Posts Tagged Hanoi
Once upon a time on West Lake
Posted by Huyen Tran in Destinations, Travel Blog on July 10, 2010
“I was with my parents, and we were riding on a boat amongst a sea of lotus flowers. I felt like a fairy princess in my favourite childhood movie, Journey to the West,” Hoang Kieu To Uyen recalls, as if it had happened just yesterday. “And the funny thing is that I was actually in the West. Well, West Lake (Ho Tay) to be exact”.
Uyen, 32, is a realtor, and a born and bred Hanoian who has spent most of her life in Ha Noi. When she was an 8-year-old girl, her parents used to take her to the most beautiful places in the city to teach her about the capital.
Flower festival marks city’s millennial birthday
Posted by thanhson in Destinations, Travel news, Vietnam Culture on May 28, 2010
A flower festival will be held in the relic site of the Thang Long Royal Citadel in Hanoi to usher in the capital city’s 1,000th birthday from May 1 to October 30.
At a press briefing on April 28 in Hanoi, the organising board said that the festival is part of the “Space of Arts” programme developed by the XQ Vietnam Company and the Co Loa-Hanoi Citadel Relics Management Board.
Our Magical Mystery Tour to Vietnam
Posted by Thanh Vu in Destinations, Travel Blog on December 23, 2009
The event started off in a pretty normal manner we booked an overnight bus to take us to the border town of PingXiang from Yangshou. We found the notion of not ‘needing’ a ticket a tad strange but not completely unheard of. So as the clock struck 18:30 our taxi van arrived; we boarded the van with Jake an Aussie dude and headed to Yangshou. We arrived in Yangshou and the taxi driver walked us around to the CITS ticket office and relayed our information to the woman and then leaves, the CITS women (number 2 in the chain) gives us a business card with a hand written number on and told us to call the number on arrival at Guilin and someone will meet us. We were then taken to the bus station where a busy bus is waiting for us; we were ushered on, bags thrown underneath.
Then we were off Guilin bound, T is sitting in the front seat which was a ghastly experience, a full coach speeding at round 70km, overtaking, overtaking cars, horns blasting as we speeded down the wrong side of the road moving cars driving towards us moving out of the way. One hour later and we arrived at Guilin, we called the number jotted down on the business card and this dude appeared and took us to a hostel bar and told us to wait for an hour and someone will collect us.
Exploring Ha Noi…
Posted by Thanh Vu in Travel Blog on December 23, 2009
This morning started with a bang…we had an intruder in the night! After Martin having assured me of the safety and low crime of the north, especially in this area…a man managed to get into the apartment below his where a woman and baby were sleeping-she woke up and tried to scream, but no sound came out…luckily the man just gesticulated by putting his finger to his lips before disappearing like a ghost over the balcony…another tried to get into Martin’s bedroom next to where I was sleeping, but luckily his wife saw him and shouted! So the police were here early this morning…they had neglected to tell us earlier, that in the last few weeks, most of the apartments in the area had been burgled-great policing eh! Unfortuantely, like many countries, the police are very corrupt, so not much to be done apart from locking every door and window…
One of Martin’s students, Bong, arrived on her bike and took me to Hoan Kiem Lake…it is a legend strewn lake…Supposedly, Emperor Le Thai To was handed a magic sword by a tortoise living in the lake, which he used to defeat all his enemies. 8 species of tortoise live here, although I only saw bubbles. Apparently at dawn, 0530, many aerobic and jogging sessions take place…hmmm that early doesn’t sound that appealing, although that’s the only time of day you could run without dying of heat exhaustion. There is an elaborate obelisk in the centre of the lake meaning ‘a pen to write on the blue sky,…there are so many pagodas and temples left over from the 15th century, when people used to dedicate these buildings to brave heroes… Read the rest of this entry »
Hiding from Hanoi
Posted by Thanh Vu in Destinations, Travel Blog on December 22, 2009
After a lousy night on a ’sleeper’ bus to the China/Vietnam border (although they did let us stay on the bus till border opening time) we were pretty much front of the queue to cross the bridge to Lao Cai in Vietnam.
Apparently still a bit politically unstable since the 17 day invasion by China in 1979, all seemed peaceful with people literally sprinting between the two countries without a worry in the world other than would they sell their wares on the other side. All queue orderly to get in.
Note to anyone who doesn’t queue in an orderly fashion to get into Vietnam – in the last 53 years Vietnam have warred with France, Laos, Cambodia, USA and China about their country and its boundaries … and beaten up on them all!
Talking of beating up, the minibus conductors in Lao Cai quite literally manhandle their ‘clients’ onto the bus in order to get it filled up quickly. Ours still took 1.5 hours to do this and by the time we left also had a cargo of tiles, tv’s and various ironmongery – mercifully though, no pigs or chickens.
The bus journey took us into beautiful rain forest covered mountains. By the time we reached our 5th floor room (no lift, heavy backpacks) the past 24 hours were forgotten as we opened our window to look out on a sun filled river valley built into glistening rice-terraces with Vietnam’s highest peak in the background.
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The Veteran does Nam
Posted by Thanh Vu in Destinations, Travel Blog on December 21, 2009
After saying a sad goodbye to Lloyd I headed back into Bangkok where I managed to get some cheap accomodation. The next day it was off to the Vietnam embassy first thing to try to sort my visa. Thankfully they were very nice and efficient and I managed to pick it up that afternoon. I risked heading straight for the airport where I managed to get on the same flight only a day late!
It was great to be in Hanoi but unfortunately I had missed the start of the tour where they headed to Halong Bay (gutted Id been really looking forward to that) and had to wait for them to come back. Not really knowing where I was going I grabbed a bus into town and managed to find my way to a hostel unfortunately it was full so I wandered round before finding a lovely hotel where I got a stunning room for only $12.
The next morning I met up again with James and Anna and caught up on the gossip of the last few weeks. Anna wanted to get her hair dyed so deciding this sounded like a fab idea we both went to the hairdressers. 2 hours and a tenner later Anna had flaming red hair and my own mother wouldnt have been able to tell mine was dyed (aside from the fact the greys had gone). We had a chilled out day before I headed over to the hotel to meet my group (Vanda, Sarah, Sophie, Richard, Jessica, Posh Richard and Louise). They all seemed nice but my first impression was that they were all (Oli tour leader included) so very young. Deciding to be anti-social (Ive got 7 weeks with them) I went out for dinner with J&A not knowing when I would see them again as they were heading off that night.
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Northen Vietnam – A reason to be jealous of us
Posted by Thanh Vu in Destinations, Travel Blog on December 21, 2009
So where did I leave off last time I wrote in this blog? Oh right, the night before getting into Vietnam. Well, we got up fine and got on our early bus out of Phnom Penh. The bus ride was about 6 hrs and the funniest part was when we hit the border. We think they like to screw around with tourists, mainly because we were the only white guys on the bus. So they took our passports when we got on the bus and when we reached the border crossing we figured they would give them back to us but no. Everyone on the bus got off, got their bags and went into a little building where the bus guy gave all our passports to the customs officer.
We quietly waited our turn as the Vietnamese passengers went through first, then the Cambodian, then the guys with the giant air conditioning units that arrived after us, and then finally our names were called and we successfully made it into Vietnam! Hurrah! After a dropping our bags on the unmanned x-ray machine we were looking to hop right back onto the bus down you know you are.and get going; however, we were not allowed onto the bus. The bus guy pointed to another check point down a ways where we had to take our passports to be shown once again. So we walked over there, passports in hand, and a bit confused. Our confusion grew as we were immediately told to go to another check point a bit of the ways down. Luckily we were shown the way deeper into Vietnam so we weren’t too worried about denied in. At the third checkpoint Kif showed his passport and both of us were allowed to walk a couple meters more down the way and wait for the bus to pick us up, which it did.
The Streets of Hanoi
Posted by Huyen Tran in Travel Blog on December 21, 2009
It’s an act of faith! Crossing the street in the city of Hanoi in Vietnam is an experience I will never forget. The roads are literally wall to wall traffic. Motorcycles, bicycles, rickshaws, cars, hand carts, buses, cars, mopeds, taxis and trucks whiz by in a blur of color and motion. There are very few traffic lights and I quickly learned that the ones which do exist are just for decoration. I asked our guide in Hanoi how we would ever get to the other side of the street given the endless stream of vehicles. “Just step out onto the pavement” he said, “and start walking. Keep a steady pace. Don’t speed up and don’t slow down and never ever come to a complete stop. If you do you will be hit for sure. If however you walk at an even pace the vehicles will be able to judge your speed and will dodge around you.” He was right! I admit that even after being in the city for four days my heart beat still began to race ever time I took that leap of faith and stepped out onto the street. I had to keep my head down, because if I looked at that frightening wave of traffic coming at me, it was too easy to lose courage and slow down or stop. And the noise! There is absolutely no need for signal lights on vehicles in Vietnam. No one uses them. Everyone just blasts their horn when they want to pass. The honking of thousands of horns is a twenty four hour a day background accompaniment to life in Hanoi. After awhile you just get used to it.
Two villages in Thanh Oai commune
Posted by Thanh Vu in Travel Blog, Vietnam Culture on December 21, 2009
Saturday 21 November 2009 – Some friends visited Hanoi, so we rented a taxi and traveled 40km to two villages in Thanh Oai commune. The first village we visited was the Vác village where the locals make bird cages and paper fans. We visited 3 houses and saw the locals drying fans in the sun or making bird cages of different shapes. The next village is more interesting. Our taxi went along the Nhuệ river and we passed by Cự Khê village then stopped at the gate into Cự Đà village. This village is famous for its finely preserved architecture. It is also home of 50 northern-style traditional houses and 25 French villas which were built in the early 20th century.
According to the “Heritage” magazine of Vietnam Airlines, Cự Đà village could have been founded up to 2,000 years ago. Archeologists have recently discovered the remains of a brick grave dating back to the period when Vietnam was under Chinese rule. The village maintains the features of a typical northern village, including 3 village gates. In the past, these gates were shut at curfew, after which nobody was allowed in or out. The residents engaged in agriculture and trades.
Hanoi the Sequel: Escape to Sapa
Posted by Thanh Vu in Destinations, Travel Blog on December 20, 2009
The 4 hour bus-boat tango back to Hanoi seemed less taxing on the way back from Cat Ba. All was going smoothly till we arrived at the bus station in Hanoi. In a moment of weakness we agreed to get in a slightly scruffy looking taxi. The fact that he had to roll it out its parking place should have sounded alarm bells. I distinctly remember Milla saying, “Great, he’s pushing his taxi…”
Anyway we had driven about 500 metres when I noticed the meter read 46,000 dong. The whole trip back to the hotel should cost about 20,000 at most. So we demanded he stop and the kids watched bemused as we bundled them all out onto the side of what is probably Vietnam’s only freeway. Milla was horrified when Julie berated the man loudly saying “you are a bad man, a bad man!!”.
“Mum, you can’t speak to other adults like that!!”, she wailed, more than a little confused by the whole spectacle.
It’s just another of those unexpected outcomes of travel with children. They get to see their parents carrying on in ways they are never likely to encounter in their everyday lives.
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