Hanoi in 1 day
Trip Start
Jul 29, 2003
1
24
31
Trip End
Dec 01, 2003
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Arrived in Hanoi about 8:30am this morning - a little later than expected as I think something happened to the bus. Naturally they didn't tell us but just stopped suddenly and seemed to be banging something around in the engine. Made us all feel really safe.
Thankfully managed to get a little sleep on the bus last night as this time it had reclining seats although it didn't help an awful lot that the Vietnamese guy behind me was hacking up phlem every 5 minutes.
Had a lovely introduction to Hanoi when we passed the dog meat restaurants. I've always wanted to see whole roasted dogs strung up and being gutted at 7 in the morning.
Got dragged along to this guy's hotel which wasn't a palace like we're used to but seemed clean enough and is in the centre of the Old Quarter of Hanoi and we were too tired to bother to go anywhere else so said we'd stay there at which he got very excited and kissed us both! As if that wasn't worrying enough when I later got my passport back off him he looked at my photo and kissed that too. I made a quick exit.
We slept for a couple of hours then walked around the Old Quarter of Hanoi, which I think is much nicer than Saigon even though we'd been told Hanoi was a dump. There seems to be a lot more interesting shops and so far and (although I'm probably speaking too soon) we haven't been hassled much at all here, compared to other towns/cities in Vietnam.
It's much prettier here than Saigon and really peaceful round by the lake in the centre of the Old Quarter, plus it also helps that the weather here is good at the moment!
We really wanted to go to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum today where his body is kept in a glass sarcophagus (even though his will requested cremation!) but sadly its only open from December to September as his embalmed corpse has to go to Russia for maintance for a couple of months.
We're hoping to go off on a 2 day trip around Halong Bay tomorrow since the weather is good, although then we have to go straight on our 22 hour journey to Laos so we'll be knackered by the time we get there! Have been looking at the tours to Sapa, in NW Vietnam which looks amazing but sadly don't have the time (or money) to go there so I suppose it'll have to wait till another time...
xxx
