[ by Stian ]
Part 2 of our Vietnam-experience, and we were now heading for the northern part of the country, to the second largest city and capital city of Vietnam, Hanoi. We had been warned before our trip that
people in this region are not as friendly as further south in the
country, but it couldn't be that bad, could it? I would also be
exploring the world famous Ha Long Bay, which from 2012 was declared
as one of the 7 new wonders of nature – so it was all set for an
amazing experience once again.
Train-ride to Hanoi
 |
| The train we came with:) |
We got the amazing staff at the hotel
in Hué to book our train ticket for us, and it turned out that they
then of course booked the most expensive ticket – first class ride
– from Hué to Hanoi. So we were given a sleeping compartment with
«soft» beds. Actually – the only difference between the most
expensive ticket and the lesser expensive ticket was the difference
of soft and hard mattress. But really, IF OUR mattress was soft I
can't imagine how the hard one was, cause this was the hardest
mattress I had ever slept on. One could feel the wood under the
mattress literally... ah well, but surprisingly I did manage to sleep
even though. We also shared compartment with a very nice German couple,
Markus and Christine, who we had very nice conversations with, so we could not complain about the company at
all. The ride was a good one indeed.
May De Ville Legend Hostel
When finally in Hanoi we found our
way to our hotel/hostel, May De Ville Legend Hostel, which is a
combination of a hotel and a hostel as they did have expensive room
as well as dorms. The first impression was not very nice though
as the receptionist seemed totally uninterested. I was to check in
only for one night to begin with as I was to do a 2-day-1-night Ha
Long Bay tour the next day, while Kenneth checked in for all 3
nights, as he opted not to go to Ha Long Bay with me. The girl behind
the counter seemed so unwilling to help that I wanted to grab her hair smash her
head in the counter – which was a WOW and TOTALLY
different experience compared to the excellent service we had received in Hué. The rest of the staff didn't seem very interested in their job either.... Anyways – we did get checked in in the end. We
shared a 6 bed-dorm and among the other guests we had Jakob from
Denmark, Simone from UK, Arne from Germany and Maggie from the US. As
I was only staying for this one night to start with I only got to
briefly get to know Simone and Jakob in the evening, while I would
get the chance to get to know Maggie a bit better, as I also would get
to hang out with her when I got back from the Ha Long Bay tour later
on. I also got to know Arne just a bit as we shared dinner in the evening the first night.
Sightseeing in Hanoi
As our hostel was located in the old part of the city center we did some sightseeing in this area shortly after check-in. The atmosphere is totally
different compared to central Vietnam as the streets are very crowded
and the shops are many. When we entered the shops no one seemed
interested in helping us at all. At a couple of places I did find
some nice shirts and we tried to ask for my size but the tiny people
just shook their head shockingly trying to gesture to us that sizes
for a big guy like me did not exist... ah well. So we just stopped
entering any shop at all as this was a lost cause in this area of Hanoi obviously.
Otherwise there were not much to see at all in this area...
Phò Bó – Speciality of Hanoi
 |
| Very tastless Phò bó. |
We had lunch at an ok establishment
called Quán Bia Minh, close to our hostel and I ordered myself a Phò
bó, which is a beef rice noodle soup, the most traditional of all
meals in the Hanoi-region. It was not to bad, though a bit tasteless.
Unfortunately Kenneth told me that the Phò bó he had in Da Nang was
way better than this one, so I was a bit disappointed as I had been
told that I should wait until I arrived to Hanoi to try this specific
dish as Hanoi was supposed to have the best one (as it's originally
from here). Ah well. I also had a chicken mayonnaise sandwich on the
side, which actually tasted better than the Phò bó. Ah well, but I
CAN recommend Phò bó still, as it still is a very nice meal:) The service
at the place was not too bad though at least, even though it seemed
like they tried to avoid us, but I guess that had more to do with
language challenges than plain rudeness.
Dinner with Arne in the evening
We went back to the hotel for resting
and got in touch with Arne, another of our roomies and we decided later to
go for dinner together at the Gecko Restaurant. Gecko
Restaurant is a chain of restaurants at least in Hanoi, but probably all
over Vietnam. Arne seemed like a really nice guy and we got along
well. This time I had stir fried beef with pineapple, onion and rice
for my main and then a crepe with vanilla ice cream and chocolate
sauce for dessert, and a banana-,carrot-, and ginger-milkshake on the
side:) VERY nice. As we were the only guests in this very small
restaurant the service was pretty OK as well. Arne left us a bit
earlier and me and Kenneth had the option of hanging out in the area
afterwards, but most places were too crowded really, and I noticed
that I was about to get a headache caused by the massive level of pollution in
the air... I have honestly never experienced this anywhere in the
world before. The pollution is really bad, so we opted just to go
back to the hotel and rest for the rest of the evening.
Ha Long Bay
The very next morning I checked out
of the hostel and was then picked up by my tour company for my
anticipated Ha Long Bay Tour. Funnily enough the tour company was
ironically called Joy Travel Company. After spending like hours
to pick up everyone who was to participate on the tour, we finally
found our way towards Ha Long City, where we eventually could board
our very nice old boat and head for Ha Long Bay. Of course this was
not without a problem to start off with, as we (for some strange
reason) had to give up our passports to the guide, with the reason
that he needed them in case we would be stopped by the coastal
authorities, so that he could prove that we were legal tourists of
Vietnam. Not everyone agreed at first to give up their passports with
the very logical reason that IF we were to be stopped by the
authorities then we could show them the passport ourselves. The
lesser smart guide insisted on having our passports in his care so we
just had to give up this «fight». It's funny how many places in the
world that requires you to always carry your passport on you or to
give it up to strangers to at be able to participate in things, even
though it is strictly recommended by authorities all over the world
NEVER to do so... ah well.
Ha Long Bay, literally meaning
«descending dragon bay», is both a UNESCO World Heritage site and
one of the new 7 wonders of nature, and is famous for it's thousands
of limestone karsts and isles in various sizes and shapes. The
islands are rising spectacularly from the ocean and are topped with
thick jungle vegetation, and many of the islets are hollow, with
enormous caves as well. The area is pretty big, though I would only
be visiting the core center as I only had a 2 day-1 night tour. The
more extensive tours also included the island of Cat Ba and Tuan
Chau, which are also very popular among the tourists.
My tour group consisted of 18 people
all together. About 15 of were like around 18-20 years old.
I was the only one who was 29, then we had David from Canada who was
60-something and who I shared compartment with, and also there was
the 70 year old female Thai professor Noppamars (gotta love that
name). We also had Olivia (18) from Sweden, Adam, Jack, Craig, Lucy,
Parisa, Imy, Abi, Roisin and Philippa who were all from the UK, and
then Toly, Eldar, Shaked, Meytal and Tal who were all from Israel.
Despite the massive age difference between the 15 young and us 3 old,
the chemistry was pretty good.
To begin with we all found our way
to our compartments, which turned out to be really nice, with real
showers and everything – so I was very pleased. Then we all
wanted to get to know each other and therefore found our way into the
restaurant/bar–area of the boat. The guy running the boat though
had other plans though as he decided that he wanted to listen to very loud techno music at the
same time, so it was not possible to communicate at all with each
other. So we politely asked if he could turn down the volume of the
music as it felt very disturbing for everyone. The guy, who would
turn out to be just an ass all over, reluctantly turned the volume
down just a bit. After a short while it was time to get our lunch
served. The same guy served us the lunch, but instead of putting the
plates with food carefully down on the table he almost literally
threw the plates on the table. So we had spent less than two hours on
the boat and I already had a massive negative impression of this
local guy. Ah well at least the group seemed to come along very well.
This first day we also made a visit
to the floating village of Ha Long Bay, and also got to do some
kayaking. We were also supposed to go swimming afterwards, but
because we spent so much time picking up people in the morning and
then getting to Ha Long Bay the night fell upon us suddenly and the
guide then refused us to go swimming, which was a bummer. So the rest
of the evening all the youngsters decided to get way drunk. We had
been told that it was not allowed to bring your own booze, as we had
to purchase everything from the bar. The youngsters didn't really
care about this. They all purchased a can of beer each only, and then
just left the restaurant and filled the can up with their own booze
before returning to the restaurant. I am not sure if the bartender
really noticed or not, unless he was totally stupid – because it
was interesting to see how massively drunk some became, but with NO
increase of numbers of cans on the table. I actually do suspect
that I was probably the one who spent the most money in the bar with
my purchase of three cans of soda, as I opted not to drink this
evening. Of course it was the Swedish girl and the Brits who drank
the most and got way drunk, while the Israeli was way calmer and spent
more time on the top deck just chatting them in between. The 70 year old Thai
woman was observing the youngster and their drinking games together
with myself from the end of the table. I asked her if she found this
type of drinking uncomfortable, but she just laughed and told me that
she was enjoying this observation and that she was pretty wild
herself in her younger days. I just had to laugh, cause I could not
really picture this in my head at all. Haha;)
Ha Long Bay – Day 2
I had a very nice sleep in my lovely
compartment, and the shower was indeed one of the better ones as
well. The only thing on our agenda for this day was to visit the Hang
Súng Sô't Cave, which is a massive cave, though it really is just
a cave. I got to take some photos though – but
unfortunately the weather for the two days we spent in this area was not of the very
best, as it was cloudy all the time. I can just imagine how beautiful
this area would have been if there had been sun and blue sky,
so maybe I have to return one day. On the way back to Ha Long City the two elder of my group noticed that there was a lot on
the itinerary that we did not get to see or to do, so they questioned
the guide, but he did not seem very interested and just explained
that we just did not have enough time to do it all as we were so late
the previous morning. Like that was OUR fault? So in many ways the
tour could have been way better, especially the managing of it.
Back
in Ha Long City we got served lunch at this local place (which was included in the tour-package), but the food
was pretty much awful and almost no one ate. On the way back to
Hanoi it turned out that they had miscalculated the number of people, as they
put two groups together for only one bus. Considering that we filled
up a whole minibus on the way to Ha Long City the previous day as
well, this was a disaster. People were NOT happy. Ah well. Eventually
after a massive number of phone calls and complaining everyone did get
back to Hanoi, but there were so much to criticize about this trip. Thankfully most of us got it VERY cheap, but some paid twice as much
as others (not at all worth the price then) as they had gotten it
organized through their hotel. So my advice for anyone heading for Ha
Long Bay: Find a tour company office in the city of Hanoi and ask for
the best price there, and then compare with another company – the
difference might be pretty big some places.
Snake Restaurant Experience:)
 |
| White Cobra till US $70 |
Finally back in Hanoi I checked in to
May De Ville Hostel again, though this time I got a different room,
so I had to deal with new room-mates. I did meet Kenneth already in the lobby and he asked me if I wanted to join him and
Maggie for one of the most genuine Vietnamese experiences ever, which
would be to eat snake. Of course I could not refuse this so I ran up to
my room and freshened up quickly and met up with them in the lobby. As there are
more than one snake-restaurant we asked the staff at the receptionto
recommend one for us. The restaurant we got recommended was Ngyen Van
Duc Snake Restaurant.
In the taxi on the way over to the
restaurant we were stopped by this very nicely formally dressed young man on his
motorbike. He asked us if we were heading for snake restaurant and we
said yes. He then right away tried to convince us to come to «his»
restaurant instead. Maggie told him that we had already been recommended one particular restaurant, so we wanted to stick with the
recommendation. The guy then asked us the name of the restaurant and
when he saw the name of the restaurant on the piece of paper we had,
he was surprisingly amazed, bursting out «is this the restaurant you
got recommended? Who recommended this? This is our restaurant!». He
was very happy, and just told the taxi driver to follow him. At first
we were a bit skeptical as it seemed like the taxi driver took us to
a dark and deserted back alley somewhere. At first we did not
believe that the nicely dressed guy spoke the truth (remember we have
had bad experience with nicely dressed people before as they usually
are scammers). We did though follow him (he was cute) and he did end up leading
us to the restaurant we had been recommended (thankfully). The location of the
restaurant was definitely not the easiest to find, but when we first
got there we were amazed how beautiful this restaurant was. Kenneth
even recognized this restaurant as the one snake restaurant they used for the
Norwegian version of the Amazing Race as well, so it really was a
nice place. It also turned out that the nicely dressed guy, who's
name was Ba Thuy, was the nephew of the owner of the restaurant. He
told us that he was in charge of the foreign customers but that they rarely have foreign customers at all as they
tend to go to the other restaurant, which is more of a show-restaurant. This restaurant is just a regular one which focus mainly on the
whole dining experience and is not so known among the tourists as his uncle refuses to promote it in any way. So sometimes he just had to try to "steal"
customers by stopping the taxis then.
As tradition is we had to choose our
snake for the meal. The first snake we were shown was a white
cobra, and we went for this one. The snake was an aggressive one,
trying to attack us. At one point I was very worried because Maggie
was really getting close to the snake trying to get the best photos of it.
They put the head of the snake on the floor and cut it's teeth out,
and then they hold the snake up in front of us again – it was even
more aggressive at this point, understandable though. We had to
witness the process of it being slain and they removed the beating heart,
which one of us were to drink later on as a part of the experience.
One of the main differences between this restaurant and the
show-restaurant is that at the show-restaurant one of the guests have
to rip the heart out of the snakes body with his teeth, while the
snake is still alive, we were told. We were suddenly very glad we did
not get the other restaurant recommended. We were then shown to our
table where we got the menu presented. Ba really turned out to
have passion for his job as he did a really good job explaining every
part of the meal for us.
The white cobra was prepared into 10
different courses for us to enjoy throughout the evening: Snake
soup, sautéd snake w/onion and spice, fried snake meat, snake spring
rolls (Very good), fried snake bones+dry pancake, snake pie, snake
intestines, snake soup w/ginseng, snake gruel, snake blood + bail mixed
with rice wine and then also snake wine. So it was a very very
interesting meal in every way. Some of it was very good, some was OK,
some was not as good, but it all depends what one like I guess. Like
intestines has never been a favorite of mine no matter what kind of
animal it's from. Though everything from the snake is supposed to be very good for male vigorous. The overall experience was really really good
though and we had a great time. As it was Maggie's suggestion and
passion to do this experience she also got the honor of drinking the
heart. Ba Thuy turned out to be such a nice guy that we
exchanged facebook, so he is now a friend of mine of facebook. I hope for his sake that he does get his dream of an owning his own snake restaurant in the future fulfilled.
A walk in the park
Safely back in the old town of Hanoi
we went for a walk. We dropped by the very nice Café Nola but it
was about to close so we decided to return the next day. We then did
a walk in the park together with Maggie and got some photos taken and
just relaxed the rest of the evening.
Last day in Hanoi: Breakfast with Mickael and Aydeen
 |
| Aydeen, Mickael and myself |
The next morning I had breakfast at
the hotel with Maggie, though she had to leave almost right away. As Kenneth is not much of a breakfaster I had to eat by
myself, but I was not the only one by myself this morning. I got
in touch with Swiss guy Mickael, and later on Pakistani
girl, Aydeen, got in touch with us as well, so the three of us
had a very nice chat together. Mickael turned out to be a very
interesting guy who was traveling the whole world at the moment as
well, and was at the same time freelance writing for a Swiss magazine about his experience. Unlike myself he had plenty of time and was traveling from Europe to
Asia on a motorbike. His recommendation for me was to go to Iran, as
Iran was the country he'd had some of the most amazing experiences in.
He felt it to be very safe, as well as very friendly. When he arrived
to Iran it turned out that he could not cash out any money from the
ATM's as his cards did not work on any ATM at all. He was still taken care
of by local people who gave him accommodation and food and made his
experience an amazing one. Aydeen could also recommend me to go to
Pakistan as it is a beautiful country as well, and according to her,
also safe. So I was lucky to be accompanied by two very lovely people
this morning as well and one day hopefully I will be able to go to both Iran and Pakistan, two countries which I really never have been considering going to before, until now.
Temple of Literature-National University
Later on I met up with Kenneth again
and we decided to do some sightseeing again. We had been recommended
to see the Temple of Literature-National University, which is a
historical and cultural vestige of national level. The temple of
literature was constructed in the year 1070 and the national
university was constructed in 1076 and has for nearly 1000 years
preserved it's ancient architectural style of many dynasties and
precious relics. The area is pretty nice indeed, and we also got to
observe some graduates during their photo shoot as well. This
historic site does though not function as a university anymore, but is solely
a cultural heritage of Hanoi -and also a very beautiful back drop for graduates to get their photos taken of course.
Lunch at Café Nola
So the last thing we got to do in
Vietnam before heading for Hong Kong was to have lunch at the very
very nice Café Nola. We found ourselves a spot on the terrace
where we could admire all the colorful umbrellas they had put up for
decoration. This time I ordered myself Bún Bò, which is fresh
noodles with beef, salad and peanuts – and I have to say it was an
amazing meal:) This one was way better than the Phó Bò from two
days before. So I was very happy. On the table next to us we had
«entertainment» in some other white and blond tourists who was
going on about relationship stuff (read: hopeless guys), and it was
obviously that one of the guys was gay as they were talking about the
Grindr-application as well. So I and Kenneth were eavesdropping to
their conversation for some time, which was pretty funny.
Overall impression of Hanoi
Overall we were not very impressed
with Hanoi, not I at least. It is a horribly crowded city and the
level of pollution is so massive some places that I could not even stay outside
at all as I got a massive headache. The people in
Hanoi is in general extremely rude, and this I also noticed in the Ha
Long Bay area as well. There are some really nice places, but I feel
that you really have to look a long time to find them, or to get
someone to recommend these places for you. I am very happy that we
got to have the snake-restaurant experience and that we found Café
Nola as well. I am glad we had Maggie to hang out with, and it seems
like Kenneth had a very good time with Simone, the UK girl, when I
was in Ha Long Bay, as well. But I really do feel that I have gotten
to experience what is to experience here and I will probably never
return, but that is ok:) I cannot be returning to every place I visit
in the world either, haha;)
We were though recommended to go to Sapa though, far north in Vietnam, almost on the border to China.... as it is a very very traditional area with loads of rice fields - though we did not have time for this... so that's the only thing to experience in Northern Part of Vietnam that I still have to do...
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