dp - new adventures: Good Morning VietNam - 15-22Feb

This is my surprise ... out of the water, no more fishy nor critter photos for awhile. I will try to pass along what i have learned and experienced in this unusual 'dry' land. I also want to say that this trip is only possible because of Shari, who organized everything! She is amazing! This is where we will be visiting:

Beginning in Hanoi.

The flight from Manila to Hanoi was uneventful, that is always good. Leaving at 5 AM and arriving in Hanoi at 7 AM; we had the whole day ahead of us. We left our bags at Trang Trang Boutique Hotel and headed to the streets, I liked Hanoi. I should clarify that by saying we were in the Old Quarter Historic District, Hanoi is a BIG city and there are areas that i’m sure I wouldn’t like. I am also rather shocked by the weather. It's 'cold'. :) But I am ok here, except that it is noisy, everyone is honking their horns :) As we walked down the busy streets, i noticed geraniums, salvia, vinca, and other flowers that ‘we’ grow. But i guess it makes sense, if it gets cold. I was thinking it would be HOT here? We were hungry and stopped for lunch by a small lake and also buy an intersection of five streets. There are no traffic lights or signals here And you have to be aggressive and 'just go'. And as we discovered, that includes pedestrians. “They will stop”, we were told.
The restaurant was 3 stories up, a perfect place to watch the organized chaos. It was fun watching. But it was, a bit 'alarming' when you are actually in the middle of it.

The restaurant was open air and the wind was blowing and I was freezing, even though i wore what i thought would be enough. Lots of Mango shakes/smoothies here that were awesome !

So next order was to go shopping for some warm clothes. I brought clothes for hot, humid, weather—obviously should have done more research. All the streets in this area are ‘shopping’ streets. They were organized in such a way that each street had a unified theme: streets with jewelry, streets with watches, streets with food, streets with clothing, streets with household items. That made it easy to know which streets to avoid. There are many many shops that say “Made in Vietnam”.

They are outlets for North Face, mostly, as well as Patagonia and Under Armor. We hit these hard ... We shopped. We bought North Face long pants, with zip-off legs for about 12usd. Also long sleeve shirts, as well as jackets, oh, and don’t forget socks. It really was a lot of fun. Things were cheap here, and you could bargain. Although I'm not very good at that. As well as the shops, there are people on the streets selling. She insisted i 'help' her.

The currency here is called Dong (VND), and yes that’s what it is called. And, they have NO coins!... yeah, they get SO heavy! 500,000Dong is about $20. Eating is relatively inexpensive also compared to the US. Obviously we ate out a lot.

Drinking is not always cheap. My fancy cocktail, which was really good, was over 9usd. But, it was a 'fancy' Roof Top bar.

You might have noticed from the photos, that we have added 2 more people to our ‘tribe’. Brian and Julie are from Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Julie tripped and fell in Bali, and broke her foot. So they have had to alter their activities, and were not always able to join us. Julie is a trouper ... she gets along pretty well on her crutches, and now has a 'boot' instead of a cast, so she is very happy. I'd be whining every day. It has also reminded me to watch where i’m putting my feet.

VietNam is famous for a soup, called PHO, which is a clear broth either chicken or beef and rice noodle with lots of interesting veggies. But does not taste anything like chicken noodle soup. I can’t describe the flavor, but it was very different and really good. Also, lots of fresh and fried spring rolls and mixes of meat and veggies, all with interesting flavors, with rice, of course. Mostly very tasty. There are MANY Roof Top bars and we tried 2 of them.

Also a lot of food places with small short stools on the sidewalk. Speaking of sidewalks, they have them. But mostly they are used as places to sit and eat, or park your scooter; leaving people to walk in the street :)

Chinese New Year had just ended. It appears they are still celebrating. It is a huge celebration for them. There were massive planted trees, with flowers and fruit, placed where they would never thrive. These are brought in for the New Year ! I cannot imagine how. There were beautiful lilies, gladiolus, and and giant pots of orchids everywhere too. It was strange, but beautiful. As we traveled out of the city we saw large 'nurserys' with giant trees ... all growing in some type of 'container' ! I don't know how they do that? But it enables them to transport them to where ever they are needed. This one was sitting in the entrance of a bank ... with no sun, nor rain; and it was flowering. yeah, that doesn't happen.

We did several 'tours', and i will talk about each of them in another Blog; but in between, we had time to do more shopping and sightseeing. Sometimes this was in the morning before we left on a bus that evening. On one of these days when we were out. At about 3pm Shari said we had to hurry if we wanted to 'catch the train'. We ran/walked for 20min to get to the street where the train travels. Shari is really good at looking at Google Maps and walking and finding the way to get where ever we are going. This street was packed with people. And there were tables and chairs all along the train tracks. We had to find a place to sit to watch the train coming down the tracks.

OK, so this doesn’t sound like a big deal, right? Well, the tracks and where people sit are only a foot apart. Just before the train arrived, the tables and chairs were folded up, and everyone was told to back up, and not cross ‘this’ line.

And the train came ….. not a little choo choo train, but a big Amtrak-type train, and it traveled fast, and went on for over 1 min. I deleted most of the video (my blog won't let me upload a very large file, and also because it gets a bit boring). Turn your speakers up to get the full effect.

At the beginning of the video, you'll hear someone yelling 'hey hey' ... he is yelling at the guy on the other side of the tracks that was leaning in too far. I guess they had stopped people from watching for awhile, because someone got killed … but now they are back at it again. Presumably with ‘safety measures’. I would not want to be one of the wait staff responsible for keeping people off the track, and safe, ... like the guy in the video. OK, that was an exciting experience! Then it was time for some photo opportunities.

One of the nights when we returned from one of our tours, Sylvia and I went out. It was the weekend, and we had heard it was 'Market Night'. Sounded like fun. It was not what we expected. Basically the streets were packed full of people (including some bikes and cars). All along both sides of the street, restaurants had 'sprung up' in front of shops, and businesses; and they were open for their business of eating. It reminded me of Cancun the first time I was there. Everyone trying to get you to come eat at their place.

Sadly, some didn't have any customers. Those little plastic stools were everywhere for people to sit on and eat....

Our last night in Hanoi, it was raining, but Sylvia and i went out anyway ... just one last time.

On one of our 'days in Hanoi' we went to the Thang Long Water Puppet Show. It was in an elaborate theater; that may be considered one of the oldest architectural structures in Hanoi. They opened with a traditional Vietnamese orchestra, with a woman, playing the most interesting instrument, and making different sounds with it. Not very calming to my soul, but very interesting. So the production had live music with it. The theater actually has a pond that the puppets perform in. The handlers are behind a curtain, manipulating the puppets ... but 'how' exactly is still a mystery. I think they use a long stick. So, they do not have a string attached at the top, like a traditional puppet, but from the bottom ... underwater. Each scene tells a story about the Vietnamese people and their traditions. We had audio transcripts in English, which was very helpful. Their spirit animals are: Dragon, Unicorn, Turtle, and Phoenix. It was fascinating and very entertaining; and educational.

We also visited the Hanoi Hilton Museum which housed thousands of prisoners, including during the time of the War with the US. Unfortunately, i got 'lost' and didn't see any of the US productions; and I am still upset with myself over that ... next time. I did read a lot about it though.

This is the way they SAFELY transported children across the street. It looked like a good plan to me!