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Tom:
Greetings from Vietnam!!! We arrived last night in the Vietnamese capital and have just about recovered from the 23hour bus journey from Vientiane.
At the risk of blowing our own trumpets, getting through that journey with stomach cramps and sickness - plus a pretty confusing border crossing - seems to me to be nothing short of miraculous. Actually thinking about it, the border crossing was the best one yet, but not really being able to focus made it seem awful. I personally am relieved that that was the last land crossing until Chile/Peru in roughly two month's time. They're time consuming, confusing, unreasonably expensive and completely bereft of any organization on the part of the authorities, but hey, that's traveling! By the way, if anyone out there is thinking of making this trip (any other mentalists) we suggest not because our bus attendants and driver treated us incredibly badly (ripping people off, leaving people behind at the border, not letting people get off the bus to stretch their legs while the attendants did). It was, quite frankly, terrible.
Our hotel is lovely. I slept for 12hours last night, and have showered and I'm therefore cleaner now than I've been for weeks. Anyway Nil can talk about Hanoi, which I quite like. Love to all at home. TY
Nilufer:
Well I think Tom has said everything there is to say about the awful bus journey we took, but he did miss one thing that was particularly poignant. At around 2am the bus driver stopped at a restaurant and the attendants and him got off the bus. We thought it was just a stop to refuel/eat etc before we continued on our journey, turned out that we were staying in that place until 6am when the border post would open! By the time we worked that out and wanted to get back on the bus to try and sleep one of the attendants had taken our seat (we were sitting in the back). He was sprawled out taking up three people's seats, and refusing to wake up. But, a particularly annoying and vocal woman decided to wake the man taking up her seat by throwing water at him. This did not go down well. He continued sleeping on the seats, ignoring us, and from then on he made the rest of the journey very difficult for us. I can say though, that the journey was worth it to be in this amazing capital. Hanoi is a busy, thriving, interesting and dynamic city. The streets are alive and full of hundreds of mopeds that drive around with little regard for rules or pedestrians, and honking their horns at everything, but instead of this being annoying, it kind of enhances the atmosphere of the place- it's like a maze of craziness that you just can't help liking, that's the only way I can describe it!
The food here is really good too. We were walking around the night market, and happened on this restaurant area where all the locals were eating outside. We were given a table and plastic chairs to sit on (Tom got stuck in the chair- the furniture is just not made for western people), and we were presented with our own cooking stove and raw beef. At first I didn't have a clue what to do, but then I got it, it was an open-air self-cooking place, which I loved because of the friendly atmosphere and the fact that we could cook the meat how we liked it!
Today was really fantastic because after sleeping like gods in this beautiful hotel we went to explore the city and came across the lake which is very quaint. And then, we went to catch a water puppet show! When I started reading up about SE Asia I learnt about this very elegant art form, and the show lived up to all expectations. The puppets were brightly coloured and were expertly manipulated in the water to give us accurate and realistic impressions of agricultural and animal life. And to top it off the music was fabulous; they used really unusual instruments and Tom was ogling at them for ages after the show to try and work them out! All in all, we love what Hanoi has to offer, very pleased to be here, and looking forward to heading to Halong Bay soon.
Love to everyone at home,
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