after a 6 hour flight from tokyo i arrived in bangkok, the main hub in southeast asia, on thursday night with only a goal to make it to vietnam. it was my first time traveling alone and i was feeling a little lost, but also exited. i was the createor of my own adventure. i made my way through the airport ignoring all the touts shouting "you need taxi!?" "where you go??" "you follow me now!!" then i stepped out the door and into the warm thailand night air. memories of traveling with my canadian friends whom i met while teaching in korea suddenly came flooding back.
i flagged a taxi to take me into the city and drove the whole way at about 100mph while weaving in and out of traffic. i headed for khao san road also known as backpacker road. found a decent hotel, a travel agency and booked a cheap ticket to hanoi for saturday morning.
my $22 hotel for the night. time to head out to take in some bangkok nightlife...
eating some pat thai from a street vendor. later got ill, but it tasted good at the time anyway!
for anyone that's been to khao san road they can tell you that it can easily be a nights entertainment to just sit and watch the the circus of crazy poeple walking around. everyone from hippys with dreads down to their waist, 4 year old kids selling flowers, ladyboys, and drunk travelors stumbling their way along. the best though is the wide eyed people with giant backpacks you can tell have just arrived for the frist timebeing attacked by the scammers like pirhannas. you can
nothing liked shaved ice to beat the 90 degree march heat.
hopped a ferry down the chao phraya river to chinatown.
ordered some tailored dress clothes to pick up on my return trip and bought some souvenirs that i would end up having to carry with me in my tiny backpack for the rest of my travels.
saturday:
hanoi, capital city of vietnam! i ended up sitting next to the only other foreigner on the entire plane, a british guy on his gap year named tom. he was trying to catch up with some friends and we were both traveling alone. we decided to see hanoi together!
he had some info on a hotel his friends had stayed at a week before so we grabbed a taxi about 40 minutes to town. the first funny part was the car horns in vietnam. they all make different sounds that fade out like our taxi driver's that went, "dodododo...dodododo...
we arrived and i barely made it out of the taxi when i got sick from the pat thai the night before.
anyway the hotel was full so we went on a quest to find something cheap.
hmmm...$25 bucks a little too high for our budget...next!
this 'nice' guy took us around to a bunch other hotels but after a short chat with him all mysteriously changed to the same price as the first one.
guess she doesn't want to make two trips.
a corner barber shop that's literally just the corner.
hanoi traffic bustling with the sounds of motorbikes and musical horns.
the music of hanoi!
crossing the street was insane, you just have to walk slowly and allow them to avoid you.
check it out here to see what it was like.
local outdoor restaurant.
my first meal in vietnam
hong
nice girl we met that showed us around the whole city.
making some bi kuon or vietnamese summer rolls.
as a vegetarian, tom wasn't having a very good time with the food. the vietnamese and especially our waiter could not seem to grasp the concept of being able to afford meat but choosing not to eat it. so he ended up with a pile of rice and like three donut things.
bicycling it through hanoi in style on with my new friends tom and hong.
hoan kiem lake with the tortoise tower in the background.
a rare turtle sighting in the lake is said to bring good luck.
and the always crowded huc bridge to jade island.
our two new fans!
saying some prayers.
countdown to the 1000 year anniversary of hanoi.
playing some sepak takraw or kick volleyball.
arriving a little late around 10am, this was the closest we could get to ho chi min's mausoleum.
...because of the 2mi long line
...still going.
hong flirts with the gaurds to distract them while we try to break in to the mausoleum... unsuccessfully.
ho chi min, national hero in vietnam. in the north anyway.
after telling us the history of vietnam and it's leaders she said, "i don't know this guy.,."
temple of knowledge:
shrine of confucious
the war museum:
a giant heap of the twisted metal of destroyed american fighter planes, tanks, etc.
abandoned american armaments as the war ended and the viet cong led by ho chi min closed in.
don't think this guy made it. in the description: "a steel helmet, evidence of the failure of the french." the museum seemed to be more about propaganda and bragging about defeating the french and americans.
devastating cluster bombs. left the vietnam countryside littered with undetonated bomblets that maim and kill citizens to this day. unexploded objects cause an estimated 300 deaths a year annually in vietnam.
why not, everyone else is doing it?
intricate and ingeniously designed tunnel systems of the vietnamese
an eye-opening experience to see the vietnamese' view of the war, but extremely educational in any sense.
hanoi at night:
trying my hand at being a vietnamese fruit-selling woman.
scramble intersection; make your own traffic rules!
and riding a tuk tuk with tom in the middle of it all. total chaos, but everyone seems to know what they're doing.
video of the madness!
at the travel agency making plans to see halong bay the next day.
next day:
2 hour bus and an overnight boat in halong bay.
our crew: two shy swedish girls, a cheerful french guy, a tough american army girl, a raunchy middle eastern couple and lastly a vegan canadian couple. our own little gilligan's island. we all sit and discuss how much we payed/ got ripped off for the trip.
captain morgan pose.
traveling on a twisted ankle from playing basket ball a week before my trip.
docking to visit some amazing caves.
floating fishing village: stopped here to rent kayaks and be pestered by children to buy some cola and snacks. but we weren't allowed to food or drink onto the boat and they tripled their prices once we left land.
took off in our kayak, joined a private cave tour group for free and ran around through some off limit caves.
that night we decided to jump off the top story of the boat. we ended up angering our captain pretty bad and we actually got grounded in our room, but soon jumped out that window and swam to another boat about 2oo yards away. they shined lights on us and were yelling in a loudspeaker so by the time we got to the boat they kicked us off and we had to swim back.
i'll never forget that when we jumped in, water all around our body lit up with a blue luminescent glow. none of our cameras could capture, but it was truly incredible.
awesome trip all around but vietnam is a big country and i feel like i only saw the tip of the iceberg. someday hopefully i'll be back to see the middle of the country and saigon in the south.
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