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| photo by tien |
With about three days in Hanoi, we planned to visit some of the tourist spots that we learned about online, and also try out all the food dishes that are well-known in Hanoi. The first morning, we went to a little store that is just a few stores down from the city's church (this is the most famous church in Hanoi). The little store sells these 'pillow' wraps, it's kind of like spring rolls (the filling is the same/similar), but instead of rice npaper, they use pastry. And there was one that was similar to a "Ham Shui Kok" (a chinese dimsum).The store is run by an old man, and a lady who I assume is his wife, and he was in a super bad mood that morning. He kept yelling at his wife and all the customers.... but people still choose to eat there cuz they make the best 'pillows'. :)
After breakfast, we walked through the streets of Hanoi, making our way to the first university of Vietnam. Along the way, we saw a lot of stores, and there was a street that sold only paint material. This photos full of colorful bags are bags of power to make into paint.
Vietnam used to be ruled by the Chinese, so they also studied Confucius' teaching. This university was the first institution in Vietnam (since 1070), and now it's been converted into a sort of memorial for Confucius with his own temple. There were lots of students dressed in traditional dress (the girls) and dress shirts and pants and tie (the guys), it might have been like going out for graduation photos - nice to see them having fun.
The education system was like the Chinese scholar system where they had to pass a bunch of exams to become government officials or join the military. The names of the scholars who passed the exams are engraved on slabs that rest on the back of tortoises - a symbol of wisdom.
The next stop is to visit the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, as we got close to the mausoleum, we noticed there were many embassies in the area. Right outside of the Mausoleum square is the Canadian Embassy, and there was also the Thai Embassy. (I saw the US Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, and it looked almost like a prison cuz of the high wall and barb wires surrounding it.)
After a quick photo in front of the Mausoleum, we made our way to visit the house of Ho Chi Minh. During the war, Ho Chi Minh lived a simple life although he did have some nice cars, and a comfortable house - but his house was sparsely furnished. After he became president and Vietnam was independent, he continued to live on the grounds in a traditional Stilt House.
Then it was off to get something to eat. We made our way by taxi to an area that is close to the lake with a red bridge (very famous landmark in Hanoi), and nearby we had some beef jerky salad and rice paper roll. The plate is small but full and we had to mix it ourselves, but it was really good! I didn't enjoy the rice paper roll as much though.
Then we made a quick stop at the red bridge and in the middle of the lake is a "temple"/"house" because as legend has it, that a turtle used to live in the lake and it gave the king a sword to fight and he was to return the sword after the war. The king succeed and was indebted to the turtle, and so he built the "temple" and also after the turtle died he put the turtle's body on the "island" that the red bridge connects to.
top & bottom: photos by tien
Throughout Hanoi, I noticed lots of bird cages hanging from trees, and ceilings and balconies. It's quite nice to see these bird cages hanging around.... made me realize that it's been a long long time since I've seen one of these in HK (after SARS, many people do not bring their pet birds out anymore).As the sun set, we walked around the lake and visited one of the most famous ice cream joints in Hanoi. At first I thought we would be going to a fancy renovated ice cream store, but when we arrived, it was very simple and dark, but there were lots of people standing around eating their ice creams. The atmosphere reminded me of "Grease" and how the high school kids used to gather in the parking lot or at the diner.... hahaha....
Walking back to the hotel, we went back to rest for a bit before dinner. For dinner that night we had eel. This place again was highly recommended, and quite hidden away. You would probably have difficulty finding it, because the entry way goes into a kitchen area and it's hidden behind other stores.
The eel salad tasted similar to the beef jerky salad we had earlier today, probably used the same veggies and herbs. The eel noodle soup was very good! The soup was delicious!
Then we also had an eel stew (not very good), and stir-fry noodles with eel (which was quite good). The eel that was used for the salad and noodles are dried eel meat, only the stew had fresh eel meat. After dinner, we had planned to walk to the ticketing centre to see the water puppet show, but we got side tracked as we walked along the night market.... hahaha....
top & bottom: photos by tien
It's super long, and sell a variety of things - iphone cases, helmets, shoes, clothes, bags, accessories, food, toys etc. Shoppers can just ride their scooters along the road and pull up to or into a shop and shop without getting off their scooters.
Day 8: Ninh Binh (just outside of Hanoi - by car, 2 hours?)
Next morning, we had to wake up early, as we were going to Ninh Binh (a.k.a. Halong bay on land ... hehe). Our breakfast was Vietnamese Sandwich, which was not as good because the filling was scrambled egg and some meat... I prefer the ones that you can get later on in the day with the Vietnamese Sausage and pate... and it tastes better in HCM. Anyways, the store owner ran out of the baguette, so we had to wait a little while and when she got the bread, she kept putting them in the little tin cupboard that she had, like she was afraid we might learn the secret to what she put in... hehe.....As Ninh Binh is an area outside of Hanoi, you can go there by taxi, but it was more cost effective to rent a car for the day. So we got a mini van, and we each got our own row of seats. After a while on the road, we all took a nap. When I woke up, we were getting close to Ninh Binh. Along the road we can see the karst mountains in the distance and all these quarries and statue carving factories. Many of the carvings are of Buddhist figures or Lions - like something that you would see at a Mansion.
Tien was looking forward to Ninh Binh because she had heard that as you go along the river in between karst mountains there are rice fields on both side of the shore, but as we were there at the end of October, the harvest was over and there were no rice fields. However, the Karst Mountains were still impressive, and we got to go through some openings and the rock ceilings were low enough to touch. Tien also went on another one of these boat trips along a river to view karst scenery in the same area as well, and she said it was better there, but there are no rice fields there.
We had lunch at a restaurant nearby, the entire meal was goat meat. The most interesting dish was goat breast meat - the funny thing is that when Tien told me that, I thought it was something similar to chicken breast or duck breast. So when I ate a piece, I made a comment "hmmm, it's different from other breast meat that I've had", Tien asked me "what other breast meat have you had?", I replied "Chicken breast...." hahahaha, she said that it's not like Chicken breast, but actually the part where the babies drink milk from! No wonder the texture is different!
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| the dish at the top of this photo is the breast meat dish |
Our next stop was a temple nearby, the temple was built as an expansion of a smaller temple that is in the mountains and hard to get to. The new temple was built by the donations of some wealthy Vietnamese citizens. Tien describes this temple as similar to a theme park... haha I guess because of its size and the fact that they built it so nicely, but it's not really used by anyone - there's no monastery there and we didn't see any monks there.
In side the temple, there are two hallways that lead up to the top, in these wide hallways are 500 buddhist figures, each one is different, their names are engraved and each one has a different expression, posture and features. Some have big ears, some have big faces, some are standing really funny....
There are not many visitors to this temple, but Tien said that when it first opened or during important Buddhist holidays, then the temple grounds are PACKED full of people. It's really nice there and peaceful. It could probably become a very good place for people to meditate, the only bad thing is that there are more hawkers than actual visitors. Every corner we turned there would be someone trying to sell us incense or souvenirs.
Last stop of the day was the ancient capital of Vietnam. This was the capital of the first King of Vietnam. The little town that this is located in is very small, and even the temple that is a memorial to the King now, is very small. There are no ruins or old palaces to visit, so this is not really worth visiting if you don't have time.
We then made our way back to Hanoi and it took us almost 3 hours to get back with traffic and everything. I'm not sure what we ate that night...... as I didn't take any photos - may be it was repeat of something that we've already had?
Day 9: Hanoi to HCM (by plane)
We had about half a day in Hanoi before we had to go to the airport to catch our flight, so we decided to go to the village of Bat Trang for pottery and also visit the Silk village. Our breakfast was pork noodle with some taro root. One not sure if I mentioned this before, but some tourists may not be used to eat on the street, not just because it doesn't look very clean, but because the chopsticks that are available are wooden ones and they look like the ones that we have for delivery, disposable ones, however they keep re-using them after washing. So if you're not used to this, you may want to bring your own chopsticks with you. I am considering that too for future travel. For our trip, we usually just wipe the chopsticks and soup spoons with our own tissue before using them - but that really don't do much except get rid of the top layer of dust (although I didn't notice our tissue had any dirt or looking grey after wiping the chopsticks).
We took all our luggage with us and caught a taxi to Bat Trang village, once we got off the taxi, a lady came up to us and offered us pottery lessons. We accepted and in the end paid VND 30,000 (10,000 for lesson, 20,000 for the actually pottery that we made). They showed us how to use the wheel to make bowls, plates, vases, anything you wanted you can try to make. As we didn't have a lot of time, we couldn't fire our pots in the kiln, they were just dried and were still a little wet and very fragile.
As we waited for the pots/plates/bowls to dry, we took a tour of some of the pottery factories in the area. Pottery and Ceramic from Bat Trang village is quite famous, many of the stores that sell flower vases and other home decorative objects get their products from Bat Trang. And even those that are sent overseas for export come from Bat Trang. When we visited the factories, we see how they mass produce these pots and vases, and also bought some for ourselves. It costs USD 1 for a vase, which they are probably already earning a profit from, but it's so cheap to us! I wish I could have bought more, but these being fragile and us not having any more luggage space meant we had to be smart and not buy more than we can carry!
Our next stop was the silk village, but that was not very impressive, because it seemed quite small, and the products don't seem like they are unique. It looks more like everyone got the same goods from the same factory. After staying a short while, we had lunch quickly then made our way to the airport for our flight.
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| have to mix red thread and blue thread to make purple thread |
We got back to HCM around dinner time, and quickly made our way home.
Day 10: HCM on a scooter
The next morning, we made our way to District 7 in HCM for breakfast. District 7 is one of the newer, developing districts. There are many new apartment buildings and more international supermarkets and restaurants there. There is a large Korean community there and you can find many of the same coffee shops that you would find in Korea. Also lots of Korean restaurants and some Korean mini-marts.
Breakfast was some Cambodian noodles, I had one with soup, and there was another that was more like lo-meen (Chinese noodles where the soup is in a separate bowl). Unfortunately I don't really remember the taste..... hahaha....
Afterwards we rode around on the scooter to see district 7. It's really nice to ride on the scooter, and in district 7 there are less cars, so it's almost like being in Canada. They have a new shopping mall "Crescent mall" and there's also a huge Lotte Mart in the area! There are quite a few interesting restaurants in the area, and we even saw the Unilever building. In Vietnam, Unilever has a larger market share instead of P&G (this is info from Tien), as P&G usually dominates in other countries, just not in Vietnam.
We took it easy and went to a cafe for a drink, then made our way back home for the afternoon, then for dinner we met up with Thuy, Tien's friend that I met when they came to visit Hong Kong in 2010. She got married last December, and we went out for street food. We had cow stomach and other innards in a tomato-y soup, it was quite good, and we got baguette to go with it so that we can soak up all the soup. YUM! Then we also had some steamed scallop, clams cooked in soup, and greens with snail. We then went to another street vendor for dessert - Flan! This place makes the best flan, according to Tien. They have it with ice, and the flan has 3 flavors - original, coconut and coffee. Flan's not my favorite, but it's nice to eat it with ice, and I like the coffee flavor the best.
The next morning, I had to leave straight away for the airport! And that's the end of my trip! I have to say, I enjoyed the other trip when I was first went to Vietnam, although we did go to several places, it felt like I really got to enjoy each place. Whereas this time, going to Hanoi, Halong Bay, Sapa Village, was quite tight and hectic. But I'm glad to have been to those places and seen what I needed to see. :) And I had great travel buddies, Tien and N.T., who made it much easier for me.
Until the next time! (we're planning to go to Cambodia or Central Vietnam - Hue)
