Sunday, February 05, 2006
knock knock...
never doing wat's normal. left for Hanoi, Vietnam, on CNY eve. well, longest hol i can hv by taking only 2 n half days of leave. how can i jux let it pass? had an ultra fruitful n exciting trip. well-worthed the time and money spent. had an excellent travelling mate in Alexis too... n His mercy, grace and blessings for each passing day... wonderful wonderful time. if i dun start somewhere... nothing's ever gonna start... so here it is... my very first night in the land of the yellow star.
arrived in Hanoi to no sight of anyone from the guesthouse... i guess when u pay only USD5 per nite for a double-room, u gotta expect things to go wrong. started things off Vietnam style... slow... waited for quite a while for the immigration to clear... den haggled for a while b4 we got a cab to the hotel. met our first foreign encounters in an Aussie couple working in sg... Jen n her bf... they were in hanoi to simply chill out. rather literally actually since it was pretty cold there... probably around 16-18 degcel? they shared some tips on the places to dine at... pretty much the upmarket places... where a main course cost USD12 while our first dinner cost a mere 12oooVND which was equivalent to about S$1.20... well, they put up at Hilton so u dun expect anything less for them... guess at some point, we all reach dat stage... but for now, the rougher, the better...
Dinner for the first night - first of many rice noodles. 12000VND
plenty of peddlers selling balloons along the streets... dat was the first thing dat hit me... huge red balloons... there were stages all over the place... like those getai we hv in the seventh lunar mth... with performances by the local in celebration of CNY... streets were jammed-packed with ppl n almost impossible for the cars to pass... plenty of motorcycles zooming around too... n horns were a necessity there since no one really checks their rear mirrors n sticks to the legal driving lanes...
first sign of scrupulous money-making schemes was when the taxi-driver wanted to bring us to some hotel instead of the one we've a booking with... but we insisted on our original choice. the only way to act around these ppl... was to b fearless n firm. sometimes fierce even to put our point across...
when we reached our guesthouse, we were introduced to this warm girl named moon who brought us to another location probably coz Hanoi guesthouse was full... our room no. for 2 nites... nothing extravagant but comfortable enuff...
went out in the dark to check out some alleys... den returned to the guesthouse n saw fireworks from the windy rooftop. absolutely chilly especially since we were dressed in shorts n tshirts only... i'd to run back to the room to grab my sweater... there were fireworks aplenty but in terms of display of the aesthetics... well, i guess they need more help... n i need photography lessons as well!
Day 2 will come when i finally kill the lazy bug...
2:07 AM
++++++
Dinner for the first night - first of many rice noodles. 12000VND
