Sunny Hotel Hanoi

... laquelle apparemment le coq vietnamien a fini de dormir...

Je suis ensuite parti vers l'est pour la baie d'Halong. Géologiquement cela ressemble beaucoup aux paysages que j'ai rencontrés en Thaïlande, près de Phuket, mais en plus grandiose. Des milliers d'îlots karstiques au milieu d'eaux turquoises, des dizaines de grottes et de villages flottant de pêcheurs...et des centaines de bateaux chargés de milliers de touristes qui passent plusieurs jours ...

... the following morning and checked into Hue Backpacker's. I met some people on the bus ride down and we all decided to rent some bicycles to check out the city. Some of us in the group thought it was going to be a nice little bike around the hostel, maybe see an attraction called the citadel. But the leader of our bike gang had other plans. We ended up biking outside of the city maps, to tombs set along the countryside. Although most of us ...

... tofu
during this trip, so Asia and I were able to share a few dishes. We had
vegetarian spring rolls (Vietnam has the best we've had so far), Tofu
in a black pepper sauce (so delicious) and fried noodles with
vegetables. The entire meal cost us only $3 each!

Tomorrow we plan to check out the Ho Chi Minh museum. At 8 p.m. we
are beginning our 4 night, 3 day tour to Sapa, a small town that
straddles a valley and is the starting point for guided hiking treks ...

... amongst many, that was going to take us up the mountain to Sapa. This was, maybe surprisingly, all very easy. We were met by a hotel rep who gave us chance to use the toilets in the station, although it might have been better to hold on, as they were gross and we even had to pay for the privilege! Speaking of toilets, Suzanna would like you to share her pain of having to use squat toilets, found throughout Asia, but in Vietnam it was taken to a whole new level with communal squat toilets ...

... the cab, slamming the door. He had to go get change from another cab driver because he couldn't make the change. THAT was the reason for the hissy fit -- all because he was too lazy to make correct change and would rather cheat us than hold to his word. So of course upon receiving our change we threw a few obscure-sounding American cuss words his way and slammed our doors as well. And that was our run-in with the cheating cab driver of Hanoi. Good riddance!

... or take a boat ride steered by a young girl wearing a loose-fitting blouse and a conical hat, through canals shaded by water coconut trees. They will have a chance to visit fruit gardens and enjoy the tastes of ripened fruit right off the tree. In Thoi Son Island, they will visit villages with orchards where they can taste the local traditional food prepared by villagers and enjoy a traditional opera performance, lovely songs and ditties of ...

... walked down past the botanical gardens to the one pillar pagoda and the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Being Friday (and the afternoon) it meant that Ho Chi Minh's mauseleum wasnt open but I wasnt too fussed about seeing a dead bloke in a box so I continued my walk down to the Temple of literature.  Hanoi is a nice city, not as many bikes as HCMC so it is a bit easier to walk across roads and the people I have met seem very friendly. I managed to find my way back to the hostel and check in ...

... enjoying it too. I was most impressed by a young female acrobat doing flips above the high wire without a net.

Lastly, I was walking down one of the major streets in Hanoi. A crowd had gathered around a stage with exciting music. It was the grand opening of a large electronics store. Vietnamese are very superstitious. So they hired a dragon to dance around for good luck. And many models paraded along the catwalk displaying the latest ...

... br>

We got served a jam roll, some random nut medley and a tub of water, which was odd but ok and inside an hour we were descending into Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, amid some very foggy conditions.

Before I forget, the Vietnamese apparently tend to separate most words by syllable, so they call Vietnam "Viet Nam" and Hanoi "Ha Noi". No doubt I will forget all about this when I'm typing updates, so bear with me!
Hanoi, Vietnam al_fey

... taking snapshots. That’s 101. More advanced phases involve the local cultural life, to whatever extent it exists, and, hardest of all, making local friends, not just hangers-on to the hand out, but real friends, people you’d trust your life with. Despite its generally benign and even welcoming attitude toward foreigners, Asia is the most racist of all places, and that says a lot. Fortunately it also says that racism isn’t about hate ...