Noerken in der Koerken
Trip Start
Feb 06, 2005
1
7
42
Trip End
Jul 2005
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Wednesday, March 2, 2005
Our compartment companions, a Vietnamese woman and a Japanese guy were nice but somewhat dull, and so we ventured through the train and met two dutch girls, Linda and Renska, who taught us card games. Good thing too, cause i brought two packs and had no idea how to play anything but poker and solitaire. They also taught us some Dutch: 'Noerken in der Koerken'. I have no idea how to spell it. If you ever meet any Dutch people, ask them what it means. Then ask them what it really means. Then tease them using lines from Austen Powers: Goldmember
Appetiser!
. It's the only way you can have fun at their expense without refering to little boys with their fingers in dykes. hee hee!It turned out that we were all headed to Halong bay on the same day and so, figuring strength in numbers, we hit Hanoi together. Hanoi is clean and the traffic stops for red lights. The people trying to sell you stuff go away when you say no too. It's the simple things you appreciate over here.
Went and saw Uncle Ho's frozen body. Weird.
Note that Halong Bay has its own travelpod entry, because it's taking me a while to piece together what happened... i've noticed that drinking has become a major feature of our time in Indochina...
Anyway, our arrival back in Hanoi from Halong Bay had a bit of fanfare. We had a parade and everything- if you can call 10 people following you down the street a parade. We had been discussing the varying levels of crapness of our Hanoi guesthouse experiences and a fellow drinker, Claudio, had mentioned that his didn't totally suck. So Joe and I, Linda, Renska, Claudio, two retired Aussies we'd also met in Halong Bay, and some random German dude (I never knew his name and he could have been the Aryan races' pin-up boy, so I'm going to call him Hans) made a conga-line through the streets of Hanoi to our new guesthouse. Weird.
Our attempt at being touristy in Hanoi failed after we got half-way through the walking tour and gave up in favour of beer and noodles. At home, if I was to serve someone 2-minute noodles with chinese vegetables and call it soup it would have ended up over my head, but apparently this is traditional Vietnamese fodder. So prepare for some authentic 2-minute Maggi goodness when you next come over for a home-cooked dinner.
We shopped for souveneirs and I actually sent them. By sea mail. They'll probably end up at my mother's place about a week before I get home. So they'll probably find their way to your respective doors... eventually. Maybe i'll just bring you a t-shirt to tide you over.
We farewelled our Halong Bay crew a couple of days after arriving in Hanoi, and set out for Laos!
