P-J's Trip Home - The Last Bit
Here is the last page of my trip home, mainly as they will only let create 5 pages on this website, but it will include my two weeks in Vietnam, a few days in Hong Kong/Macau and my last week in South Korea....
Vietnam - A Communist Country
We arrived by plane in the North of Vietnam in the city of Ha Noi. The plane journey was quite breathtaking as we flew over and next to a thunderstorm and could watch the forks of lighting shine up the sky on their way down to earth. When we got our bags and were quickly processed through immigration we were to be met by a man from a hotel we booked to take us to the city and our hotel. UNfortunately we were picked up by a con man holding up a sign for our hotel who proceeded to confuse us on the journey to the hotel ending up with i\us turning around at a toll station and going back to the airport. Well almost he took us to a bridge near the airport an proceeded to put our bags inside a taxi and asked for the money so he would pay the taxi driver for us and they taxi driver would give us a receipt when we got to the hotel do that they would give us the money back. The currency over hee is very large 16000 Dong to $1, so without really understanding him i handed over 1400000 Dong, or $90, which when we got to the hotel was given a receipt for 200000 Dong and have the taxi drive off in a hurry! The hotel we stayed at was nice, even though we had to climb up 8 sets of stairs to our room on the roof of the building, the staff were wuite helpful and we did get free breakfast!
Ha Noi -
On the first day in Ha Noi took a taxi to the Vietnam Museum of Ethanolgy, and were pre\oceeded to be ripped off again as he drove 4kms farther than he needed to on the journey before throwing us out the cab with the wrong change while shouting Lo Lo Lo Lo at us!?!?! The museum itself was interesting with examples of hilltribe settlements and tools. For the return journey we decided to take an xe om, Motorbike Taxi, back to the hotel which was absolutley crazy. The rules in Vietnam for the road are try and drive on the right, give way to bigger vehicles and beep your horn alot! Its far worse than Thailand, but at the same time really good fun and a goos way to see the city! Next up we took a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake, having dinner and then going to see a Water Puppetry show, which is a Vietnamese tradition wher they tell stories using puppets in water, the puppets are controlled by long poles hidden under water by puppeteers hiding at the back!
Day two in han Noi started off quite bad, we headed to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum at 10am, with the doors closing at 1030, we decided the quickest way would be be xe om so got a couple of bikes and headed to the Mausoleum, this is where we lost each other and ended up at different sides of the mausoleum! My taxi driver tried ringing Kathryn's before driving around to each entrance looking for them, after 30mins we got a phone call and waited for the other taxi to turn up, aparently they had gone back to the start to get a mobile phone that was left on charge! After all this the Mausoleum was closed so we didnt get to see it, but we decided to goto the museum since we were there, 5 minutes after buying a ticket and looking around they started to close the museum so that was a short lived adventure! We then walked, after deciding we didnt want to be seperated again, to the Tmple of Literature which is a complex made up of 5 courtyards and buildings that Confusius set up in 1070 AD to teach literature to students. It was good to see something man made that has stood the sands of time, and it would never had lasted this long in a western society! After this we took a brief walk to the Hao Lo Prison museum to see how they treated Vietnamese prisoners when the French were in control and how the American POWs were treated. The prison was originally built over a large local market by the French to put opposing party prisoners somewhere. The prisoners were kept chained to a table which they lay on next to each other. There were also two gulloutines that were used as recently as 1930 to execute prisoners. In contrast the American POWs were treated with good food, hot baths, a basket ball court, volleyball, tv and lived a decent live until they were released!
Ha Long Bay -
The next part of our trip was to Ha Long Bay, a 3 hour bus journey from Ha Noi. We left at 0830 after waiting an hour to be picked up and arrived in Ha Long City at 1200 where it took another hour for us to be ushered onto our home for the next two days, a Junk boat. We started the trip with a lunch of seafood rice and greens, which was ok but not enough to fill us up. We then spent the next couple of hours on the deck sailing through HJa Long Bay, which is a magnificent array of Limestone Islands and Islets. Our first stop was at a big cave called 'Hospital Cave' where we got off the boat and made our way up the large staircase built into the side of the wall of acliff, this lead to an opening into the cave, which we found out was not the original opening the finders of the cave came through but was easier to get tourists in! the cave itself was Gigantic, and with different coloured lights, looked spectacular although some of the 'things to see' in the cave were suspectable of foul play, like a small geyser that was fake and a large rock that water some how poured from the top of and down into two pools! After a 10minute walk back to the boat, where we saw huge butterflies playing with each other, we were on our way to a small water village and to go on a little boat (which of course cost more to do) to look at two bays that were used in the film Indochina, to get to the bays we had to go on a little boat that took us through a tunnel made in the cliffs to each of the small bays which, although beautiful, were abit disappointing. Next the little boat took us for a 2 minutes trip through the village though we were fortunate to see children being taught at a school, this small part of the trip wasnt worth the money! After this brief 'tour' we headed to Ca Bay to swap some apssangers before heading to another village to go kayaking, since Kathryn didnt want to do it and everyone else had someone to do it with i went on my own, which was nice and relaxing adn i got to see some impressive islets and a large cave. We then headed around the corner to set up for the night where we were 'treated' to a slightly better dinner than lunch, before continuing the night on the deck with music and drinks.
At 0700 a crew member thaught he would be nice and wake evryone up by banging on their windows so we could have some breakfast and check out of the rooms, breakfast consisted of cold fried eggs and cold toast, so cold infact it had turned back into bread! Once we had eaten, or not, our breakkie we headed to the deck where the sun was just creeping out, we spent the remainder of the trip sun bathing before arriving back at Hal Long Bay at 1130. We then sat around until 1215 to be taken for lunch before heading back to Ha Noi.
We arrived at Hanoi at 1600 and had a quick shower and got a takeaway sarnie as we were back on a nother bus at 1900 to take us down to Hue. The Bus was a good one if you got on before everyone else as they had sleepers towards the back, unfortunatley we were some of the last on and ended up in some semi comfortable seats. the trip itslef was uneventful other than a few toilet stops that consisted of a wall, for boy and girl, to pee against! Kathryn had taken a sleeping pill for the trip and woke up a couple of times doped up and rambling and almost falling over which was really funny for me as i have not seen her like that before!
Hue -
We arrived in Hue at 0800 and got ourselves into a hotel and slept until 1330. We then went out and walked around the town visiting the Citidel and a local market.
- Posted by d1d2d3_pj on 14/05/2008.
