Nilesh’s Posterous

28/12/2008 - I have a flight from Hanoi to Saigon today on JetStarAsia, one of the few budget airlines in Asia. Flight is about 10:30a.m. So I arranged for a taxi to come pick me up and drop me at the airport for $11 USD.. I had to leave too early to be able to find the shuttle bus that I took to come to town for $2 and I was not even sure what time it started. Taxi came in around 7:30. The driver seemed very very young.. maybe some 15 years old or something. Maybe he is very young and inexperienced, as after only 3 blocks, he hit anothe car !! He tried to close the windows and keep on driving, but the other driver got out of his car, quickly came and grabbed my driver by his neck and took his car keys from him. .to prevent him from leaving without taking care of things. I was stuck in between their fight :( Fortunately the driver phoned another taxi to come pick me and it came around 8:00.. fortunatley I had allowed some time in case things happen and things did happen.

Landed in Saigon around noon or so. Went outside to get transportation to town and talked a to few taxis, but they were pretty expensive (uh.. around $9.. but for there and according to my travel book, it was expensive). I kept on walking and found a motorcycle that was willing to take me to down for about $2. Fortunately I had the backpack, I climbed behind the dude on his moped and off we went zig zagging through traffic with my heavy backpack hanging behind.

I told him to bring to Pham Ngu Lao in district 1, the part of town where I read from Lonely planet that there were many guesthouses. Bike dropped me and as soon as I got off, a small vietnamese lady in blue uniform (badged tourist information service) came to me and proposed that she'll show me some guesthouses. Went with her to see some guesthouses in very narrow alleys and while they all were pretty cheap (US $4 or so), I did not really like them much - they were real guesthouses - the local people lived, cooked and ate downstairs and the room were upstairs. I walked about on my own for a while with the heavy backpack hurting my back. I was not used to carry this heavy weight on my back.. so my back was paying the toll. Walked for an hour or so in intermittent rain and finally found something decent that had rooms and was within my budget ($11). Booked a night with them. Showered, took a little nap and went out to orient myself. The hotel was found just in front of a huge park which featured 3 outdoor stages with free Vietnamese entertainment every night (New Year Celebrations) + also featured a huge outdoors food court with all kinds of traditional foods and drinks. So lucky me !! So I went out there and had some food and watched some nice Taiko and Chinese Dragon show at one of the stages and chilled out for bit talking to the few tourists I found amongst the mostly local crowd.

After dinner, I went about town to check out the city. Saigon is definitely much more active than Hanoi - lots more people, lots more eateries, lots more motorbikes on the street, but yet not as noisy as Hanoi (it did not have the incessant people horning at each other). As I walked around town, I found everybody's gaze was on a TV. The South East Asian Soccer Championships finals were on TV and the two finalists were Vietnam and  Thailand. No wonder it wasn't as noisy :) I also sat down at one of the make shifts tv watching stations and had a drink and watched the second half of the match with the locals.

90 minutes and it was 1:1.. thailand and vienam.. In the extra time (maybe 2-3 minutes or so), Vietnam scored and won the championships !!! Everybody was just overjoyed ! Vietnam had not won taht championships in 10 or so years and it was big time celebration ! Everybody had their red Vietnamese flag out and were parading in the streets to show their joys - roads were blocked and hundreds and hundreds motorbkes upon motorbikes carrying joyful fans raising their flags and chanting songs to celebrate their victory and show their patriotism. It was so great to watch and feel the pride of the population at winning. The manifestation and parades lasted all night night till maybe 3:00a.m - 4:00a.m. (match finsihed around 8:30p.m). I have an early morning tour tomorrow morning to go visit the Cu Chi Tunnels (the famous tunnels and cave system that allowed the vietnamese to defeat the americans when they came) and also visit the Cao Dai Temple.

Pic 1 : Joyful Crowd Celebrating vietnam's victory
Pic 2 : The whole family out on the motorbike
Pic 3 : Street Side eateries (They all have baby stools)
Pic 4 : Vietnamese Style Drop Coffee
Pic 5 : Saigon side street
Pic 6 : At a traffic light on any day, any time in saigon
Pic 7 : Motorbikes are used for everything !
Pic 8 : An eletric pole
Pic 9 : Everyday life
Pic 10 : Patriotism starts young !

27/12/2008 - Yesterday I rested the entire afternoon long and I think the drugs I took also made me kind of drowsy. It was good though to have a break, as I had just been on the move since beginning of December and not really relaxed. So this morning, when i woke up, I was in pretty nice shape and mood. The medicine did their good on my body. I had bought a full day tour to Halong Bay for today. Halong Bay is considered to be one of the seven wonders of the world. It consits of a bay with thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various shapes and sizes emerging from the sea + a few nice caves as well. Bus was supposed to come pick me up at 7:30a.m. Went outside and it was raining heavily and cold too. I guess it was not the best day to go visit Halong Bay (which is about 3 hours drive from Hanoi).

On the way to Halong bay, we stopped at some artisnal workshop where they make lots of clay and earth figurines, pots,pans and other stuff. It was very interesting to see them being made and the huge amounts of stuff they make by hand over there.

We finally reached Halong Bay after the shop stop. So many tourists buses were there and every tour was trying to group their people and go to the right boat. Apart from buses, there were also like hundred of mini cruising boats in the bay waiting for passengers. Our tour guide took us and brought us to our boat and seated us. We were seated 4 at a table and we could also go up the deck to chill if we wanted. We'd be in the bay on the boat for about 4 hours and wil be having lunch as well on the boat before heading back to take the bus back to Hanoi.

Rain had stopped a bit, but it was still pretty foggy. The boat cruised around Halong Bay and the guide showed us the different formations, the shape they represented and stories associated with each formations, such as the fighting cocks, the dog and the cat story. Interesting Folkore.

Here's an extract I took from Wikipedia about Halong Bay legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halong_Bay)

Along the bay, there are many floating fish farms. They raise many kinds of fish and crustaceans on these farms.The boat stopped at one of them to buy the fish they'd be cooking for lunch for us. The fish in these farms were impressively huge.. so were the crustaceans. I am not sure if they had been genetically modified or that's the kind of fish found in that ocean. We got to walk around on the floating farm and check out their good.

As we were walking on the farms, many boat fruit sellers approached us from their boats. These boat fruit sellers were mostly women and in some cases, they had their kids too on the boat. They had so much energy to be able to row their boats on their own in the pouring rain and come to dock the fish farm to sell us fruits. I bought some delicious tangerines and guava from them (i had already forgotten i had gotten sick the day before :)).

After we got back in the boat, the boat cruised a bit more, while the chef cooked us lunch. then they served us at our table. We had a communal lunch. My table had an Indonesian couple, a single thai girl, a french grandma and her grandson. They put all the food in the center and we had little bowls and chopsticks to eat with. We had a steamed whole fish with spices, mussels, egg cake and some bananas. Lunch was not the best lunch ever but, I was hungry and it readily got digested. After lunch boat stopped at a couple of limestone caves that we got to visit. Impressive formations.

After the cave visit, we headed back to the port where we took the bus back to Hanoi. I sat next to the guide in the bus on the way back and we had some very interesting conversations about culture, life and traditions in Vietnam. For the 3 days I have been here, its pretty hard to find English Speaking local people. So that was a great 3 hour chat we had and the most weird/interesting part of the conversation was about food. So, in vietnam Dog and Cat meat is very common food. We talked about the taste and preparation of these (not that I am going to prepare it, but I was curious). She told me dog meat is rather rabitty in flavor, but she preffers cat. The vietnamese word for dog is Cho and for cat Meo.. so i'd know if I see these on the menu what not to order.

We finally reached Hanoi. I quickly showered, changed and headed out for a show I had  bought tickets - A traditional Vietnamese Water puppet show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_puppetry). It was the traditional entertainment in Vietnam. It was perfomed in flooded rice paddies with puppets, but for that show they had some sort of pool mimicking the rice paddies and had the show. It was a nice show. Show finished around 10:00p.m. Got some simple non-vietnamese dinner and went to sleep, as Taxi was coming to pick me up at 8:00a.m the next morning  to catch my flight to Saigon.

Pic 1 : Seabound Fruit Seller's boats
Pic 2 : Many Boats waiting for passengers to go cruise Halong Bay
Pic 3 : Nilesh on the Boat Deck on Halong Bay
Pic 4: Floating Fish Farms
Pic 5 : Having Lunch on the boat
Pic 6 : Our Lunch
Pic 7 : Boats Crusing the Bay
Pic 8 : Nilesh in the caves
Pic 9 : One of the many formations coming of the sea at Halong
Pic 10 : Pottery and Clayworks at bus stop
Pic 11 : Water Puppet Show

25/12/2008 - Flew in from Lao Airways from Luang Prabhang to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. I slept for most of the flight due to the arduous bike ride all over Luang Prabhang during the day. As the flight was about to land, I chit chatted with the passenger sitting net to me and he was the first american that I met during the entire trip - Greg. Greg had been out in Asia for a while and he was flying to Hanoi to catch a flight back to the US. He had already been in Hanoi in the first part of his trip. From reading the travel books, it made it sound so scary to get transportation from the airport to the city center, due to the numerous touts and scam artists around. I asked Greg about it and he mentioned the official mini bus that takes people from Airport to the Vietnam airlines offices in Hanoi.

I changed some money and once again I was a millionaire !! The exchange rate for 1 USD was 17,000 dong, the vietnamese currency.

Together with other passengers, we boarded the mini-van and paid our $2 + $1 to drop us at our particular custom stop. From talking to passengers, Hang Bac and Hang Le, seemed to the place to stop by and then look for guesthouses, as it seems that many are concentrated around there. The minivan stopped me and I walked around trying to orient myself in the new city. Checked out a few hotels (I hardly found a any guesthouses around). The cheapest hotel i could find was $7 (Prince 49) with TV, Shower and Fan, but it was on 7th floor with no elevator and the room was very small and boxy. I checked out a few and the place I liked was Prince 79 hotel on hang Bac. I bargained to $11 from $14 and I liked the room. It was a huge room with aircon, tv and nice hote clean shower. I dropped my bags, showered and went out to look for food. First time in asia, I had some trouble finding food... all I could find were street side food that did not look to my liking at all and furthermore, it was mostly pho and pho is ot really one my favorite dishes. I walked and walked and after consulting my map, I almost went outside of the old quarter into another neighborhood. Painstakingly and hungrily, made my way back to where my hotel was and on the way found a decent looking restaurant where I ordered some Com Dien - Fried Rice. Ate two orders of that and walked back to hotel. It was still 10:30p.m or so, but everything stats to get pretty quiet in Hanoi. I think they have a curfew at 11:00p.m or something. Not a lot of people around on the roads and slight rain starting. Finally reached hotel and had a nice long good sleep.

26/12/2008 - Woke up early the next day and as in every country, went to the local market to check out the fares. As all markets in Asia, very interesting, crowded, lively and full of surprising eatables :) 

One of the biggest differences from Laos and anywhere else I went on this trip, was the insane amount of traffic on the streets.. Its non-stop and everybody's horning and horning.. constant noise, movement, danger everywhere. It took me quite a while to figure out that nobody yields to pedestrians. Pedestrians are the last class of traffic on the road :) You cannot wait for traffic to stop before crossing the road. You just got to five right into the traffic and walk your way carefully within the moving traffic to the other side. Kinded of reminded me of a very old video game - Frogger :) Anyways, for th first crossing, I took a deep breath and with a bit of hesitation here and there, I walked straight in the long 4 lane roads into traffic to cross to the other side. Its a thilling experience, but after you do it a couple of times, u get to sync your movements and steps with traffic and it becomes chid's play ;)

I walked around the area. The night before, as I had come in in the dark, I had not had a chance to see much of what was around. The area which I was, was filled with Shops. Each Road specialized in one type of Item.. some roads were only shoes. some were only bags.. some only tombstones.. very interesting. My duffel bag somehow had gotten heavier and was getting harder to carry around. So, I went to the bag street and bought a 'fake' North Face 75L red backpack. On the way back to the hotel, i stopped by a travel agency and booked an air ticket to Saigon via Jetstar asia and booked a day tour for the next day to Hailong Bay, one of the 7 seven wonders of the world.

Then I did a stupid thing. i thought that when in Rome, do like the romans.. or rather.. when in Vietnam, do like the Vietnamese.. So I stopped by a street pho place and sat down on their very mini tiny chairs and ordered a Pho Ga - Rice Vermicelli soup with Chicken. As I was eating the soup, I felt that something was going wrong in my stomach. Indeed it was. When I got back to the hotel, I was pretty sick.. had diarreah, fever and felt very sick and weak. I think my body just was not used to these germs yet ! I stayed in the hotel for a while and it was getting worse. Ventured out to find a pharmacy and that was hard too, as there was none nearby and I tried to stop around people and ask and nobody spoke English. Fotunately in Laos, the dutch girl I had met (marjolin) had given me a lonley planet vietnamese phrase book. I used that and finally managed to find a pharmacy and I was glad the pharmacist spoke Engish. Bought many pills and went back to the hotel and splept most afternoon and night long. I guess its the custom to at least fall one time sick during a trip and that was my one time :)

Pic 1 : Fruit Seller at Hanoi Morning Market
Pic 2 : Hanoi Morning Market
Pic 3 : Eels for sale at the market
Pic 4 : Shoe Store Display
Pic 5 : Bridge to go to Temple
Pic 6 : Hanoi Street
Pic 7 : Hanoi Traffic (Cyclos, Bikes, Cars Combined)
Pic 8 : Hanoi Street Scene
Pic 9 : Temple Doors and Incense