With that, I took luxury in exploring the world wide web to see if I could piece together our great time in Vietnam using other people's photos. Whenever applicable, replace the perfect strangers in the photos below with thoughts of Claudia and myself.
We arrived into Hanoi, Vietnam after midnight and quickly realized that we had entered a new/different world. Our driver that drove us to our hotel, Hanoi Elegance 2, pictured above, (highly recommended if you're ever in Hanoi), honked his horn every 500 meters. At what you ask...we had no freakin' clue. We were certain that there was something wrong with him. Turns out honking your horn is like checking your mirrors in the states, the more often the better...safety first, peace and quiet second. With motorbikes being a real status symbol, every Vietnamese citizen has one, probably two, so the roads are full of them.
In order: motorbikes honk at pedestrians, cars honk at motorbikes, trucks honk at cars, and just in case there's nothing around to honk at, honk just because!
During our first full day in Hanoi, we walked around and took in most of the sites. Most interesting was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh himself is resting. He's been dead for almost 30 years and looks like he's taking a nap. Unfortunately, they guard him like Fort Knox so we were only able to take pictures outside.
We also went to the famous Hoa Lo Prison, a.k.a Hanoi Hilton where Mr. McCain was held prisoner during the "American War". They have his flight suit and parachute on display. His plane went down in the lake picture above.
According to tripadivsor.com, the #1 thing to do in Hanoi is to visit Halong Bay...hmm, that's strange, Halong Bay is 3.5 hours drive outside of Hanoi. We had heard many great things about it so we boarded a bus and made the journey. We opted for the traditional "junk boat" overnight experience. Junk definitely not referring to the condition of the boat, as our boat was top notch. We were joined by 8 other people that only added to the great time. The tour included kayaking in and around the limestone cliffs, and a tour of a wonderful cave system. Many of us found it funny/sad that they tried to enhance the cave by adding colored lights. We celebrated Christmas Eve over dinner with a great family we met on this tour. A quick shout out to Ed, Brenda, Rebekah, and Daniel...hope to see you guys sometime in the near future.
After Hanoi, we headed south to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). A slightly more modern city than Hanoi with even more motorbikes and horns. Our first night in town we met up with an old friend from New York who is now working in HCMC. He took us to a great club not in any tour books that had really fun live music...basically a "sing a long" to 80's rock music. The next day we took a 2 hour bus tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The maze of tunnels, about 450km worth, were built and used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. We found it amazing how anyone could spend any length of time in these tunnels as they were extremely small. During the tour they also allowed us to fire AK-47 and M-60 machine guns. Talk about power and an adrenaline rush!
The following day we took an overnight tour of the Mekong River Delta. A totally different side of Vietnam that we found to be very interesting. Our tour included multiple boat rides and about 6 hours of bike riding over 2 days. It was great to ride through different villages and to see many smiling faces. Just about every child we came across was eager to yell "hello" and give us a warm wave.
The overnight portion of the tour had our group of 10 stay with a family that lived in the delta. The conditions were pretty primitive, including bug nets around our beds and outdoor toilets. Overall a great time and a highlight of our trip through Vietnam.
No comments:
Post a Comment