Bao Long Hotel Hanoi

... gekostet:eine Leibspeise, auch wenn die Knochen etwas klein und spitz sind.

Häus**fronten sind in Vietnam übrigens sehr schmal. Wie üb**all auf d** Welt hat dies steu**liche Gründe. Dah** wachsen die Häus** in die Höhe und haben eine Gesamtwohnfläche bei 3 Stockw**ken von 100 Quadratmet**n. In d** Innenstadt ist im Erdgeschoß natürlich ein Shop für Irgendetwas. Die Altstadt von Hanoi ist dann auch genauso: üb**all Shop im ...

... wait for our shuttle bus. This time, the bus was quite crowded and we felt like caged chickens sitting inside the bus. Luckily Adrian and I had a seat on the side which was much more convenient. But before leaving Halong City, we received a mysterious white box which we had to take along back to Hanoi. Once we made a stop in the middle of our route the driver managed to leave the white box behind so we had to drive back for around 20 minutes to pick-up the box. Some of the ...

... about 20-40 minutes later than the said time. So me and my xeom driver Giung (pronounced Zung) sit across the street having coffee, tea and a cigarette. No I haven’t taken up smoking, he had the tea and cigarette. We wait for Mrs Thuy (pronounced Twee) to arrive 40 minutes late of our proposed 9am meeting time. Upon arrival I walk/limp across the street to meet her and we are directed by 3 people as to which room we are to go to.

The room is kinda small with two ...

... fuller. But a great vibe in this city. Very lively and they use every piece of pavement to sell anything!! Even their mothers if they can. But also very smart...they use a block of streets for certain things they sell. So a Toy-street for...toys. Hardware-street for hardware, and a " buy-my-mother street for that??!! But a all very friendly and less pushier than the other cities we have been so far. But we neede a coffee first.

So as we strolled ...

... et pourtant vrai! La multitude de 2 roues motorises jouant aux spaghettis sur les voies de Hanoi nous plonge dans la perplexite...Ou se cachent-ils s'ils ne sont pas en train de zigzaguer en un ballet 'nouillisant' sur la voie?

Pour certains, ils sont sont sur les trottoirs, gares les uns a cote des autres en des parkings de motos et scooters gigantesques et superbement ordonnes. Mais ils sont aussi et le plus souvent pele-mele sur le trottoir. Pourquoi les pietons ...

... I went out to a different place for lunch instead of the cafeteria across the street. I wasn’t hungry enough for there and I ran into Alex a teacher from Singapore and an excellent cook who by the way says he’ll teach me to cook Singapore and VN dishes. Anyway he said he wasn’t very hungry either and was going to have Bánh cuon. I was game so we walked a few blocks away and went into a little place – he looked at the menu and ordered for us both. It was ...

... hotel just round the corner. Turned out it was brand new and quite plush for our $20 a night. We felt as though we’d had an upgrade, which was nice. Hotel rooms aside, we had a few days left in the city before my parents headed home and we headed south. We kept ourselves pretty busy though visiting some more sights etc. We visited a couple more museums. One was Hao Lo Prison, notorious from the Vietnam war for keeping famous POW’s, such as John McCain, not that you’d ...

... However, it wasn't really that bad. We each had a draught Carlsberg (why Danish beer is so popular around the world, I do not know) which cost 35,000 VND. Granted, this was WAY more than our 3,000 VND Bia Hoi from the night before.

I ended up having two beers, Cory only one, and we ended up paying in American dollars since we were pretty low on VND. We all enjoyed talking to each other, and we had a pretty good conversation with the owner (who was from ...

... history of...). The prison was where the French kept the Vietnamese who didn't like being under French rule, and there were various exhibits of horrific torture equipment, including a grim-looking guillotine. Dozens of political prisoners escaped the prison through the sewers and parts of the sewers' foundations were kept to show the reality of this. They crawled for hundreds of metres through holes barely wide enough for a human, covered in faeces. Pretty hardcore; Shawshank stylie ...

... huge headlamps on, blinding me in the process, and chatting to us in the local dialect. The older guys stayed about 5 minutes, happy to know that we were responsible, older, foreigners. The younger ones decided our fire was pathetic, so, in one fail swoop gathered up a whole load of bamboo and wood (they weren't quite as sensitive about ownership as we were), and whoooosh, we had a bonfire. Thanks guys. We think they just came to check us out, they had ...