Hanoi Trip (Last day)

Our flight scheduled at 2.10pm local time so we need to leave the hotel at 11am. We packed the night before so we took our time lazing in the room... Finalised our packing and went down to the lobby for our breakfast. Our last Pho and Vietnamese coffee at the hotel... :(We ate like there's no tomorrow... Hehe

After breakfast we had approximately another 2 hours before the taxi comes, so we decided to went out for a walk at the nearby lake, took some pictures of the olderst pagoda in the middle of the lake and on the way back I managed to grab few things...

We took some pics with the hotel staff, thanked them for the superb service during our stay and I was quite sad to leave... They were so friendly...despite the language barrier...I will highly recommend this hotel to those who are planning to visit Hanoi...

We reached airport and immediately checked in. Out of a sudden there's this one long queue of locals being escorted to another KL bound flight counter and the line was made up of young vietnamese men and women. There were sadness in their eyes.. They must have taken up a job to work in our country through a job agency.. I wonder to work as what... and just outside the metal fence around the area were their family members watching from afar.. I guess they must be from a village somewhere and not the city as some of the mothers were holding jars of pickled things.. Maybe they thought that their child could bring it together with them..so they can have a piece of home with them. Somehow the scene at that time touched me.. Makes me even sadder...

Anyways, after checking in we felt hungry and went to the top floor to eat... Yey they have Pho!! So we ordered the same Pho with Vietnamese coffee and beer for husband... Last Pho in Vietnam for this visit.. :(

After meal, since we have 1.5 litres of alcohol per person that we can bring back to M'sia, we bought these...

Till then we haven't open any, coz there's still a bottle of white chilling in the fridge... So guess must finish that first... :)

So bye bye Hanoi... Hi Malaysia... (gasp! reality!!!)

P/S - In flight movies played during the flight back home sucks. I fell asleep.

Hanoi Trip (Day 4)

It was raining the whole morning and it was nice... I can't explain the serenity i felt when we head down to the lobby for breakfast... just pure bliss...

Breakfast was Pho and Viet coffee... can't get tired of these...srsly...

Then we tried getting a taxi from the hotel staff but the taxi didn't come (could be because of the rain and holiday).. Anyways, since the rain has almost stopped, we decided to walk to Dong Xuan Market... Erm, this market was suppose to be the place for you to buy all the souvenir stuffs...

Husband read the map and navigate, and my role was to find and read road signs... keke...
Oh did I tell you that I didn't bring any slippers so I have to buy one coz I felt like walking in flip flops that day.. I bought it the night before from the bicycle vendor lady and it costs me 80,000 VND... Wtf, RM16 for a pair of selipar jipun.. but what to do...just buy la..

Ok when we reached Dong Xuan, it's a big market, but poorly managed. We bought some stuffs and Vietnamese silks for the moms and the cute-cute face mask (famous in vietnam)... Bargaining was through calculators coz they speak little or no Enaglish at all. A word of advice, should you ever go to Dong Xuan market, never EVER go to the ladies... I regretted going but I have no choice coz I really have to pee and I got the shock of my life. They don't have walls in between the individual toilets. So the ladies just squat over the holes and go. No sink to wash hand just a single running pipe and a big bucket and a gayung there... Argh...! Tsk tsk... I have to pee so bad so I manage to survive the most extreme toilet condition in my life... haha.

We spent the whole day shopping / window shopping along the streets of Hanoi and by noon we felt hungry so went back to the hotel to put the stuffs we bought and went out again for lunch. We went to Pho 10, the place recommended by the hotel staff since day 1, but it's closed till dinner time, so we went to another restaurant near the hotel and ate this...

Not crazy bout it, but the deep fried roll was nice. The husband tried their local rice wine and he said it tasted just like langkau but stronger. So he almost got drunk from that small sip.. Tsk tsk.

After relaxing a bit we head down to hunt food again.. Dinner was Pho, Nem, and Ca Bo but pre-dinner we went to eat this. Forgot the name of this dish. But it's basically very fine rice porridge with char kui and shredded chicken meat on top... Tasty.

My tummy never felt happier...

After dinner, we went back to hotel to take our bath and immediately headed out again to find a place to lepak... We managed to find a cool place but it was infested by backpackers (most of them were mat salleh) so we went further into town and found a tapas restaurant... We didn't get any tapas but drank the cocktails there... Quite expensive.. Husband not satisfied with one drink so we went back to the cool place and managed to find available seats for us at the bar... So we ordered margarita for me and mojito for husband... then we ordered shisha (melon flavored) This was my first shisha ever! Then husband ordered more and more beers before we went back to the hotel... The bartender cum owner of the place asked us to write a memorabilia on the walls before we left.. so this was what we wrote...

Enough said... :)

Hanoi Trip (Day 3)

The next morning after breakfast we went near the cave area again for kayaking session.. I managed to force husband to kayak with me hahaha... It was sooo nice... My first time kayaking... A bit puzzled on the paddling wise...but we got on fine few minutes after... We saw a live jelly fish!!!... We paddled around it for a while until husband whined that he wanted to go back to the dock... duh... but I managed to persuade him to kayak some more... hehe . We didn't get any pics though coz husband said should the kayak flipped over at least the camera wont get wet.. O_O
Kayaking was around an hour, the rest of our group took longer.. I think they went further from our area... I envy them..

So we head back to the port...and reached there around 11.30am... Wah so sad to leave the boat... I love to sail... with comfort that is... haha
We got our group lunch at one of the restaurant on shore... Nice lunch... but quite hurried... Then hopped on the bus for journey back to Hanoi...

We reached Hanoi city around 4.30pm and quickly bathe, laze in the room for a bit then go out for dinner.. our dinner was Pho (see just how much we love pho!)

Oh and we stopped at the sidewalk near our hotel to eat Nem and Ca bo.. Nem was made of pork with fish.. like satay...Ca bo.. erm actually I don't know whether or not we got this one right but the dish was actually grilled squid, marinated in something sweet.. haha...husband love this one so much...

Oh and we did buy this for supper.. haha eating spree I tell you...

Hanoi Trip (Day 2)

Erm... It was not supposed to be a long pause between Day 1 and the next... but this is just me.Total procrastinator. :P

Okay. See if my memory still works... Day 2 was the day for Ha Long Bay trip... Yey!!So when morning came, we ate Pho for breakfast at the hotel and minutes later the tour guide showed up to pick us up for the trip. His name was Ngoc. Pronounce as "ngok"... Hehe

He's nice and his English was much better , can understand la. Our bus was cute, the small type. A bit bigger than a mini van. And it's pink in colour! However when we got in all the twin seats were already taken so Husband and I have to take the single seat each. Window seats though so I can snap pictures like mad.

Anyways it was almost 4 hours before we reach the port... and during the whole bus ride we saw donkeys, buffalos, cows, ponies dogs, birds, cats, ducks, geese and people... ok ok moving on...
When we reach the port, then it was like waaaa... so many cruise boats... very nice...And the place was crowded. It was a public holiday in Vietnam that day so the number of local tourists add up to the crowd...
So we got on to our boat... and it was a very nice imperial junk cruise boat. We got to our room and this was it...

We were pooled together with a Korean family, several couples from Taiwan (I think about 3-4 couples), a Vietnamese family and 1 single Vietnamese lawyer.
The view was superb... here are some pics...

Then we stopped at one of the famous cave...

The one floating village...

Then swim time...We didn't though coz it's open sea and we were scared.. haha. This by the way was our tour guide, he's about to do the single somersault thing...

And while he did that, we sipped our margaritas. Bliss...

At night after a nice dinner, oh and I almost got drunk from the bottle of white that we ordered... we had a karaoke session... but not before I tried my luck in squid fishing... It was a lovely experience although I didn't catch any.. husband got pretty drunk from all the cocktails and wine and sang his heart out during the k-oke session.. :D And we were rocked to sleep by the sea... :)

Hanoi Trip (Day 1)

Yey... Finally, my long awaited holiday..
Currently, I'm typing this post in my hotel room.. specifically at Golden Plaza Hotel, Hanoi... Yes, Vietnam! I'm writing this now, coz husband is fast asleep and I feel like updating!


I'm just happy to be here.. and glad that we can make the trip happened at last. Long story.


29/4/2010
Arrived at Noi Bai Airport. Picked up by the nice hotel person. First time seeing paper with my name on it being waved at the airport. Keke. The airport seems dull and a bit stuffy, and the officers over there were fiercely looking. And they were strict too. Husband said that's becoz this country is a communist country. Was a bit scary then. Anyways, airport transfer to hotel was uneventful until our car actually knocked down a motorist, a lady. Poor lady. Traffic was crazy!!! We were stunned on the first day coz everybody was honking everybody! All the time! Oh, the lady was unhurt, I think. Coz after several shouting between our driver, the lady and another motorist, she simply got up and took her bike/ scooter to the road side.
When we arrived at this hotel at around 3pm something, everything was nice. Our room has 2 beds though. I asked for VIP room with double bed, but we got an extra bed in this room. This room is more like a family room. But it is still nice. The extra bed officially became our dumping / lepak area. We have a jacuzzi (small) and internet in the room (with PC), so it's nice. Per night is at 40USD.

We tried to venture out of the hotel after we settled our stuff in our room... but immediately went back to the hotel coz everything was so unrecognisable (streets' name are so confusing). Hehe. So we asked further directions from the hotel staff, who's very helpful. However, we ended up in good hands for dinner coz my ex-colleagues brought us out for a very nice Vietnamese buffet that night. The buffet costs around 150,000 VND. It was nice to see Dr Mai & Dr Bui after so long... I have now fulfilled my promise to meet them in Hanoi. :) They were so nice that even though they have to work till midnight on that day (month end closing, underwriters u know this) and 30th of April was a National Holiday for Vietnam, it's their day to commemorate the merging of north and south of Vietnam, they still took time to get a taxi and fetch us at our hotel to go for the dinner. The buffet place was nice. Great foods with great friends!
After dinner, we went straight back to the hotel and went out to a nearby shop to buy beer, Tiger beer only costs at RM2.60 here. Husband is happy. We slept early coz we need to wake up early for Day 2.
TBC...