Chewing gum's the new currency!
Trip Start
Dec 28, 2005
1
46
55
Trip End
Sep 01, 2006
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Found Hanoi brilliant and crazy! Thought the roads were hectic in other places, but they were nothing compared to this! Every single piece of the road is used by bicycles, motorbikes, cyclos, cars, vans, buses and pedestrians. And the paths are designated parking spots or for stalls - so basically people are forced to risk their lives by sharing the road with an immense amount of speeding vehicles - scary stuff. Nearly got run over a few times, but generally figured out that once again crossing blind was the only way to do it.
01Made it to Vietnam without looking like tourists
To make it even harder, it's rare if you can walk more than a couple of metres without someone trying to sell you something - a lift, fruit, books, frogs... On our first day we were cornered by a woman who literally wouldn't let us past - she proceeded to adorn us with her conical hat and those balancing basket things. We gave in and posed for a picture, which of course we had to pay her for - suckers...Spent a lot of time getting lost in the Old Quarter, which is really bustling and colourful with shops and stalls selling all sorts of bits and bobs and certain roads specialising in chosen items - a shoe street, a clothes street, a fruit street, an art street - you get the picture. Took way too many pictures of the lake and the primary red bridge before realising we were getting a bit over snap happy about a lake. Bought a couple of toiletries in a store and when the cashier opened the till I saw there was a wad of chewing gums, one of which she handed to me as my change. When Caz and I begun to giggle she looked at us as though we were really bizarre because apparently in her world it was perfectly normal to use gum as currency? Needless to say, I left happy with my gum, feeling it was more satisfying than the 5p she owed me! Found a budhist-shrine-house-thing - which we were enticed into by a very sweet little man. We then found ourselves roped into a lengthy photo shoot with a tall wise old man - he whipped my camera off me and put us in various positions of worship around the place leaving us in fits of giggles. On our departure from his clutches we gave a small donation which he was thrilled with and he returned the gesture to us with bags of wafers and fruit! Also went to see a traditional water puppetry show - very impressive.
Felt like royal idiots when we got a lift in a cyclo (the chairs are at the front)to see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Unfortunately when we got there it was shut so we never got to see Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body or his wispy white beard. We did however, have a mosey around the One Pillar Pagoda and the Temple of Literature - both of which were lovely. Got a motorbike (the first of many now!) back to the Old Quarter and enjoyed the buzz of weaving dangerously inbetween the traffic - Caz and I have now mastered the art of mounting and riding a motorbike without flashing Vietnam!
Not much news on our evenings out as they were pretty tame (good food and fruit shakes) - our excuse being we were still quite ill. Did sit on the Bia Hoa Junction which was pretty cool - good spot to watch the world go by and for the cheapest beer ever, which I didn't get to take advantage of, being sick - poor me! As we were quite ropey we stayed longer than planned so that we could basically get lots of sleep and recover. And then onto Halong Bay we went...
