Vietnam - June 2014 [Intro & Hanoi]

It's been a long time since I last blogged about my travels. Ever since FB became popular I abandoned the idea of blogging since it's so much faster to just upload pictures to show what I've done. However, all this uploading of pictures really don't mean much. After a while, I can't even remember what I've done and how I felt that day. A travel journal helps with that. I can't share with others what I write in the journal though... Another way to share with more detail is through this blog. Though I'm not too sure who reads this. Hahahah. Let's see how long this will last anyway...

Vietnam was my latest travel. It was chosen by my siblings as a place to surprise my parents. It's hard to gather all the family together in one place when all of us live in different countries. We initially thought of going back to KL to gather up but one of us suggested to surprise my parents instead. The plan was to get my parents to Vietnam where my brother stayed. When they asked the kids to go there instead, everyone would say that they are busy and won't be able to make it. The surprise worked and they were touched (I hope). More on that later...

In summary, the trip was good fun. It has been too long since the whole family spent time together and made me long for more time together. It would be a while before we are all together again I guess...

Anyway, back to the main topic. I've always loved going to Vietnam. The food is good, friendly people, quality clothes, awesome coffee. Since my siblings wanted to surprise my parents in Ho Chi Minh City, I decided to spend sometime up north before meeting up with them down south. Here is my itinerary for this Vietnam Trip.

Day 1 & 2 - HK -> Hanoi
Day 3 - Hanoi -> Halong Bay
Day 4 - Halong Bay -> Hanoi
Day 5 - Hanoi -> Ho Chi Minh City
Day 6 - Ho Chi Minh City -> Mui Ne
Day 7 & 8 - Mui Ne
Day 9 - Mui Ne -> Ho Chi Minh City
Day 10 - Ho Chi Minh City -> Danang
Day 11 & 12 - Danang
Day 13 - Danang -> Hanoi -> HK

Before I start, I must note that I never intended to write about my trips on my blog hence there are many pictures/details which I may not have taken to provide you a better picture of my experience... I'll do my best to describe. If you see some missing descriptions, it just means I've forgotten what I've eaten/seen/done.

Hanoi

We decided to stay at the old quarter of Hanoi after some researching. Almost every point of interest was a walkable distance from the old quarter. However, the roads were a little difficult to walk on as it's rare that the path for people to walk on isn't already taken up as a parking space by the motorbike. We had to walk on the road most of the time. It was hard not to be paranoid about either getting hit by a motorbike or getting robbed. Nothing happened to us during our time there and I doubt anywhere is as dangerous as KL when it comes to snatch thief on a motorbike in Southeast Asia...

Day 1

We stayed at Orient Boutique Hotel which was located at a very convenient location in the old quarters. From there, we walked to a place nearby called New Day to have our first meal. The price was reasonable and you could tell it's not just a place for foreigners.

 Beef noodle

 Sweet & sour pork (yes, I know it's a cliche Asian dish but Kev was craving for it...)

One of my favourite in Hanoi - Dried noodle with grilled meat ball and fried spring roll

After a very filling meal, we walked to the Hoan Kiem Lake. It was hottttttttt. It was exhausting even though it really wasn't that far away.

 The bridge that connected to a temple at the lake

From the lake, we further walked to the St Joseph's Cathedral. I was hoping that I could go in to the cathedral to have a look but it was under construction at the time when we went. It looked pretty old and abandonded from the outside but sill had a sense of beauty to it.

St Joseph's Cathedral

By the time we walked to St Joseph's, I was already dead tired. I know, I have really bad stamina. We decided to head back to the hotel to rest for a while before dinner. For dinner, I chose this place called Green Tangerine. It's highly recommended by a few people and guidebooks so we decided to give it a try. It's also just located 5 minutes from the hotel. Yay for me. Hahahah. Green Tangerine is a French restaurant in a nice looking mansion (?). It was overall a nice meal. But if I were to go again, I would probably request to be seated downstairs where it's cooler and seemed to have a nicer ambience.

 A nice place for couples to go to

 Pastry with iced parmesan cheese in the middle

Day 2

I can't remember why, but I didn't bring my camera out the whole day on the second day. ^^" If I have the time, I'll ask for some pictures from Kevin...

Anyway, we woke up early with the intention of wanting to go to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum as it's only opened for the first of of the day. The taxi dropped us somewhere close to the entrance but it.was.so.damn.crowded! There was this longggg line getting into this place. Kevin and I decided not to join the line and went to visit the outside of the HCM museum instead. We kept going around in circles looking for HCM's stilt house till we finally realised it was under renovation. Lol. We felt pretty stupid at that time. 

After that confusing walk around the HCM museum, we decided to move to our next destination - Van Mieu (Temple of Literature) where it's the first National University of Vietnam. I am not sure where we went wrong, but we ended up walking the wrong direction and got a little lost. Nobody on the street seemed to know where we wanted to go... Before getting even more lost than we needed to be, Kevin made an executive decision (I was still undecided whether I wanted to continue walking) to catch a taxi. It was lucky that he made that decision. From the looks of where the taxi went, we were pretty off course.... Hahaha. The Temple of Literature was very Chinese looking and there were many locals taking graduation photo there. It's not everyday we get to see Vietnamese students in their traditional clothes. Entrance ticket was VND20,000.

The Vietnam Fine Arts Museum was our next destination. We took our own sweet time walking around the museum. It was empty enough for us to look at the pieces slowly. For VND30,000, it was good value for money.

We were pretty hungry by the time we finished touring the Art Museum. From there, we walked to Quan An Ngon for some Vietnamese food. The concept is like a big food court centre but you don't have to walk around to order. Food was decently priced and from the looks of the crowd, it's popular among local and foreigners.

Next up, Hoa Lo Prison. I debated with Kevin on going to this museum. I'm not a fan of looking at these things. It gives me the creeps... He won in the end and I ended up going in... Though it's not as scary as I thought it'd be, I still wanted to get out of that place as soon as I could. Entrance ticket was VND20,000. 

We headed towards the Opera House before heading back to the hotel. You can already imagine I was really tired by then. We rested at the hotel until dinner time before heading out again. Initially, we wanted to go for some street food at the night market. It seemed we had already missed the night market by the time we got there. It's either the night market wasn't opened on that day or we were at the wrong place... We ended up choosing a random place, and went back to rest early as we had to wake up early the next day for the car ride to Ha Long Bay.