Hanoi, Vietnam

18th January 2007

Hanoi, Vietnam
(18-22 January 2007)

We woke up early in the morning; around six plus we already hit the road. In Singapore, we still haven’t seen the sun at six am, so it felt very early. But there were a lot of people taking the train, to the work, to the school. That early! Those poor school kids still had some saliva at the corner of the mouth when they had to walk to the train with huge backpack on their arched backs.

For us, the day was a good day. Husband’s office had a trip, and for the forth time, I joined them. We met the rest of the people at the airport; we arrived on the scheduled time. It was 24 of us, 22 original employees and two spouses tagged along, one was me and the other was husband’s best-colleague-friend’s wife. I know more than half of the people, but still felt uneasy at first, although not for long.

We had quite a tedious check-in, as it was quite a big group. After check-in, we proceeded to the duty free, some did liquor shopping, and we had breakfast. Hot dog, omelet and hot tea. We had a lot of food in the plane also; it was 3,5 hours flight to Hanoi. Lucky they had entertainment on board like movies, music, games, newspaper and the length of the journey was basically consisted of one movie, one sitcom, and some miscellaneous. I was very excited this time, I’ve always wanted to go to Vietnam before, but we never really looked into realizing it, until we got this chance and we almost skipped it for some reasons.

When we touched down, it was around midday, Hanoi time, same as Jakarta’s time. Every time I go to a foreign country, I always feel anxious with the immigration process. Fortunately, It went smoothly and one by one was discarded from immigration counters to one big room. There was a sign, international arrival baggage claim, but we only saw a crowd with trolley gathered facing one point. After we passed through them, we could see a conveyor belt, one conveyor belt to serve people arriving from Moscow, Singapore, and two other countries I failed to remember now. We waited and waited and waited for almost an hour for our luggage, until the crowd cleared up and only people flying from Singapore left.

We could feel the difference by then. The wind blowing from outside was cold, and the people were wearing thick jacket or some other fashionable winter clothing and one thing I observed, almost all the girls wore high heel, half of them were high heeled boots. When we walked out, the temperature was cool, colder than what we have been warned before, it logged as 11-Celsius degree, and it was midday, but I like the refreshing air.
It was winter in Hanoi, and peak holiday season, while I always thought that Vietnam is an untouched country far from commercialized tourism, for people to retreat and enjoy the solitude, like my idea about Tibet, or maybe I’m also wrong about Tibet. I guess so.

We needed to take about three hours coach ride to Ha Long, because we were going to Halong Bay the next morning. We had one bus for our own. Ding, the tour guide told us the story about Vietnam in communist time which was very interesting but I only caught too little of it to share, I was busy taking pictures and Ding's voice couldn't really fight against two dozen's excited voices.
From the airport, along the way there were not many buildings. Some houses, paddy field, open field, basically we saw a lot of open skies and rivers. Hanoi means city inside the river, there are rivers surround the city. We saw quite a lot of cemetery plot all the way, some came only in small groups, others were solitary cemetery inside paddy field. Yes, we actually saw many tombstones erected; standing alone, around it was big paddy field with their complete set of farmers, cows, sometimes sheep, duck and dogs.

The unique things about the houses; they were slim and tall, some easily reached seven storey high while only have 3 meter width. In between the houses, most of them had very small gap, some 30 centimeter to half a meter width, so everybody had their own wall with funny tight dark alley in between. The other thing was, many of them only bother to paint the front of their house, left the sidewall as unfinished concrete, same style with Indonesia. The elevation of the house were very neat, all the windows were in the same line and same shape, so did the balconies and door, it repeated every floor.

We stopped for lunch midway and everyone started to gear up with their winter clothing. Additionally, the wind was very strong. We had an extreme long table to accommodate two dozen of us. The lunch was very yummy, we fell in love with their food immediately, it was tasty, and it was not spicy. They served some of the signature dishes; spring roll, Vietnamese beef noodle, some fried crushed prawn shaped like an ellipse with sugar cane as the stick, cabbage dishes cut into small pieces which we liked very much, some hot plate and few other dishes. Slurp slurp.

After lunch, we stopped at another place, a big shop selling silk, souvenirs, gems, those kind of shop that tour operators like to stop by. Most of us didn’t shop there; we just used the opportunity for toilet break and to straighten our legs.
We checked in Halong Bay Pearl hotel around 6 pm, it was located in front of Halong Bay, obviously. After a while, we all walked to the restaurant, it was a relaxing walk. Ding told us that Hanoi is very safe for tourist, as most of the local are discouraged to go out after eleven pm, that is the way for them to cut down the crime rate.

The restaurant served another spectacular food, with cozy surrounding; they used birdcage for decoration of the light. Vietnam was having some bird flu cases at that time, and some of those health conscious people refused to eat chicken, but most of the others, we were grateful for every food.
They also performed live music, we swore first song was Indonesian song, some jale-jale or I don’t know what title. They also use angklung as one of the musical equipment, some drum, sitar and wooden kecapi. The waiters and musicians dressed nicely in long red dress. Most of Vietnamese girls had good skin complexion and none of the young girls were fat,that was my observation during our stay, which is wow! Isn’t it every girl’s dream?

After dinner, we walked to the night market nearby, it was big but there were not many shoppers as it was almost closing time. Many of us were not in the spirit of shopping and bargaining yet, and we were quite tired because of whole day journey on the road. I bought a big package of dried jackfruit, for the company in the bus tomorrow.


19th January 2007

7.45 in the morning, we boarded the bus. We managed to steal the opportunity to have a walk opposite the hotel and enjoyed the magnificent sea view for the lobby roof. It was a short ride with couch, and all of us gathered at the jetty, there were a lot of wooden boats; all of them have the same style, with big dining room below, spacious deck on the top. Some of the boat even have portable garden, potted plants, they also had long chair used for suntan, except that it was winter.

Halong Bay is one of the UNESCO’s World Heritage of nature. More than 3000 incredible islands rising from the emerald water of the Gulf of Tolkin. Legend has it that the islands of the Halong Bay was created by a great dragon that lives in the mountain.









































We spent all the journey time on the roof deck, enjoying the scenery. It reminded me of Komodo, where we could see islands with different layer in the horizon. There were big boats and small boats everywhere, the water was jade green. After about half an hour, we reached the island when we could find the Ha Long Caves, wonder of the world. We had to climb artificial stair to the top of the cliff and then we went in to the cave. The cave was very huge, grand and breathtaking. The cave consists of a lot of contours, forms and textures created by thousands of years of natural force. Some part of the cave was actually below water level, that’s some of information we managed to eavesdrop from other tour guide, because our tour guide and the big group were far in front, four of us enjoyed ourselves taking pictures and pictures, it’s difficult to describe the beauty of the cave with words.



























































There were another caves; we visited one of them only for a while because we were running out of time. We bought boiled peanuts which was not hot anymore in this weather, then we went back to the boat.
The jetty was crowded with boats everywhere, on the way out, our boat collided with another, result in some damage on our front and side of other, it was physical damage, so it didn’t delay the journey.

We stopped at one floating fishery on the way, it was like small floating fish market. We could see those fish and marine life we used to see when we dived, anemone crab, shrimps, cuttlefish, grouper, etc. The boat crew tried to repair the boat front, we were shopping for fruit and the cook I guess shopping for fish, but I didn’t want to see the process.
There were beautiful scenery; our eyes were pampered with the fresh surrounding of blue skies and grand rocky cliffs. We could stand forever on the deck but the wind was freezing, we shared vodka bought by few friends, one gulp could heat the body for a while.

They served lunch on the boat, and the lunch was generous, we had a lot of delicious food. They also had their own souvenir shop inside the boat, the girl went around to offer their stuff like pearls jewelries, postcards and other type of souvenir. The boss bought a lot of pearl jewelries for gift to those in Singapore and to his female employees. The price was quite high and count in US dollars, it was authentic and delicate pearls.

The rest of the day, we visit the pottery village, the traditional village where we had to go into labyrinth of houses, less than one meter of width, if someone left out, it’s very hard to find the way out, so we were noisy and kept giving direction to those behind, Turn right in front, dogs on the left,etc,etc. We had the opportunity to see every day’s life of the villagers, the making of the pottery, the painting process and the clay shaping process, which was very interesting. We stopped at one pottery shop, the one that the lady boss visited more than a decade ago. So those who interested to buy, did their long bargaining process and even climbed to the storage to look for their particular type of pottery.







































For the rest of us, especially the younger ones who were not interested in carrying bowls, pots and mugs back to Singapore, lazed around and shopped for roadside food, grill pork, spring roll and pig ear.

I thought Chinese eats everything, I thought Singaporean too. But they were quite scared with the pig ear we bought. It didn’t look scary at all. It didn’t look like anything in particular, it was long sliced beige color, covered with rice powder and mixed with lemon grass. It tasted very good imo, crunchy and interesting. 100 gram only for 5000 Dong, which is 50 cents Singapore dollar or 2500 rupiahs. The spring roll was very good also, so did the pork. We kept supplying food to those inside the shop, and sometimes we sat down relax and enjoy the hot tea we brew ourselves.

When we finished, it was dark already. Somehow, all of us were very happy, even the two bosses. Maybe it was the cooling weather, although it was much colder than expected, the spirit of holiday, the beauty of everything we saw, the simple life of the village, the wonder of bargaining which begun to sink into everyone’s soul, or maybe it was because everybody were starting to get familiar with everyone else and it felt like we were being with big family.

Just before we boarded the bus, there was traffic of people going back from work. Girls were riding bicycle with their winter clothing, some with traditional Vietnamese bamboo hat, they were great for pictures. Many of us lined along the junction and took pictures of them. Some were smiling, some just speeding and some cheering through their facemask. Most of them didn’t object us taking picture.
Facemask seemed to be very popular there; people wore it while riding bicycle or motorbike, two main vehicles in Vietnam. Maybe it was the flu, or the wind or the cold weather.

We went to dine in a very cozy restaurant, they served a very good white wine and generous food, again, it was great food. We fell in love with the white wine, but each of us only got a small wine cup, apparently, it was home made and they sold it. So me and Hubby bought two bottles, they bottled them up in 500ml mineral water bottle, each was sold only for 2 US dollar, which was very cheap for that quality.

Went back to the hotel, we threw our bags and went to the café next door. Ding said it served the best Arabica coffee, so we were keen to try. We had one group of twelve sitting together, so the waitresses were very confused and mixed up orders. I ordered dark black coffee and they gave me coffee with milk, with some missing spoon and bowl. So actually the bowl was filled with hot water and the cup was in the middle of it, in that way the coffee could stand warm longer.
I didn’t want to change as the waiters were already super confused and others were very noisy, added up with difficulties to communicate with broken English and hand signal. Now since my coffee was with milk, I couldn’t take much, lactose intolerant, mhehehe, this is a medical term that I found out from magazines, so it’s real! Every time I take moderate or too much dairy product, I have headache and stomach discomfort, additionally I don’t like milk since the beginning of Majapahit, maybe because of that or maybe I simply don’t like it.

Anyway, the coffee was very thick, I tried to take a sip or two, but I didn’t like it, it smelt really good, but it tasted quite awful to me, but I also didn’t know what was my original order tasted like. Some of our friend crossed the road and came back with Vietnam orange and bread. They tasted great, and the orange looked very pretty, with perfect ellipse shape and smooth bright orange skin and few leaves.

We went back straight to the hotel since there weren’t much shops still opened at that time. We visited the hotel casino but lost interest as none in our group liked gambling and casino always smelly. So we took shower and gather again in big room. One triple sharing group got this deluxe room with two bedrooms and one living room. So we gathered for gossips, talks, tidbits, and mixed drinks; vodka, red wine, white wine, soft drinks, and even tea according to preference.


20th January 2007

Today we visited the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, the most respected hero in Vietnam. His body was preserved on the contrary of his wish to be cremated, because the people simply love him so much. The security process to enter the mausoleum was very tight, everybody could only bring money and small wallet, we had to entrust all precious belongings to Ding; camera, bag, handphone etc. So Ding looked like Christmas tree that morning, with his small built, he almost had to drag himself with 24 people’s stuff hanging around his neck.

The walk to the mausoleum was very quiet, every where there were soldiers with riffle and bayonet, we had to line up two by two, just like flag ceremony. Nobody could put their hand in the pocket, and jacket had to be worn, not tied around the waist. The row moved slowly and we were guided through big pavements, gardens and finally inside a building. I was not excited to see a embalmed body; in fact I was a bit uncomfortable. Then we reached the room, from my point of view at the start, Ho Chi Minh was laid on low-lit glass coffin, two meter from the ground but one meter from the place we stood. The path was two-meter width around the perimeter of the room, boundary of the path was railing and the sunken area where the bed was, stood four soldier on each corner of the coffin. The body was preserved really well, he didn’t look like someone who passed away long ago, but someone in deep peaceful sleep. The room was dark with surreal feeling, nobody talked and everyone kept moving, the line almost never stopped as there were so many tourists visiting this place.




















After mausoleum, we went to the very big open plaza when Ho Chi Minh declared the freedom of Vietnam, then we proceeded to historical museum. The museum display was actually very interesting but I had to fight with the urge to fall asleep because I took the sick pill, thinking that it was going to be a rough day.

After museum, we visited Vietnam first University, Temple of Literature. It has statue of infamous teacher and philosopher Confusius. Ding told us a lot of story about the process of passing the exam, something very similar with China long time ago. If somebody passed the exam, he would immediately become a very important person and the social status would be lifted up. There were stones of achievement, with names of successful students craved on that. Each stone stood on a giant tortoise, there are some meanings to it, but I kept missing Ding’s explanation as our group was too big.

We stopped at one restaurant for lunch. Outside the restaurant, there was a girl selling fried food. Fried sweet corn and yam and banana, it looked very good as everyone of us was very hungry. But we had to get into the restaurant first.

This time, they served very little food, and they refused to serve drink, even some plain water. So in order to quench the thirst, we ordered Hanoi beer, one small bottle to share for two. We don’t drink but we wanted to try and it matched well with the weather, so everyone was trying and sharing the beer, anyway, it was only slightly more expensive than mineral water. The beer tasted not bad, but not fantastic.

So, feeling hungry, we ordered ten pieces of fried beverage outside, sitting together with the seller, waiting for the things to be cooked. Nobody else ordered anything but four of us, because we were out of time. The fried yam, banana and sweet corn tasted very very very very good.

Our next destination was cyclone riding around the 36 Ancient Street. It’s like beca, but accommodated one person only. So there was a long row of cyclone and each one of us hopped into one. Not long after we departed, Hubby’s cyclone passed by mine, and kept moving and passing those in front of us. While my cyclone was very polite, he never skipped any, even though he had a lot of chance to do so, I was almost asked him to do it, because it was very tempting, but I was afraid.

Afraid, although I grew up in craziest traffic in the world, I still had to swallow nervously everytime my cyclone cut into traffic. When we crossed the junction for example, we cut through the way while from the right side, cars, busses, motorcycles and another cyclones came into our way and they didn’t slow down a bit. Holy moly! I was stunned that I forgot to take a shot, still couldn’t figure out how we managed to go through. After that junction, I looked back and saw my Singaporean friend was also pale-faced.

Along the way, there were many interesting things, shops, houses, and interesting road side food stalls. We could see one table and few very very short plastic chairs, that’s the portable 'restaurant'. They sold many kinds of food, sometimes only cigarette and some hot tea, every 'restaurant' was almost ‘full house’. It’s funny to see those bule with big sized bodies cramped into the small and short kiddy seats.

The feeling of the surrounding, some were similar to Indonesia. Everyone was generous with horn, so we could hear pip pip pip from motorbikes, clong clong clong from cyclone, te tret trete trettttt from other type of motorbikes, ka ka kaaaa from cars, puoooooooot from busses and krincing krincing from bikes. It was really noisy, I was grinning all the time to hear those sounds which supposed to stress me out somewhere else. The pollution level of vehicles was high also. Sometimes we stopped behind a motorbike and it farted into our faces.

We rode the cyclone for almost an hour, to take a tour surround the busiest market place. After that we gathered again in the bus. Some photo seller tried to sell the pictures of us riding the cyclone. Our bus was parked next to a pavement where the natives played the don’t know what it calls, a cone shaped ball with chicken feather, they had to kick it with legs. We could see this sport being played everywhere, from open field to the pedestrian’s pavements, sometimes they had the outline of the court drawn on them.

We stopped by to silk factory and silk market, bought some pouches for souvenirs and a scarf to make my neck warmer. Again, we stopped by road side food to enjoy boiled corn and friend banana.

Tonight, we had to find dinner by ourselves. So the bus would drop us into the hotel and gave us five minutes to throw everything we didn’t want to bring. It drove us back to the market we saw earlier, and we had to find out the way to come back home.
We spilt, now we had our group of nine people. We walked around looking for place to eat. We ended up standing in front of a restaurant. When we still hesitated, a bule passed by and shouted, Good restaurant! Great food! we were happy to get the info.

We didn’t have reservation, so we didn’t have seats inside, but in the open garden seating space, there were a lot of seats, because we didn’t mind, we could sit there. The weather was very cold that night. There were burning charcoals we could use to warm our hands. The chef went out by himself and he was very helpful, saying that he was sorry we couldn’t sit inside and he brought all the charcoals to our table. It helped a lot to ease the crazy weather.
The garden was a very beautiful seating place. Felt like we were inside but outside. The waiter served baguette and appetizer, complimentary from them. It was a free flow baguette, very nice of them. The waitresses were all male and all of them spoke good English.
The food price was quite high, but value for money because of the place, the service and the hospitality, it was priced in US dollar. The presentations of the food were very good. I ordered NZ steak and it came out with a boat of salad too. Boat, with veggie and mashed potato inside and big eatable sail, actually every part of the boat was eatable. My friend order prawn something, came out with green-coated cooked apple and prawns on the sides. We enjoyed our dinner very much, until the end, they never failed to fill our baguette baskets.



We told the waitress we would come back after shopping because we needed their help to call the cabs.

We spilt into two groups again, four and five, and went shopping, it was rainy, which explained the coldness, but it was mild rain. Ding said most of the rains in the winter were mild, so we still able to do activities. We shopped for those cute, unusual and funny things for ourselves. I managed to buy a boot, when I was trying the boot, there was an explode sound outside. Few negative thoughts came into our minds, apparently it was only an exploded motorbike tire, came with the package of smoke and sound.

We agreed with other group to meet at ten in the restaurant, then we went back by cab recommended by Ding. Reached hotel around eleven, gathered in the big room with others for a while, this time big boss joined too.


21st January 2007

As usual, had breakfast in the hotel.
We traveled outside Hanoi city, passing through field and rivers. The wind was very strong so the weather was extremely colder that morning. There was a doggie tied to a tree and it shivered from the wind. So poor thing. We walked by some village with beautiful sight of lake. The villages sold sweet potato and fruits. We were going to visit the temple in Hao Lu.













Hao Lu was capital of Vietnam during AD 968 to 1010, during the Dinh and early Le dynasties. Its temple art and architecture is primitive in form and massive in conception, dominated by massive stone carving of elephants, rhinoceros and horses. Much of this former capital has been destroyed, although archaeological excavation has revealed a great deal of historical and artistic interest. The two principal temples at Hao Lu are those Dinh Bo Linh, and Le Hoan, King from Dinasty Dinh and Le.

Ding, our tour guide, told us the interesting history involving this two dynasty, it is almost like a story of modern complicated drama.
If I caught everything correctly;
The Dinh king has three sons, instead of giving his title to the eldest, he gave it to the second son, so the first son was jealous and killed the second son, I skipped the process until it left only the youngest son who was only four years old. So the queen governed behind this toddler and then the power was transferred to the General, which was General Le. The queen then married the General and started Dinasty Le.

First temple consisted of Dinh family statues minus the queen, the queen and Le family statues located in the second temple. There is a traditional ceremony every sometime to bring the queen back to the Dinh temple.
(I repeated what I heard, sorry if there’s something wrong and fell free to whack me and let me know)

After the temple, we went for boat ride in the river; I don’t know the river name, Hong River? So we boarded the fragile boat with two women rowed for my boat. It was a beautiful and relaxing journey. We helped the women row the boat, so did everyone in other boats. But my boat was the worst; the main double-row was handled by a very old grandmother while the side rower was her daughter, pregnant at six months. So although we started early, everyone passed by us.

We enjoyed the journey very much, it was looong, super long, If I didn’t hear wrongly, they rowed for six kilometers, it was about two and a half hour boat ride.
The scenery, the rock, and we rowed through three caves with low ceiling, which were created by water. We saw goats climbing on the cliff too. The water level was very low, some part it was less than a meter.





















Every boat rower shared different but similar stories to us. From the petite amount they earn, working at the field, rowing the boat until the difficult lives. Our boat rower communicated in broken English. Somehow I felt that the beauty of everything tainted by the way they commercialized. On the way back to the pier, every boat had to stop at rows of boat selling snack, coffee, fruits etc. They forced us to buy, if not for us, for the boat rowers. That was one. Then from our boat rower they had a lot of T-shirts, embroiderers, souvenirs. While we were helping them rowing the boat, we rowed almost along our journey, she kept pursuing us to buy even though we already declined many times. Because we didn’t want it, because we really had run out of money (honest!), but she kept pushing us in very uncomfortable ways.

Because we were the last, we escaped from those picture takers, who would persistently pursue tourist to buy their pictures too. These practices almost spoiled the great mood we had from enjoying things, but on the other hand we pitied them, we gave the boat rowers fat tips, tips was a must, they would remind us, but the amount we could decide.

Same thing today, free and easy. We ate in the much cheaper restaurant which served very big portion of food and very slow. After that, we walked around and this time we found the night market which was very crowded! There was no way that we could do any shopping, so nine of us just formed tu-tu train to get through the crowd without being separated.


















That night, when we gathered in the big room was the most enjoyable, they talked about their office problems, gossips and so on, they had many funny stories to share. As outsider, I was free of all the problems and just enjoyed the stories and gossips. We left the big room around 2 am.


22th January 2007

Going home time!
Morning we still managed to do some ‘grocery’ shopping. They loved the jackfruit snack that I bought, so they were trying to find it to bring back home. On the way back we saw a big guy roasting a full cow, he didn't object when we took his picture, but he didn't looked pleased too, he just kept working and looked at us until we ran away.
















After some shopping, we board the bus at 10.30 am and departed for the airport. There was a mess in the check-in process, as some of us told that we didn’t have confirmed ticket. We only finished checking in half an hour before the plane schedule.

Overall, very nice getaway. Vietnam becomes one of the countries that I recommend everyone to visit. The food is good and cheap, nice people and when we were there, it was pretty safe. The only problem we witnessed was stirred by a bule tourist, who was drunk and tried to force a cyclone rider to take him home, but it ended well.

Winter is the preferable time to visit, as summer is very hot, or so I heard.