Disco Knitter

Our last night in Hanoi, Bia Hoi corner.  This picture doesn’t really do it justice, but you get the general idea of how close the traffic is.

The Sunny Hotel from across the street.

We were picked up by “German” (apparently westerners murder his real name, and he won’t tell us what it is), and hauled off in a mini bus for the 3 hour drive to Ha Long Bay.  The bay is crowded with boats like this (I saw at least 6 different boats with the same name).

We had to climb over three other boats to get out to our boat.  Luckily I had spent a lot of time while working on Water Rats doing this sort of crazy stuff while carrying a lot of heavy gear, so I wasn’t phased by it as I might have been before the water rats experience.

Our boat.

Our cabin.  We paid $110 US for a three day tour.  Similar tours were going for about $235 per person, so I have to wonder what we are missing out on.  We’re pretty happy so far, and the vegetarian food has been much better than anything we had in Hanoi.  There are a couple of other freaks on board, and we get herded together for meals.  Last night they gave us fake prawns which were much better than the ones we get in Sydney, but still pretty horrible. 

We stopped at a floating fish shop, and I was greatly saddened to see these magnificent creatures patiently waiting to die.  One of them was scooped up in a net, and then dumped down again, his body started pulsating rapidly, and his companions all matched the rhythms.  Obviously social animals, with advanced communication skills.  But tasty, so the brains don’t matter.

We sailed past a lot of rocks.  This is a place of such majestic beauty, everywhere you look is another postcard picture.

We were in excellent “hands” as we cruised to our first stop, an island with amazing caves.

The view down to the bay from the top.

Another knitter.  Actually she was crocheting, but I was happy to see her anyway.

This was another amazing day.  The day trippers went for a night kayak paddle last night, and apparently we’ll get to go today.  Mark and I are having a much better time than we thought possible with all the stresses of the past few months, and though it is sad to see the passing of each day, we look forward so much to the next adventure.

Cut vegetables in the food market.

Last night we found the night markets (pretty much accidentally, we were wandering around looking for the Barbie shop that Mark had found earlier in the day) and we saw a few signs that had the word “chay” on them.  Chay with an accent over the a sloping in the right direction means vegetarian, sloping the other way means fish.  We think.  After my second fruitless attempt to get a decent veg pho, this was very promising, and we’re seriously debating wether to go here for our last meal in Hanoi (between returning from Ha Long Bay on Thursday afternoon, and catching the train to Hue at 11pm), or going to KOTO, the restaurant run by an Aussie to teach hospitality skills to Vietnamese streetkids.

Mark is snoring gently, and my body clock is stubbornly refusing to switch from Sydney time.I can hear the city starting to come to life, but it is still dark outside.  We are being picked up at the hotel at 8am for our 3 day trip to Ha Long Bay.  The tour company is “ET-Pumpkin“.  I would have picked it just for the whacky name, but Mark did some research and found that other travelers have been very happy  with the company.  We are doing this trip, and apparently they cater for vegetarians.  Still tossing up whether or not to sneak out of the hotel for a quick pho before Mark wakes up.

I should also mention that The Sunny Hotel has wireless in the room – not fast, but it’s an amazing luxury to be able to blog from bed in a city with open sewers.

Woman selling flowers – there are fresh roses everywhere, and yesterday I saw some stems with each rose individually wrapped in damp newspaper to preserve them.

Tourist shot of my darling at Hoan Kiem Lake.

Incense burner outside the temple on the lake.

Tourists at the temple.

Marble gravestones.

Made with an angle grinder on the footpath/workshop/restaurant/motocross track.

Yesterday we wandered from over the top shopping malls past beggars with suppurating wounds. It seemed like the city was only half alive, a slow sunday waiting for New Years Eve. We had lunch at Cabbages and Condoms, a restaurant that does AIDS outreach and family planning in Bangkok, the idea is to make condoms as easy to get at the market as a cabbage.

Back to the hotel to pick up our bags, and a quick stickybeak at the rooftop garden, where I saw possibly the saddest bird I have ever seen. The birds where in cages not much larger than a refrigerator, with no mental stimulation. There was an African Grey Parrot (very smart birds, about the same mental ability as a human toddler) with one blind eye, clearly showing signs on insanity.

The hotel found us a cab to get the airport, we drove past more and more huge billboard tributes to the king, and testaments to his good works. Earlier at the posh department stores we had seen the special Edition “Kings iPod”, which has his symbol engraved on the back, and on a special case. We ate mangosteens from the market just before customs (my favourite fruit in the known universe, and almost impossible to get in Sydney), and had an uneventful flight to Hanoi.

The first thing we saw as we stepped off the plane into the corridor was an immigration official in the dark green of a cartoon communist, complete with hat, and epaulettes with stars on them. I’ve not travelled in a communist country before, and didn’t know what to expect, but certainly not this. More dark green at the immigration counter and customs, and then out to meet the driver from the hotel.

Who wasn’t there. No guy with a sign with my name on it. I pulled out my laptop to check the reservation, in which Mr Trung says “we will see you on the 31st”, but not explicitly “we will see you at the airport”, so I figure we’ll just get a cab to the city, and find the hotel. I changed some money into Dong, and chatted up a lovely Irish backpacker at the currency exchange counter, who agreed to share a taxi with us to the city. He was going to a hotel in the Old Quarter, and I couldn’t find the address of our hotel so we just went to his, and figured we’d find the Sunny Hotel when we got to the Old Quarter.

We said goodbye to Paul (a law student living in Melbourne for a year), and set off to find an internet cafe to get the address of the Sunny Hotel, when Mark discovered that he had left his man bag in the taxi. Including his iPod, my noise canceling headphones, and new camera. Mercifully his wallet and credit cards were in his pocket, but it was a rude start.

We went in to Paul’s hotel, and spoke to the very helpful guy at the desk. He allowed us to use the lobby internet to get the address, gave us a map to get to the Sunny, and suggested we ask them to call the taxi company. He seemed to have this strange idea that the cab driver would return the bag.

At this point I should mention that Hanoi traffic is absolutely insane. We were on a narrow lane, with barely room for three people to walk abreast on the street, and there are cars, and motorbikes, all with horns blaring, and people sitting eating and drinking on footpaths, kids playing in the street, chaos. We only had to go about 700 meters, but with heavy bags, overtired, and a little bit dazed and confused, it was a little more harrowing than I would have liked.

We made it to the Sunny, and the guys behind the counter gave me a blank look when I claimed to have a reservation. I showed them the email, but apparently Mr Trung doesn’t work there, and they had no rooms left. It was at this point that my equanimity was severely tested. Thank god for Mark, who took the opportunity to DEAL WITH IT, while I got out my knitting, and started muttering to myself that I was NOT going to have a holiday from hell, this was just a hiccup, and it would all be sorted out shortly so we could enjoy watching the clock ticking over past midnight into a bright new year.

And it did.

The guys at the Sunny were wonderful. They called all three taxi companies (after Mark drew a picture of the taxi we were in), and found us a hotel. While we were waiting for a cab to take us to the hotel, the call came in that the bag had been found, and could be collected from the Sunny in the morning.

We went around the lake to get from the top of the lake to the top of the lake, and I strongly suspected that the taxi driver was ripping us off, but I was so happy to be going to a hotel (any hotel), and the promise of a door to lock my bag behind was more than my bad mood could take, and when we drove past the lake and saw the Jade Mountain Temple in the middle, all lit up, I was positively beaming.

The Prince Hotel is a little shabby, with a spiral staircase up two flights to a high ceilinged, marble floored room and french doors leading out to a little balcony overlooking the (very noisy) street. We dumped our bags and headed out for beer. Found an intersection with a Beer Hoi shop on each of four corners – tiny plastic stools creeping out into the traffic, and freshly brewed beer in a clear glass for about 16c each.

At 11:40pm, they stopped serving beer, and started chasing customers away. We were bemused, but not alarmed until about six green uniform guys piled out of a van, mostly with bright red and white stripped truncheons, but one with an electric stun gun thing. I know it was a stun gun because it was charged, and sparks were flying off it as he waved it about.

Tourists stood about taking pictures and even having their pictures taken with the goombas, and my day had reached a new height of surreality. Remember if you will that at this point I’ve slept approximately 4-5 hours in the last 48. My appetite for challenges is pretty high, and my ability to adapt and thrive in a challenging situation is something I’m quite proud of. But the stun gun did freak me out a little bit.

We wandered off to the lake for the “big event”. There were ballerinas, there were pop groups, there were fireworks, streamers and glitter, and even a hard rock version of Auld Lang Syne.

Happy New Year Hanoi.

Artwork in the Ambassador Hotel lobby – an auspicious start to our journey…

We headed out early to the weekend markets, but we quickly convinced that with the amount of crap on offer, it was going to be spectacularly difficult to find any crap that we wanted.  I did get myself a single souvenir of Bangkok – everywhere we go there are portraits of the king, and about every 10th personn is wearing a yellow t-shirt with the kings symbol on it.  I found one with a glittery background, it seemed a fitting souvenir of our experience of Bangkok so far.

I stumbled across the animal section (some entire rabbit pelts, and some extremely cute labrador puppies), so we decided to catch the skytrain back to Siam station, where I saw a “Loft” department store sign.  If you know Japanese department stores, you’ll know that loft is AWESOME.  Bangkok Loft isn’t quite as awesome, but we did find some evil “Bloody Bunny” stationery.

No pictures yet, as we don’t have the card reader for the camera with us.  WE have to be back at the hotel in 3 hours to catch a taxi back to the airport for the short flight to Hanoi.

I’ve had 4 hours sleep, and rather more wierdness than I’ve experienced in quite some time.

The lovely Damian (parent to the trio of gorgeous bunnies I features on the blog a few weeks ago) has taken over as head chef at Club Denistone, and he was also kind enough to drive us to the airport, and usher us through security. My cunning postbag trick fell flat – no more post boxes at airports, and they don’t do the security check until after immigration – so I couldn’t even hand my weapons back to Damian if I got caught. I didn’t though! I practically had to take my pants off to get through the beepy door, but eventually they let us through to the duty free area.

We bought some booze, couldn’t find a Gorilla Pod (no internets while I am writing this in the hotel room, so no link, but you can google it), and then off to the plane. Mark had the blood supply to his left leg cut off for a minute or so while we took off (I am a slightly nervous flyer – saw rather too much of the Lockerbie disaster when working as a tape operator at Ch 9 years ago). We got exit row seats, and a pretty good vegan meal (except for the skim milk instead of soy, but no biggie), and three utterly crap movies. The iPod was great for 2 1 hour tv shows before the battery expired, so hopefully in this mecca for consumer electronics (Bangkok) we can find a battery pack for it today.

Checked in to the hotel after midnight last night, but were “upgraded” to a superior deluxe room which had been inhabited by tobacco breathing dragons. My lungs attempted to shut down, and so we traipsed back to the lobby to switch rooms. Once the guy with out bags finally found us in the new room, it was well past 1am. At that point I was too tired to sleep, so I considered going for a walk, but settled for a wee nightcap of duty free Baileys and Cointreau.

One small tip for anyone coming to Bangkok. Read an up to date guide book. The taxi fare from the airport is now 900baht, not 2-300 that it says in the guide book.

Off to breakfast now, and then heading to the sky train for a trip to the weekend markets. Apparently they sell live animals, and conditions are pretty revolting, but if I can avoid that bit I can pretend it’s not happening.

So I’ll leave you with something amusing to while away the hours. It involves endless timewasting, and a very cute bunny.

Here.

And speaking of bunnies – here is some news I found rather heartening. Australian scientists are working on a variant of the myxo virus that causes infertility instead of a slow painful death. Go Aussie!

Dad’s Christmas pressie.

When he was in hospital in Bangkok, about to have surgery under a general anaesthetic, Adam and I sent him flowers.  I hadn’t thought what we would write on the card, so when the florist asked, I got a bit flustered, and this was what I said.

Dad was chuffed.  He had never been sent flowers before, and he kept the card like a prized possession, and showed us when he got home.  So I figured a little subversive cross stitch was in order.  One of my better gifts…..

BTW.  Keen eyes will notice that the word “don’t” isn’t centred correctly.  Built in irony.

And tomorrow, the plane that interrupts your conversation in Sydney’s inner west around 5.10pm will be carrying me and my sweetie off to Bangkok to start out honeymoon.  Wish us luck.