FOOD!!!

The table.



No I didn't go swimming, that's sweat. But who cares, the chicken was amazing and so was the tofu. One of the tofu dishes had onions in it and it tasted kinda like a McD's cheese burger! It was good haha..



Hil eating lots of tofu! mmm...I'm excited to go back to Ha Noi at the end...I'm gonna eat everything.



Delicious mocktails at a little fancyish cafe in Ha Noi.

Cat Ba Island and Lan Ha Bay

For the last few days we’ve been on Cat Ba Island, where we got our first taste of the South China Sea. Getting there was an adventure (especially at the bus station in Hanoi where everyone was trying to convince us to get on their bus – the wrong bus). It was about a 2-3 hour bus ride to Hai Phong, where we got on a boat for about 30 minutes to cross over to Cat Ba Island. From there, it was another half hour drive to Cat Ba Town. Once we arrived we had to grab something to eat before even thinking about finding a place to sleep (we MUST remember to bring snacks on all bus/train rides from now on). Finding a place to stay wasn’t easy, since we arrived on a Friday and didn’t book ahead - we were vacationing with Hanoians, and most of the rooms were full. So we lugged our packs around and eventually found a lovely place called Nam Duong to stay at with a view of the harbour for a decent price (after rejecting another option where we climbed 5 flights of stairs only to find that the sink was off the wall – the place was a dump and they wanted us to pay the same as at Nam Duong). The hotel owners at Nam Duong were very nice – they even gave us a free bottle of water when they saw how tired and sweaty we were (nothing is free thing in Vietnam so that was a nice gesture!).

On our first day on the island we rented a motorbike and explored the beaches, where we swam and sat in the sun for a while. We got to the beach early, before most of the tourists and Vietnamese on holiday arrived, so it was very peaceful. The second day we went on a cruise through Lan Ha Bay (rather than Ha Long Bay, the more popular tourist destination) so we were able to see the landscape with a bit less clutter. We were on a boat with about fifteen other tourists and we got to kayak around the bay and into a lagoon, hop off onto island beaches, go swimming off the boat, and (not my highlight) kayak into a bat cave (disgusting! and much worse compared to the ROM’s bat cave of my childhood – we didn’t stay in there very long). On our last evening in Cat Ba Town we had a great experience with a few local young men, who shared their rice vodka and chicken hot pot with us. They were very hospitable and fun, despite the language barrier – and they even wanted to pay for our meal (we didn’t let them)!

Yesterday we arrived back in Hanoi, where I went on a mini-shopping spree (silk skirt and a tank top… for wearing here of course J) and we stayed the night. Today we take an overnight sleeper bus south to Dong Hoi -  a small and lightly touristed city where not a lot of English is spoken – where we will try to visit the Phong Na Cave (hopefully no bats there!), relax on the beach and check out some of the war remnants.

View of Cat Ba Town

Fish Farm in Ha Long Bay

Kayaks

View from a beach in Lan Ha Bay

Lan Ha Bay

So Hannoyed!

Last night we fell asleep around 6 or 7pm. probably not a great strategy, but it had to happen. after waking up at 1:30am, we soon fell back asleep, only to wake up at 6am. Eventually we got up and went down stairs for breakfast, included in our stay price. Omlette and a fresh bun..so fresh and so soft. And french. I love bread and i was very happy to see it for brekky.

After a tasty meal made by an elderly woman in the little kitchen, we decided we would head south to the french quarter. I think we left the hotel around 9:30am? Along the way we were over charged for four doughnuts by a woman selling them on the street. they looked good and we had seen them the day before and wanted to try them. We paid $30 000dong for basically 2 timbits and 2 small crullers...$30 000= about $2.30 USD........how many timbits do you get for $2.30?? hehe anyway, not a big deal but we just felt a little taken. It's been a learning curve to figure out the converstion and to calculate it in the moment. We're nice canadians, it's hard not to assume the price is right. I mean, if we forgot our change in a tim hortons, someone would run out and give it to us...

To speed this up..We walked and found a pretty crazy little market..very back alley, lots of produce and lots of animal parts. Not enough people cooking them though...;)

After a while we did our best to head back towards "familiar" grounds. I've never had so much trouble navigating anywhere! Everything looks the same, but still you recognize when you are somewhere new. After a stop for food at a place with listed prices, we headed back to the hotel. It took us i'd say an hour to find it from only a few blocks away. We were losing our patience. Then this woman came along with fresh pineapple and basically put the carrier on hilary's shoulder and insisted I take a photo. Neither of us even had a camera out at the time. We both knew where this was going, but hell, i took out my camera and snapped one! haha...Hil was already irritable and lost, this was not a welcome gesture of robbery. Then, we switched. I took the carrier and stood there almost falling over while hil took an out of focus photo of me just to get it over with hah. Then she tried to sell us two small pineapples, sliced, for $50 000d! We talked her down to $25000...when really we should have just said no thanks in the beginning.

It's not so much the money, it IS relatively cheap for most things. But it's the constant feeling that you're being charged a different rate and don't know how to defend yourself. its kind of degrading and frustrating. It compromises my sense of entitlement as a white person. It's just not fair. :)

Ok, that's all from me. I'm going to go study the exchange rate.

LOVE!

Hello from Hanoi

Well we're here, in Hanoi! We survived our flights (really, they weren't that bad) and we had no problems getting our visa or going through customs. We got a ride to our guest house (Tung Trang I), which was a good first taste of the city's haphazard traffic and crazy honking. The guest house is run by a lovely woman who has already been very helpful. Our room is also quite lovely.

After settling in we had our first taste of street food. I wasn't too hungry so I thought I'd just go for a drink. Erik pointed at a few things on the menu (which was actually just heaps of food sitting out, ready to be dished onto plates) - shrimp, pork, tofu - and then we sat down. They brought us TWO plates of what he pointed at... so I passed the pork on to Erik and ate my rice and tofu and some shrimp too. Oh the good old language barrier - I'm sure this kind of miscommunication will happen many times over :) Also we must remember that $1 = 18,000 Vietnam Dong (because we think we were overcharged just a bit). Anyhow, it was tasty! And we got to eat sitting out on the street with the locals.

Our meal at the Hong Kong airport (Ramen noodles with pork/with Veggies) was our first non-airplane meal. It was a fast food type of thing, but delicious! Just for fun, here's what my almost fully eaten meal looked like:

It really is nice here. Loud, humid and a bit dirty - but beautiful and somehow calm despite the noise and traffic. I'm sure we'll get a better idea of the city over the next few days... and now it's time to relax.

BIG P.S. Just realized there is no facebook in Vietnam. Communism = facebook blackout.