Hanoi City is the capital of the socialist republic of Vietnam, some travellers have called it the Paris of the Orient, forgive us, however, if we do not share this point of view. For us it has been a wild crazy whirling dervish, to be fair; this was possibly due to Hanoi being our arrival destination.
Hotel Hong Ngoc sits in stark contrast to the dwellings that we passed in our air-conditioned, modern chauffered car.We sat gaping at the passing traffic:
- Four people on one motorbike
- Three men on one motorbike accompanied by 3 tied pigs (more about that later)
- Huge towering billboard advertisements
- Ricepaddies ploughed by oxen and elderly villagers
The food is the exciting part, the difficulty is what to choose & how to ask qestions; The vietnamese are so polite, they mostly nod & say yes to everything. Its sweet but frustrating. Tashi & I walked randomly along streets, crazily trying to cross traffic filled dusty roads & ended at a busy market on our second day here. It was so full on & incredibly intense.
We will write more later, just wanted to get this started today as we have checked out of hong ngoc & we need to go enter the streets again, although today is sunday & a little quieter, we are hungry & we have till 8pm tonight till we catch the overnight train to sapa which lies north of hanoi in a beautiful valley, shrouded in mist, close to the border with china. is Its cold there at the moment; the locals shiver when we say we are going there! its 6 degrees celcius & we might have to go by ourselves a jumper.
We are sharing our train cabin with 2 new zealanders who we havent met yet; & we'll stay for 2 nights there. Its isolated & we are looking forward to seing some of the hill tribes & doing a few short treks!
After sapa, we will head to halong bay where we will sleep overnight on the water in a junk. we'll write later about all this & hopefully post some photos.
more from the travelling tandems next time
wish us luck
Tashi & Isabella
Bon Voyage!
2 comments:
Hey you intrepid travellers - great to hear from you. What vivid descriptions of Hanoi - I look forward to more.... Still raining in Sydney and weather a cross between Singapore and Leeds! (being English I always talk about the weather first!) Lindz organised a surprise birthday party for me at the weekend cos I've been so miserable! What a wonderful daughter I have. I had a great day and got lots of pressies and cups of coffee - heaven!!
Just sad because along with the joy of learning to receive love and being generous and loving with myself and others comes the sadness from realising what I have missed out on all of my life until now....
Lots of love
toff x
Hi Issabella and Tashi, so good to here your having exciting, busy time, so different to our world in australia, how is the pollution and what is the population in Hanoi ....Tashi is the cat food different to australian? ..........Oh and mullumbimby is getting heaps of rain as usuall. Talulah is missing you......keep having a great time and keep us posted all our love toni and talulah
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