Monday, March 9, 2009

Vietnam

Good Morning Vietnam,

... well i have finally started properly travelling and Emily (the lucky travel companion that i bribed so that she would come with me...) flew from London to Bangkok and then on to Hanoi in North Vietnam on the 5th of March. Having arrived in Hanoi late on the night of the 6th after a very easy but very long flight we checked into the hostel that we had booked in advance. As we drove up to the hotel in the taxi, he stopped at the entry of a back alley and pointed "down there...i no drive..." I subsequently shoved Emily out of the car to go check it out while i stayed in the safety of the taxi. It turned out to be our hotel and the right lane after i had been arguing with the taxi driver in my obviously fluent Vietnameese about taking us into downtown fish market. However once we got into the hotel, it turned out to be clean, with 2 beds, a relatively clean bathroom with hot water for about 5 minutes if you used the shower early. It was, we thought then, probably the best hotel we would be staying in while we were travelling, and for 7.50 US a night... pretty reasonable we thought. For the next 2 days we wandered around Hanoi old town visiting the temples and the lake in the centre. As our hotel was down a backalley off a back alley we walked to the centre and to the temples with the Lonely planet as our bible. It was, admittedly a little scary, not just because of the way we seemed to have been thrust into the middle of the local fish and snake market, but more because of the copious amounts of mopeds and taxis... We quickly noticed that there is LITERALLY no side of the road to stick to, if there is a space you go for it and the larger vehicles (whether it car or cow) has priority... as you can imagine extremly hard to cross a road with out being hit.
We then left Hanoi on a bus that was assured to us to be 3 hours and straight to NinhBin, however after getting on our guide Peter told us that we had got onto a day tour of the rice paddies in an agriculture area and 2 temples as it was prayer day, if we didnt want to do this then we could stay on the bus... So we decided to jump on the band wagon(so to speak) and went along.. this turned out to be a great success and the rice paddies in particular where amazing where we got a row boat down the river and through the paddies. Emily and i took a boat on our own having been told that we were English and not vietnameese and therefore wre heavier ( 4 vietnameese people are allowed on one and i refuse to believe that we are the same as 2 locals....)
Today we then went to the national park in Cuc phuong and visited the primate centre there which rescues monkeys from captors and helps them be able to go back into the wild - a great experience!

We are now waiting for our bus ( a night sleeper bus) to take us further South on a 1 hour ride to Hue where we will hopefully meet some more travellers (which have been surprisngly sparce and old..) and some more sun (you will not believe how cold it is in northern vietnam!!). So until then... please email and i will update as much as possible!!!

xxx

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