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Our itinerary through Vietnam
(03/04/2016 - 16/04/2016; 2000 km) |
Hanoi is a shock. A big one.
Especially after Singapore. After Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore we are back in dusty, noisy, dirty and overcrowded South East Asia and it takes some time to adapt again.
We arrive late in the afternoon and our driver already waits for us to bring us to our hostel. The air is strangely grey. No sun to be seen. In fact we will never see a sunbeam while we are in Hanoi. What is this? Mist? Haze? Smog?
Probably a bit of everything. We read that Hanoi has one of South East Asias most terrible air quality. The usual amount of respirable dust lies usually around 150 micrograms per cubic meter, the WHO recommends not more than 20 micrograms per cubic meter… Sometimes amounts are worse than in Beijing and that really means something.
And where all this dust comes from we learn really quickly. Hundreds of thousands of motor bikes, cars, trucks etc are circling around in Hanoi. The noise, the dust, the heat, the dense traffic on small roads, all footpath are fully parked with motors or filled with tables for little restaurants. Walking is only possible on streets in the middle of the traffic or by circling around waste piled next to the footpaths.
It is an incredible shock. Johann is the first one to show the signs. He is in a terrible mood when we start walking from our hostel to search for some food. He declares to take the next flight back to Singapore. I find Hanoi at the beginning fascinating, but after two weeks I can't await to leave this stressful place either. Paul is in fine balance with everything, when we offer him something to eat, his favorite response is: “Gerne, gerne, Mama.” :-)
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Hanoi: Pauli pants had to get fixed - again.
A friendly tailor took c |
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Hanoi: Strolling through the streets we discover all kinds
of handcrafts, like repair and 2nd-hand-sale of ceiling fans or ... |
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| ... or bamboo ladder shops. |
We find a beer pub, where the typical Bia Hoi, the local beer is served and enjoy great food. That helps with the shock. :-)
But we realize very quickly: we are back in money greed country. Back again we are the "rich long nose westerners with lots of money in their pocket" and are treated like that. Fantasy prizes, false prizing, cheating on return money we will see it all; Vietnamese seem to be very virtuous in that game.
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| Hanoi: Having Dinner. |
We have a nice little room in a small hostel. The room is a haven of quietness which we really enjoy. Before we can start in our Vietnam adventure we have to do some ahead planning of trains, buses, hotels etc. Something we have to get used to, with Emma things were much less complicated.
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| Hanoi: Enjoying a beer in our tiny hostel-room. |
We have two weeks time in Vietnam. Since 2016 some countries citizens are allowed to stay without a visa for two weeks. We were happy that we didn't have to apply for visa at the embassy but got the stamps right at the airport on arrival.
To see more of Hanoi is our first thing to do. After getting a wake up by patriotic music and the news of the day in Vietnamese from loud speakers on the street, we walk the crazy traffic and get to see the old town. All kinds of craftsmen can be found here, from metal working, to wood, basket making, food, anything you can think of.
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Hanoi: Street food stands serve breakfast for school kids, like
rice meals and noodle soup. |
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| Hanoi: rail tracks cross housing areas in the center of the city. |
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Hanoi: An old Mobylette tells a bit of the countries' history
and the former French colonization. |
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| Hanoi: Fruit & Vegie bikes. The price is only ... |
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| ... a starting point ... |
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| for negotiations. I like it ;) |
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Hanoi: Amazing! At every corner in the old quarter
we discover another handcraft, here glass cutter ... |
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| ... tin-box-makers, ... |
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| ... shrine makers, ... |
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... tailors (no matter which color the
seam needs to be ;)) ... |
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| ¨... or stamp makers, where we simply ... |
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| ... could not resist ;) |
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Hanoi: the streets of the old quarter
also host countless of merchants. |
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| Old-Quarter@Hanoi: Street impressions. |
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Old-Quarter@Hanoi: Awesome street food, here Pho Bo.
Some of us love it (!), some crew members barely tolerate it. |
And we start learning about Vietnam's past. We visit the famous “Hanoi Hilton”. American prisoners of war (POWs) called a big prison like that. And we learn that this prison even had a longer past: built by the French during colonial times it housed hundreds of Vietnamese prisoners fighting against the foreign forces for independence. And from what we are told the French occupiers had many ideas on how to torture and kill people. It is a very dark and impressive place. Though in the room that is dedicated to the American POWs pure propaganda takes over. All pictures show happy baseball playing young men, them celebrating Christmas, how they receive souvenirs when leaving the prison etc. One must think they had the time of their life here. Experiences from POWs having survived Hanoi Hilton tell other stories.
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Hanoi: Prison originally installed by the French for
opponents of the colonial regime. Later used by
Pol Pot to detain and torture prisoners of Vietnam war (POWs).
The unlucky ones coin the sarcastic name 'Hanoi Hilton' for this place. |
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'Hanoi Hilton': pieces of broken glass fixed on the walls
around the buildings, to keep prisoners from escaping. |
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'Hanoi Hilton': The museum illustrates the conditions for the
prisoners during French occupation. |
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| Hanoi: Pauli gets a lot of attention, even from peers ;) |
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Hanoi: Two people playing Xiangqi,
an old Chinese board game, similar to chess. |
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Hanoi: An elderly couple picking a meal.
A scene to be remembered. |
Hanoi is home to a special form of theater. In rural areas people liked to entertain themselves with water puppet theaters and those shows can still be seen today. The puppets swim in the water, the person leading them are hidden behind a wall of rice mats. They dance and jump, there are dragons and fire. Paul loves it.
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... used back in time. They do not last longer than 3 month,
so the daily performances keep alive the traditional handcraft
of making of the puppets in the villages nearby. |
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Old Quarter@Hanoi: Enjoying one of the great coffees.
Later I discover two great specialties. |
To see some more of the northern region we have booked a two day stay at the world’s famous Ha Long Bay. It is quite far from Hanoi, some 170 km and on Vietnamese roads it takes about four hours by bus to get there. The road passes villages, industrial areas and green rice fields. Drivers are crazy in Vietnam. In Hanoi traffic is dense, but at least slow, but outside the city huge trucks join the game and now it gets totally crazy. Wild passing maneuvers, together with honking and speeding are totally normal. We have seen a lot of dense traffic on our journey, but Vietnam tops it again. At least we don’t drive ourselves anymore.
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Old Quarter@Hanoi: Ready to leave the
hostel for Cat Ba Island. It seems that Johann
and the kindle became an inseparable unit. |
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On our way to Cát Bà Islands: After taking a bus to Hai Phong
and a ferry to Cát Bà we end up in another bus to approach our final
destination: the less croudy town Cát Bà at the Southern tip of the island. |
We reach Cat Ba Island in the afternoon. Our hotel is very cheap and when we arrive we see why: big construction work is going on next to the hotel. The owner is still very helpful and gives us a room that is hidden in the back and not tool loud and at six workers go home, the dust we can cope with.
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Cát Bà Islands: Since we come off-season
there are a lot of construction sites
(unfortunately also next to our hotel)
to get the facilities done before tourists arrive. |
On a one day boat tour we explore the area of the bay and the islands and it is very fascinating and a beautiful nature. It is low season and we are only ten people on a big boat. We see the same on other boats and ask ourselves, why they didn’t join the groups together to save some fuel and other costs, someone else might understand that. We even have a cook on board, preparing a fresh and tasty lunch we enjoy a lot.
Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Bay are basically filled with thousands of limestone islands, covered with forest and wild animals. It is a wonderful place. The boat takes us several hours through the bays. On one island we see monkeys, but leave pretty quick when we see how fast and experienced they grab plastic-wrapped cookies out of a bag of another tourist. Torsten and Johann go on a tour with a canoe, while the rest of us enjoys quiet time on the boat.
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Boat trip@Cát Bà Islands: Even though the weather is not ideal we really
enjoy the impressions. |
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| ... some of the lazy ... |
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| ... others curious ... |
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| ... and yet others pretty hungry ... |
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| So better don't bring any food on the island. |
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Boat trip@Cát Bà Islands: It's quite
an experience to see them fro so close. |
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Boat trip@Cát Bà Islands: Johann and me taking off for
kayak tour. We had some fun hours exploring rocks, caves, ... |
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| ... tunnels to enclosed bays. |
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Boat trip@Cát Bà Islands: Our boat anchors 'close' to a beach.
I take the challenge to swim over there ... |
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| and yes, it was colder and farther than I expected ;)! |
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Boat trip@Cát Bà Islands: Antonia completing a drawing
of the scenery and ... |
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| ... the anchoring boat next to ours. |
To get back from Cat Ba Island to Hanoi we change the itinerary and take another boat tour, for about an hour. The tour in the bus back from the harbor to Hanoi takes four hours and we experience for the first time very rude and unfriendly tour guides. And complaints of travelers don’t seem to interest them at all. In Vietnam everything is organized by little agencies in hostels and hotels. They organize taxis, buses and tours and earn some money with that. Since everything is not really expensive we use these friendly services several times. The only problem is, that there is no security of getting a good service after starting the trip; it seems that all guides and drivers are subcontractors, or maybe cousins or brothers, who knows. Fantasy names are written on the cars, like “Happy Tours” or “White cruises” and you have no idea how to reclaim or complain for terrible service. We have met so many pretty disgusted and pissed travelers on our way, but since there is no transparency more tourists will come not knowing what they buy. It is different in hotels though: platforms like tripadvisor, bookingdotcom etc have made it possible to compare and owners seem to know.
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Cát Bà Islands: Johann and Antonia enjoying
the ferry trip back to Ha Long, |
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| so does Pauli. |
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| Selfie-Time. |
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| Last moments on the boat. |
We have a new adventure planned after our return from the bays: We will take a 14 h night train from Hanoi to Hue in the middle of Vietnam, some 600 km. The four bed cabin is soviet style, nice and cosy, not very clean, but we didn’t expect anything different. The train is called “Reunification train”, rides on single tracks and takes 24 hours all the way from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Our train leaves three hours late, because of an accident on the tracks that needs to be cleared off. The delay is actually perfect, since it gives us more time in the morning to watch landscape and villages along the way. We try the food and drinks service during the trip and enjoy the time. Tracks are pretty bumpy sometimes and I hope there will be money to renovate them one day.
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Hanoi: Taking the night train to Hue.
Somehow reminds me on Russian Railways years ago. |
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| Engaged! |
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| Night-Train to Hue: Kids love the bunk beds. |
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| Night-Train to Hue: Impressions. |
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| Night-Train to Hue: Impressions. |
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| Night-Train to Hue: Impressions. |
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| Night-Train to Hue: Buying some coffee. |
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Night-Train to Hue: Taking a last look
into the night before going to sleep. |
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Night-Train to Hue: Pauli gets some rice for breakfast from
train-bistro staff. |
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Night-Train to Hue: What a great view
for having some breakfast, ... |
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| ... even the coffee is decent. |
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| Night-Train to Hue: Johann enjoys the landscape rushing by. |
Our first stop is the city of Hue. Today it is again a big town, after its destruction during the Vietnam War in the sixties. We are now in former southern Vietnam, we have passed the 17th northern parallel, the former dividing line of the country. The most interesting is the old imperial palace and its gardens. The emperors of the Nguyen dynasty decided one day that actually the middle of Vietnam should host the capital and not Hanoi or Saigon in the North or in the South. Hue was capital of the whole country from 1802 until 1945 when the last emperor abdicated on the front gate of the palace in front of a delegation of new Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.
Since the whole area was completely destroyed with all the weapons that could be found in the arsenals during the Vietnam War we don’t expect too much and are surprised to see the whole palace, an impressive front gate and a wonderful magic garden. It is a wonderful calm place and we enjoy to imagine how the emperor sat on his thrown, after passing as the only one through the middle gate, while everyone else had to walk around. Johann wonders if the son of the emperor was also forbidden to use the emperors gate and states that he wouldn’t have let anyone to forbid him to use it… ;)
It is very scary and impressive at the same time. We are too young to remember the pictures and news on TV, I know them only from history books. The war went on from 1955 to 1975 and was actually the first real time broadcasted war that appeared directly on the screens worldwide. We stop at a place to look at a mountain called “Rockpile”. Right where we stand used to be a huge American armed fort. Today we look at a tapioca field. But our guide doesn’t have to dig deep to show us remains of a sandbag to make clear that this used to be a place in the middle of a front line. Our guide shows us pictures and maps on his pad and that makes things very real. We have endless talks with the kids that day and afterwards to discuss the Vietnam War and war in general, I think seeing all this will make a lasting memory for them.
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Visiting the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along Route 9:
Listing to the history of mountain Rockpile.
Some 50 years ago this place ... |
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| ... looked like that. |
The Ho Chi Minh trail, that we have already seen in Laos also goes through some Vietnam area and we learn about the functioning and maintenance of the trail, that had thousands arms to provide the northern troops with everything they needed.
Khe Sanh is another dark chapter. Built as an armored American fort close to Laos and the demilitarized zone between north and South Vietnam, on a mountain plateau this was the place for one of the biggest deceptive maneuvers in the whole war. In 1968 from January to July Vietcong troops attacked the base with constant bombing to hide preparations for an even bigger move, the Tet offensive of 1968.Tet is actually the Vietnamese New Year celebration, in January 1968 it was used to turn the Vietnam War and eventually leading the American Government to withdraw from the conflict. It still took until 1973, but since the beginning of 1968 public opinion in the US towards the American engagement in Vietnam turned from positive to negative. The New York Times and Time Magazine had put Khe Sanh on their cover, dozens of journalists covered the battle at the place.
Around 6000 marines and other troops were stationed here in January 1968, around 270 of the forts soldiers were killed and more than 2000 wounded. For northern Vietnam Vietcong troops precise numbers are unknown, around 5000 to 10000 soldiers must have died in this battle. What a bloody horror.
Today we can visit a little museum, see all kinds of shot down metal things (what was left of helicopters etc), helicopters, an airplane and some housing. The old runway is still there. Our guide lets the dusty desert come to life with lots of explanations and pictures and we can get a pretty clear picture of the camp. The landscape around is very impressive and the whole time blows a hot and humid wind on the high plateau. We don’t stay long.
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| ... when they were cut-off from logistics. |
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| ... warned their readers in a rather strange way about Khe Sanh. |
Another stop that day is an old wooden bridge across the Ben Hai River that used to mark the border between the two Vietnams. We see pictures where the whole is area is a moonscape of bomb craters. This zone had been established in the Geneva Conference of 1954, reflecting on the status quo at that moment: the north was supposed to go to the left-wing Viet Minh with their leader Ho Chi Minh and the South was reigned by Dao Bai, the last emperor and became also independent. The division went through the 17th parallel north, where a so called demilitarized zone was established. At the end it was one of the most militarized zones of the world and battleground. We walk across and jump back and forth at the division line in the middle, no border anymore today.
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Visiting the DMZ:
Our guide in front of the reunification monument of a
waiting Mother&Children at the Hiền Lương Bridge. |
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Visiting the DMZ:Standing at the former divide of
North & South Vietnam on Hiền Lương Bridge. |
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Reunification Museum@Demilitarized Zone (DMZ):
Ho Chi Minh is always present. |
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Visiting the DMZ: Along the way
we discover ... |
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| pepper plants. |
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We are pretty happy to get chance
seeing them, since we did not go far enough
down in Cambodia (Kampot pepper). |
The last scary and impressive stop of the day are the Vinh Moc tunnels. They are not the tunnels that were used for fighting, how they can be found in south Vietnam today. Here a whole village lived underground during the war. The shelter for the village was at a depth of around 30 meters, consisting of three levels: Kitchen level, living level and storage. Towards the sea and the beach there were openings for fresh air. It’s a scary place, very narrow, humid and warm I can not imagine how people have survived here. The place for each family was three square meters, to dig by themselves next to the tunnels. A lot of Vietnamese are visiting while we are there, most wear their best clothes: dresses, suits, nice shoes. It is obvious that this a place they are proud of. I don’t quite understand that, in my opinion the people of this village were held hostage here by their own government, since they were not allowed to leave the area when fighting started, but were forced to “dig or die”. Around 60 families lived in these caves for about 9 years.
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| ... to the sea and provides fresh air to the tunnel system. |
What a day. We are all tired on our way back to Hue. We have learned so much and again we connect this new knowledge to things we have seen in other countries in the region. It is great to be on a journey that connects so many countries at once and gives therefore a very special perspective of seeing it all at once.
To get a whole picture of Hue we decide to visit one of the imperial graves in the outer skirts of town. Hanoi was quite ok with the temperatures, but here in Hue we get hit by the heat again. When we arrive at the tomb-temple-complex cicadas are squeaking, the sun is burning unbearably and humidity seems to be at 100 percent, within five minutes our clothes are wet sweated and after fifteen minutes sightseeing we flee back to our car and the airco…
At the Thien Mu Pagoda we get to see another dark side of Vietnamese history. There is a car on display that the monk Thich Quang Duc used in 1963 to drive to Saigon to burn himself to death to protest against the persecution of Buddhists through the government of southern Vietnam. Someone took a picture of the burning monk and it went around the world. Like the pictures of the Vietnam War it put a lot of attention to a topic that otherwise no one would have known about.
From Hue it is just a two hours drive across a pretty mountain range to Hoi An, the little charming princess at the Thu Bon River. It is today a touristic hot spot today, after being totally forgotten for centuries. The little town has a preserved old town with old houses, temples and Chinese inhabitants meeting places that is great to visit. It used to be a trading port and looks very similar to Georgetown and Malacca in Malaysia. We really enjoy being here: we live in a wonderful little hotel with friendly staff, the old town is a car free zone and we admire the wonderful lanterns hanging everywhere giving the town a special atmosphere at night. And of course we buy several of these wonderful lamps to take home. ;) The Japanese Bridge is the icon of Hoi An, actually a little temple crossing a river. We visit old homes and admire ancient wood carvings, we see traditional dances and music and Antonia even wins a lantern in a local bingo game. The food is great and Hoi An becomes one of our favorite places in Vietnam.
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An:
Visiting the old house of Tan-Ky-family. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An:
Visiting the old house of Tan-Ky-family. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An:
Pauli in the twilight. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: I missed that opportunity. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: The kids experimenting
with a flying dragon. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Entrance to the assembly hall
of the Trung Hoa clan. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Inside the
assembly hall of the Trung Hoa clan. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Inside the
assembly hall of the Trung Hoa clan. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Inside the
assembly hall of the Trung Hoa clan. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Calligraphist writing poems. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Pauli & me liked it,
but we were the only ones in the team ;) |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Japanese Covered Bridge at night. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Typical lanterns. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Strolling through the streets at night . |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Waiting for the start of ... |
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| ... traditional dance. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Antonia won a lantern
playing a Vietnamese version of bingo game. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: After the dance
performance finished, Antonia had a chance
to try some of the costumes. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Another shape of
typical local lanterns.
Beautiful at day and at night. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Pauli seems to like the vibe as well. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Roof-tops. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Susanne & Antonia on the hunt for more! |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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Market in the Old Quarter@Hoi-An:
Freshly prepared shakes ... |
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| ... and simple, but delicious food. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Pauli & me on a excursion. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Nap-Time, I suppose. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An:
Real Cao Lầu in Hoi-An is prepared with water ... |
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| ... from this dwell. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Antonia keeps on checking the smell
of whatever plant she comes across. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Confucian temple Khổng Tử Miếuin front of our hostel. Kids use it as football field. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Antonia collecting Frangipani blossoms. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Antonia & Johann watching this man,
writing a name ... |
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| ... on a grain of rice. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Pauli loves street food, here rice cakes. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Making of the lanterns. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Visiting the handcraft museum.
Very nice ambiance. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Curious how they came up with this name.
In any case apparently one of the best places to eat in town. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Paulis comment 'dead guys'
(german: 'tote Leute, eeh') |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Fruit sale on the street.
Very friendly, but pretty pricey! |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Pauli watching these guys playing Xiangqi, an old Chinese board game, similar to chess. |
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... then finally our coffee arrives.
The bottom layer is all condensed milk. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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| Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Impressions. |
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Old Quarter@Hoi-An: Pauli and me exploring the
Confucian temple Khổng Tử Miếu. |
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Pauli admires the colorful protection against demons
(they can only walk straight ;)) |
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| The temple itself has seen better days. |
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In the rear part of the temple we find a workshop for producing
parts of lanterns. We don't quite understand how this fits together. |
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Antonias collection of blossoms being nicely arranged in the
hostel room. |
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Another faithful item made it to the end of it's life cycle.
After 9 month of daily use the cover of our IPad needed to replaced
(at least according to Susanne). |
We have booked flights from Hanoi to Seoul, so we have to get back from Hoi An to Hanoi and take again the night train from Hue. The drive from Hoi An to Hue is by train also, but we have bought hard seater tickets, which means that we get to sit on wooden benches in the train for two hours and enjoy the fantastic mountain range reaching into the sea. It is a very scenic drive!
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Night-Train back to Hanoi: The first few stations we traveled
on hard seats with very friendly co-travelers.
Quite an experience. |
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| Night-Train back to Hanoi: Impressions. |
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Night-Train back to Hanoi: The tracks lead along the bay.
It's said to be one of the world's most beautiful itineraries. |
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| Johann enjoys the head wind, ... |
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| passing by at old locomotives. |
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| I ordered an Ice Coffee, |
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| and look at the green rice paddies. |
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Someone once said: "Green is good for your eyes".
I fully agree. |
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| Later Pauli joins. |
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| The food offered in the train. |
Oef, back in Hanoi. Grey, noisy, dirty, I can’t wait to leave.
We arrive early in the morning on our night train. The plan for the day is to “visit the dead man”, Ho Chi Minh in his Mausoleum in the center of Hanoi. Torsten and me we have already years ago seen Lenin in his tomb in Moscow, so we know what to expect. For the kids it has a bit that ghost train feeling. It is all very organized: brother Ho can only be visited between 8:30 h and 10:30h, so we have to hurry up with breakfast and get in line to wait our turn. Waiting lines are the same as in Moscow, endless long rows of people around the building and grim looking armed soldiers in white (!) uniforms, golden belts and white shoes (Michael Jackson would have loved it.) guard the crowd. We are not allowed to carry our camera with us, nor any other bags, nor Pauli on our shoulders… ;-)
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Back in Hanoi: Pauli not yet awake (neither are we)
and still in his pajama, needs ... |
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| ... urgently a new diaper (poor guy) ... |
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Hanoi: We still cannot believe that the rail tracks go
right through apartment blocks. |
Waiting time isn’t so long though, since walking past Ho Chi Minh doesn’t take more than 30 seconds, the whole crowd wanders all the time, no stopping, no shopping. ;) School classes have priority and we see hundreds of little school children, dressed up, holding each other’s hands walking through the mausoleum. There are even kids just about the age of Pauli being dragged through, not sure if they were able to glimpse above the barrier around the tomb. While we wait outside and watch all the school children, the Vietnamese standing in line with us get comfortable, start chit chatting and kneel down on their heels, but as soon as one of the white archangels shows up they jump up and line up in two neat lines. Amazingly fast and precise, they haven’t done this for the first time.
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| Hanoi: One of the last destinations on our wish list ... |
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Even groups of toddlers at the age barely older than Pauli
visited the site including the Mausoleum.
The past is kept alive and still present! |
With the mausoleum comes a whole complex of museums featuring Ho Chi Minh. They are interesting, especially the old pictures, some furniture of his home is left also. Also interesting to know, that apparently he had written in his testament that he wanted to be buried in earth quietly. But the cult around this iconic figure is unabated still today.
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an exhibition of the cars donate to and used by Ho Chi Minh
like the Peugeot 404 or ... |
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| The perfectly renovated Ho Chin Minhs Residence is |
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| ... attraction for people like us, to check out how Oncle Ho ... |
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| ... has lived and worked. |
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Hanoi: Coffee-Break. This time with a
traditional drip coffee. |
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| Hanoi: BTW there is a motorbike underneath the bags. |
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| Hanoi: Motor-bikes everywhere. |
It’s time to leave. Torsten enjoys Hanoi and uses the last day to wander around to see some more houses and cafes, the rest of us is pretty fed up with Hanoi. For the kids it adds to the stress, that they are touched all the time by other people, this irritating behavior is very annoying. Paul is in the center of attraction all the time and tries to run away whenever someone approaches him: “Boah, Mama, die Frau, eh!” I find the trying-to-squeeze-out-money behavior very annoying too. (When we are on the plane I am told that the water bottle of 200 ml costs instead of 2 Dollars, as mentioned on the menu, 4 Dollars “because we are on an international flight”, this is my last contact to a Vietnamese on this journey...)
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Hanoi: Kids getting a little tired of
noddle soup. Time to move on. |
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Old Quarter@Hanoi: It's hard to describe
the traffic with a static picture. |
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| Old Quarter@Hanoi:Market in the . |
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Hanoi: Fish, frog and other unlucky animals being
tortured, killed and sold on the spot. |
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| Old Quarter@Hanoi: Impressions. |
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... also called bullet-proof
(as rich as a whole meal). Pauli loved it. |
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| Another favorite of Pauli: Yoghurt Coffee 'cà phê sữa chua', ... |
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... which we enjoyed in the legendary Cafe Duy Trí.
It' was worth the long walk from down town. |
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| Hanoi: Watching the preparation of ... |
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| ... Bánh Cuốn, rice pancakes stuffed with pork meat. |
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Hoi-An: Blueprint for one of the future project ideas born
on our trip. By motor-bike going through Vietnam from
North to South or vice versa. |
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Hanoi: The sign in the middle indicates the entrance to a cafe
... |
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| ... located in the rear house, ... |
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... with a stunning view over
Hoàn Kiếm Lake (Lake of the Returned Sword) and ... |
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... on an interesting construction site next door.
These guys are building a house closing neighbors' windows.
(It's worth to enlarge the photo, just click on it) |
There are two sides of Vietnam and both are very strong: the friendly, helpful, colorful and smiling one and the unfriendly, deliberately infringing, dishonest and corrupt other one. We experienced both and it makes a double-picture.
 |
| Hanoi: Defeated by physical laws. |
 |
| Hanoi: 'Hot Dogs'. |
I can only write, reading this blog,I felt hot, sweaty, and exhausted.
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