admit we saw some cool bits of Ha Long bay.  Vietnam was just kind of like that - organized tours and buses and such.  I'm not against that at all, but Mihai and I are really not go-go kind of travelers.  We fear tight itineraries.  We like to be lazy and do things at our own drawn out pace.  Anyway, here are some cool pics!

Rock that looks like a teapot.  Can you see it?  

Floating village viewed from Thien Cung grotto

Floating village viewed from kayaks.

Another shot of the little teapot rock cove from the cave entrance.

 In the evening after kayaking we actually swam in this water, if you can believe it.  There was so much dissolved salt in there I could float normally with my head dry.

Coastin'

In the end, the best part of this experience for me was cruising around the bay on the top deck in the sun :)


- milly

Excuses

Hi Everyone,

First I would like to exclaim WOW how time does fly.  It is 2012, and I have been plucked from my balmy travels and plunged into the icy depths of West Coast Winter.  I'd say it's good to be home, but just look outside for a minute!

Secondly, you have our apologies for posting heaps of nothing as soon as we left Hanoi.  I've been meaning to put up some photos, really!!  My only excuse (aside from laziness) is that internet access and quality in SE Asia is truly poor.  In Vietnam, when we could get online (most of the guesthouses had only 1 or 2 dodgy old computers for all of the guests to use), half of the important sites had trouble loading.  This means that every second guesthouse computer or so wouldn't connect to Google.  And then Facebook.  Twitter?  Out of the question.  There was even a device that was so dated I couldn't figure out where to insert an SD card to upload photos anyway.

For some reason, the other countries we visited had better quality net surfing (save Singapore - very space age place), but guesthouses and hostels only provided WiFi access.  (unless you wanted to pay for use at an internet cafe).  On my teensy, browsing-capable phone it was about as ridiculous to reply to a Facebook message using the touch pad keyboard, as trying to write calligraphy with one of those giant pencils.  Let be writing a coherent blog post.  And then deny you all photographic evidence!

What I'm getting at is that since we've neglected sharing our experiences on the road, and now that there is a reliable/fibre-optic/4G/"real" internet connection and we've got heaps of time on our hands (Yay Unemployment!), we/I can begin filling you in on what happened from Hanoi to Sydney, Australia.

Thanks for your patience, and I hope you are still interested in what we have to share!

- milly

So the problem with going to Vietnam towards the end of the rainy season is its the rainy season. One might think this is a truth that is self evident; towards the end, but not there yet. Sadly for the eternal optimists out there such as myself, when it comes to weather we see the term 'towards the end of' to mean 'clearing up'. Hanoi proved me very wrong today... so so very wrong.

When we headed down for brekkie we could see that it was lightly raining outside, we spent a few hours planning our next few days and could see it was still lightly raining. Not to be one's to let things rain on our parade we decided to head out in the light rain and check out some of Hanoi's sights. Fair to say I should have listened to Emily when we found ourselves at a 6 way intersection with what I think was supposed to be a round-a-bout in the middle, but it just could have easily been a chuck of concrete that fell off a truck and nobody wanted to move it so the just painted arrows around it. Anyway, Emily pointed out which road we needed to be on, which was all the way over the side of the intersection... this meant crossing the road. I strongly believe that there 80 year old Vietnamese people that have never left the block the grew up on because they simply cannot cross the road... Crossing the road here is taking your life into your own hands... its stupidity...

So because it was to scared to cross at the crazy intersection I told Emily we'd be fine if we followed the road we were on, it would bring us to the main road and we could navigate from there... rookie mistake number 1. we got hopelessly lost, but through the fine navigation skills Milly and Mihai, we managed to stumble upon the Hanoi Hilton (an old prison built by the French and used by both French and Vietnamese governments), our intended destination.

After about a hour in the Hanoi Hilton we decided we'd like to see the Opera house which, apparently all the materials had been shipped directly from France to build. As we wandered towards the Opera house through the French quarter of Hanoi, admiring the French style architecture, we saw a building that took our fancy and deviated from our set path... Rookie mistake number 2

The building was pretty cool, however somehow we ended up being turned on the map... and when I say we... I mean Me, I was navigating. It was still raining, had been all day... it was very humid... and we were lost in Hanoi... Again...

Once again Emily came to the rescue, finding a street sign that matched a street name on our map. From here we were able to make our way to the opera house... which is a pretty cool building, however once we found it I think we were well past building appreciation time, and more focused on food time.

We rounded out our day with some well deserved beers and Pho at our local Pho place... 

The one thing that I did learn today is that my Thongs (or flip flops for those of you who like to name shoes for the sounds they make... cause that's not weird or anything) are truly Aussie thongs... made for a drought... they did not like the wet pavement one tiny little bit... I nearly went ass-up at least 15 times, and every time I did I would elbow Emily. I think it may be time to give these bad boys the flick... I know I said that I am an eternal optimist, and as such I should keep them for drier times... however in the here and now, these puppies are dangerous, so they have to go. There is no room for optimism in my slippery thong...    

Arrival Notes

I'm going to gloss over the details of how I got here, but I am in Hanoi and it is raining.  It's still humid, but now everyone is wearing ponchos.  I've just seen a woman drive by with 1700 water bottles strapped to the back of her motorbike.  


My first impressions of the city were overshadowed by the fact I almost died several times travelling from the airport to my hotel in a taxi.  The only rule of the road seems to be that there are no rules when it comes to driving...this has taken some getting used to.  But thanks to my Grandma Anderson, I have accepted the norm of walking straight into oncoming traffic with the hope that the never-ending stream of vespas and motorbikes will swerve out of my way.  Very tempted to rent a bike and try out the roads for myself, though I have a feeling that it would be a terrible idea.   Especially because I have no idea how to drive one.

Yikes. So many bikes.

Yesterday we had a proper walk through the old quarter and it was quite lovely.  The buildings are thin and tall with little balconies jutting out everywhere.  In some places the sidewalks are totally covered with rental bikes, etc.  By etc I mean everything.  Streets feel really cluttered but cosy, complete with massive old growth trees with roots grown into the pavement.

  

Tortoise Tower

Hoan Kiem Lake, a small lake south of the city centre, was an oasis of calm (despite the constant traffic noise in the background).  I liked it because there was a cool breeze.

Bridge to Ngoc Son Temple  

So far we've only managed to spend 26.83 AUD - but $8.30 was scammed from us.  Firstly, a crazy man who tried to tell us he was a Red Cross ESL teacher that sold toothpicks to benefit needy country children.  We should have been tipped off by his piss poor English.  He wanted 20.00 USD from each of us, but in the end we gave him 50, 000 VND to leave us be.  Second came later in the form of a youngish woman who put 2 sacks of chopped pineapple in my lap and said "Baby" whilst gesturing to her belly.  Against Phil's better judgement, I gave her 50, 000 for 1 bag (AHHHH OVERPRICED) and got an upset stomach for my charity.  Dammit!  Probably the best pineapple either of us had ever tasted, though.  


We were thinking of busing to Halong Bay tomorrow, but the forecast literally says 'torrential rain', so maybe on Thursday.


- milly

Heroes

This is one of many songs that are keeping me creeping on towards September.  Also, I just watched The Life Aquatic so maybe I'm feeling sentimental.




- milly

stagnancy

Even though I finalized my remaining SE Asia/Australia flights this week,  it seems like my self-contentedness at this heroic milestone is being smothered by a massive, memory foam pillow.  Of which the sham covering is a literal symbol for the sham that is my Nanaimo Life Of Waiting.  An interminable sea is stretched between me and salvation. A stagnant sea involving the months of May, June, July and August.  And I guess, also, what's to be "salvaged" of this April term.  


It's hard to wait any longer.    Another solo summer stands in front of me, no job security or ready fulfillment on the table, so fuck you, VIUFA.  I am really trying to save myself, but it's hard being the heroine with no sidekick.  I wish I could wear the club colours without feeling like shit.  


There is an imprint of both sides of my face in the real memory foam pillow on my bed from the hours I've spent waiting for sleep.  Waiting for the dream about the Vietnamese beach, the cool breeze, dorky sunglasses and the hand I get to hold for the first time in 12 months.


- milly