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