welcome back to hanoi and the perfume pagoda

i didn't know exactly where i should go for my winter holidays, i ended up deciding on vietnam...for the third time...my flight to vietnam was christmas day, and this was one of the decorations in the seoul/incheon airport...korea is only 25% christian, but the country definitely gets into the secular aspects of the holiday...there are decorations everywhere...the airport was busy, but efficient, as always...the flight to hanoi was just under 5 hours, a smooth flight...since i was in the second row of the economy cabin, i was able to get off the plane rather quickly, even catching up to the first class businessmen before they got to immigration...immigration  went quickly, and then i got to stand at the baggage carousel for ages and ages...baggage claim is the great equalizer in travel...everyone has to wait, it's just luck when you get your stuff...i waited almost 45 minutes!!
from the airport i took a minibus to hanoi (the airport is 35km outside hanoi) which took an hour...it was a reminder of the craziness of vietnamese traffic...traffic in vietnam never stops, and i rarely saw traffic lights...most people ride motorbikes, and there are a few cars...even at four way intersections, there still are rarely lights!...but i didn't see any accidents, so i guess it works for the vietnamese...as soon as i got off the minibus there was a tout who wanted me to get a room at his hotel...he had a brochure, and the photos looked decent enough...the price he quoted was also the amount i was okay with spending, and he said he'd take me there for free...all of it sounded okay to me, so i got on the back of his motorbike, and off we went...it didn't take long to get to the hotel, and the room was fine, so i checked in...

my next task was to book a couple tours...since i'm a guidebook freak i had spent time reading it on the plane, and had come up with a tentative itinerary...there are TONS of travel agencies and most of them offer the same tours, so i could've shopped around a bit more, but the numbers i was given at the first place were okay, so i went for it...for boxing day i booked a tour to the perfume pagoda, which is a day trip from hanoi...starting the day after that, i booked a tour to halong bay...having those booked, i started walking around town...i walked through a temple that seemed mostly deserted...i don't know which temple it was, whether it was mentioned anywhere or not...there seemed to be some construction going on, but there was still an room with stuff in it...(i don't know what that room is called?)

somewhere in the guidebook i'd also read that vietnam is known for water puppets...it sounded interesting, and there is a water puppet theatre in hanoi, so i wandered in that direction, intending to book something for later in the evening, or even the next evening...i got there at 1645, and it turned out there was a show at 1700...convenient...i had a "first class" ticket, though the seat wasnt really all that good...plus, there was a tall guy who's bald head seemed to end up in nearly all the photos i took...ugh...anywho, the show was 45mins, and i enjoyed it...i think everyone in the audience did...we were all trying to take photos, but almost none of mine turned out well...(which didn't surprise me, as it was indoors, and fairly dark)...oh well...
after the show i wandered around the old quarter for a while...it's an area with some french architecture, a LOT of street food, a lot of budget hotels, and shops of  all sorts...these gates are on the lake, leading to a small temple...

good times...i ended up having pho for dinner, a typical vietnamese soup...i love sitting down at a street stall and having food appear in front of me...YUM...after wandering a bit more i found a bakery, complete with chocolate mousse...again, YUM...a few goodies came with me back to my hotel...
early the next morning (well, not that early, it was 0745) i was picked up for my tour to the perfume pagoda...a bit over an hour later, the minibus was finally on it's way out of hanoi...i was the first to be picked up, which meant i got a good seat, but it also meant i had to be patient while the minibus went around and around, picking up the other tourtakers...an hour later, we stopped for a potty break, or so it was called...the stop just happened to be at a place full of souvenirs and snacks, and there were three other minivans stopping there as well...as everyone piled out of the minivan (we were scrunched in pretty tight) ladies selling fruit came up and tried to get people to buy...rather aggressively, i might add...another hour later, we got to a river...a 10 minute break to do i don't know what, then we got into rowboats...

not rowboats like we have in the states, but vietnamese rowboats...shallow, thin, and long...six of us in each boat, as well as a lady rower...the ladies rowed us an hour up the river, rowing forwards, not backwards as we would've expected...it was interesting to watch...the boat ride along the river was pretty, and we saw people doing a lot of manual labor along the way...

after the boats pulled up at a dock, we got off, and walked about 100m to a lunch place...clearly, this place is primarily there to serve tourists coming to the pagoda...tofu, fish, cabbage, rice, chicken...it was a lot of food...from there we started walking up to the pagoda...there were a lot of steps...not surprisingly, it wasn't just one pagoda...on the way up i stopped at a couple pagodas/shrines on the way to the top...

fun times with photos, at least i tried to get a few  good ones...at the top i saw our guide, who had ridden the cable car up...he made it seem as though i was running really late, though it didn't seem late to me...at the top, the biggest pagoda is inside a big cave...there were several shrines inside, and as far as i could see, that was the only place photos weren't supposed to be taken...

then i  started going back down, which only took half the time...partly because i was concerned about time, partly because i was moving a lot faster, and partly because i wasn't stopping for any photos...the steps were regularly spaced, which was nice both on the way up, and on the way down...as i got back down to the bottom, i found the rest of the group, minus a few people who were still coming down...eventually everyone was together, so we returned to the boats...

according to our guide, by this point we were already over an hour later than normal...oops...we figured it was his fault as much as anyone else's...the stops the bus made weren't stops any of us would've chosen, and they added up to more than an hour...plus, the pickup in the morning took foreva and was terribly inefficient...anywho, we got in the boats, and headed back down the river...

the water didn't seem to be moving much, so i don't know whether we got back any faster...after we got off the boats the guide told us we should tip the ladies who rowed us, saying that they had worked hard...knowing that the vietnamese don't normally tip, and tipping is generally only prevalent among foreign tourists, this annoyed me...i hate required tips...i gave her some money, but she demanded more!!! (10x the amount!!)...um, no thank you...i was amazed that she was so up front about how much she wanted from each of us...she tried to hand back the money i gave her, insisting that i give her more...so i took the money, and started to put it back in my wallet, and close my wallet...she didn't like that either, and then accepted what i had originally given her...how rude...

the bus ride back into the city was definitely faster, yay!! i got off the bus before it got to my hotel, but that was just because i was motion sick, and needed "fresh" air...
i stopped at the same bakery as the night before, picking up some treats...yum...another night back in my hotel room, watching movies, etc...i love day trips:)

vietnam 3

after hoi an, it was a short bus trip (4-5 hours i think?) up to hue...another ancient city, it used to be an imperial city...it seems that whereva royals have lived in the world, the food is always better, even centuries later...there was certainly a lot more variety of food available in hue...YUM!!
before arriving in hue, i met a girl on the bus, we chatted a bit...thinking nothing of it, we both got off the bus and were approached by two representatives of the same hotel, offering a decent rate...we figured we would check it out, and if nothing else, take advantage of the free ride to the budget accomodation area...anywho, somehow we ended up deciding to share a room...and what a room it was...HUGE...HUGE...HUGE...the ceiling was equivalent to the 2nd floor ceiling...we both had queensize beds too...tv, a fan, a bathtub, towels, it was pure luxury...all for $7 a night, only $3.50 each...at that point we didn't even know each other's names, but why not? hee hee....i discovered later that night that she had taught english in japan for a year, so we spent a bit of time figuring out similarities and differences...fun...
anywho, the first place i decided to explore was the citadel...not in use anymore for the original purpose, but plenty of people still live within the original walls...i had to walk across a bridge to get to the citadel, and to hear all the offers from the motorbike and cyclo drivers, you would've thought it was a 3 hour walk to get there...but it wasn't...the largest flagpole in vietnam (37m, or something like that) is on the outer wall of the citadel...the vietnamese flag isn't anything exciting, just red with a yellow star in the middle...but it was neat to see it flying strong with the blue sky background...i wandered around the imperial city area of the citadel, with it's former temples, palaces, theaters, etc...there is a temple in there where women weren't allowed in!! not even the empresses...my favourite area was the living quarters of the empress mother, or whateva she was called...maybe i liked it most because it was totally deserted...while wandering through the imperial city i came upon the area where they keep a couple elephants...i don't know why the elephants are kept there, or what they do, but i decided to say hello, and perhaps have my picture taken with one of them...i tried to be polite, but apparently he didn't like me, because his hello consisted of shoving me away with his trunk...i tried again, but again he rebuffed me...sad...hee hee...the amusing part is that a british couple had volunteered to take my picture for me, and the guy took the picture just as the elephant was pushing me away...lol...
the next day i took a tour of various locations around the former DMZ...the DMZ (the 17th parallel, it basically follows one of the rivers in the country) was once the border between north and south vietnam...i got to see the rockpile, (there was a US base on top of it, reachable only by helicopter,) the former doc mieu base, (only the remains of a tank are left, it was part of the "electronic eye/wall" built by the US in an attempt to stop the north vietnamese from getting into the south,) the former khe sanh base, (sight of one of the largest battles, but the area really didn't mean much of anything, given where it's located...it ended up costing the lives of too many on both sides, for a hill that didn't matter,) dakrong bridge (over which the POWs were exchanged when the US pulled out of vietnam in '73) and the tunnels at vin mohc (sp?)...the DMZ area was bombed, a LOT, by the US, so villagers in several areas built tunnels...unlike the tunnels down south which were used more for fighting, these were used for living...people stayed in the tunnels for as much as five days straight...they're much bigger than the tunnels at cu chi...i could stand up properly through most of them, i only had to duck my head a little...they had family rooms, a school room, even a maternity room...17 babies were born there!!
my last day in hue i hired a bike and rode out to some of the tombs just outside town...(another advantage of imperial cities, there are often grand tombs to see...these guys liked to be buried in style!)...the tombs were great, and BIG...i again missed a turnoff, and ended up riding quite a bit farther than i expected...so i didn't see the three tombs i had intended to see, but i did see two others, so life was good...i was the first customer at one of them, the money guy had to get change from one of the local vendors...
that night i took a bus to hanoi, the capital...i arrived just after 0900 the next morning, to more touts...one showed me a brochure for a hotel, and we settled on a price that sounded good to me...($6) but, surprise surprise, when i got there, they said they didn't have any of those rooms left...but, golly gee, they could give me one of their $15 rooms for $12...ummm, no...i told them the reason i went there in the first place was for the price of the room, not the hotel itself...so i picked up my stuff and left...i've heard about that scam before, and i'm sure that it works much of the time...but i'm too cheap...so i started walking, and soon enough found a room for $6...it wasn't great, but i knew i'd be meeting up with layna again that night, so i only needed one night...
hanoi is supposed to be laid back compared to saigon...i was expecting a big difference between the two cities...but i didn't feel much of a difference...traffic was slightly less crazy, but that's about it...there is certainly a lot more to see in hanoi and it's a lot more aesthetically appealing...the vendors are more apt to try to charge foreigners high prices though, which is always disappointing...and by high prices, i mean even higher than the tourist norm...after being in vietnam for three weeks, i know what most prices are supposed to be (well, at least what a tourist can get) so i know when to walk away...
while in hanoi i visited the mausoleum of ho chi minh...when he died, his wish was to be cremated...but the government wasn't about to respect the wishes of their idol, so they built a HUGE mausoleum for him...it's a lot like lenin's mausoleum in moscow, russia...you're not allowed to take a camera or handphone in the mausoleum, they've got a check area for those...you walk in, walk past several military guys in dress whites, then enter the room itself...i counted the number of military guys in dress whites in the room itself, 13!!!! the room is temperature and humidity controlled, it's pretty chilly...it's total silence, except for the whir of the air conditioner...the guards aren't moving or talking, so it's all a bit creepy...plus uncle ho looks rather uncomfortable, and waxlike...no one stays in there for long, it's not a place for lollygagging...by the time i walked out, my camera had already been transferred from where i turned it in!! later that afternoon i visited the literary temple...i've forgotten the history, but needless to say, it's been around for a while...there were a number of temples in the complex, and since it had been used as a university at one point, there were also 82 stelae, one for each of the professors...that was probably the most crowded sight in hanoi...from there i walked south, and saw the former prison at hoa lo...most people wouldn't recognize that name, but during the war, it was known in the states by a different name...the hanoi hilton...it was originally built by the french to house rebels, and communist supporters...the north vietnamese government used it to house american pilots shot down during the war...there were pictures of many of the former inmates, from communists to pilots...they even have the flight suit and parachute that used to belong to john mccain, the former candidate for president of the US...there are also a couple pictures of him...one during his visit in 2000, and one of him being hauled out of a river after being shot down...(in that one i have no idea how they know it's him, cause the picture isn't clear, and the angle is terrible)...there was an entire video dedicated to the american pilots who lived there, telling how they had great living conditions...lots of smiling photographs...i felt like it was more propogandized than the war remnants museum in saigon...
we were sad to be leaving vietnam, as neither one of us felt like we had seen enough of the country...another country we'd both like to return to...