Nashville-Los Angeles-Taipei-Ho Ch Min City: Getting there is not half the fun when you are going to Vietnam. Flying-wise and not counting airport layover time, it is four and a half hours to L.A., 13.5 hours to Taiwan and three and a half more hours to Ho Chi Min City. The good news is that we have done some very long trips before and every one of them has been worth the "getting there" side of the ordeal, so we are excited about this one.
We flew to L.A. on Southwest Airlines, and then had to claim our luggage, re-check it at a different terminal and then go through security for the second time that day. One thing we did accomplish was talking our way into bulkhead seats on our with extra leg room on our upcoming China Airlines flight.
We also were fortunate to have roomy bulkhead seats on the way to L.A. The wait for our next flight at crowded, dingy LAX was about five hours. We passed the time talking with our friends Ed, Michele, Novis and Anna, whom we had met on a tour of South America 14 months ago and who are going to be with us on this trip.
The flight finally pulled away from the gate around 3:15 a.m. Nashville time. The bulkhead seats were not as comfortable as envisioned. They were narrow and hard due to built-in tray tables and entertainment consoles which we never used. We each took a sleeping pill and were dozing when the cabin lights came back on and they began distributing food.
We were very tired, but decided to go along with the dining session and received a Chinese pork and rice dish around 4:15 a.m Nashville time. The entrée wasn’t bad and I ate that, leaving the side dishes. Sharon was so tired that she fell asleep with her hand in the partially eaten pork dish. (I joked with her the next day that the hand looked younger and softer as a result of the soaking.) I must have dozed after dinner, too, because I don’t recall them removing my plates.
We fidgeted a bit during the night due to cramped conditions. Lights came on again at about 3 a.m. Taiwan time (about eight hours since our last meal) and breakfast was served. They were out of cheese omelets and sausage by the time the flight attendant got to us, so we had a Chinese breakfast item called kanji, which also contained pork and rice in a thicker sauce. Very tasty. Chinese pickles, a roll and fresh fruit rounded out the meal, which was served on a tray adorned with cute little Chinese food boxes. They were similar to Japanese bento boxes.
Architect Sharon started playing with the empty decorative food boxes and built a pagoda. The nice Filipino lady next to her giggled.
Though China Air’s huge 747 was very tight room-wise due to cramming seats together, the flight attendants could not have been nicer. They were all beautiful Tawanese women, impeccably dressed in uniforms, hose and high heels (Think Pan Am flight attendant, 1960s.) They were there in a moment if we needed anything.
We had a much shorter layover in Taipei, where the airport was very clean, modern and full of shopping areas. The three-hour flight to Ho Chi Min was great – good, more spacious seats, good service, pleasant flight. China Airlines serves a full meal on all flights, and I had a chicken and noodles dish, along with several sides. Sharon had quiche. The plane – a large Airbus – had a cockpit cam so you could watch what the pilot was seeing during takeoff and landing. A very fun feature.
We were greeted upon arrival at Saigon's very nice airport by a very gracious and knowledgeable tour guide named Thuy. Our tour group consisted of just eight people, four of whom were friends from the earlier trip. There were two guys each traveling solo - one from South Dakota and one from Denver, both very nice. We felt like we were getting a private tour.
Thuy didn’t let us feel sorry for ourselves after just getting off the plane after a day and a half of travel. We headed straight from the airport for the Chinatown section of this city of 9 million people, with “Mr. Ho” driving our luxury van. Motorcycles were everywhere. Ho Chi Min City, interchangeably called Saigon, has six million motorists and four million drive motorcycles.
The Chinese section, where about 500,000 Chinese immigrants to Vietnam live, was interesting, mostly because of its well categorized but chaotic market. We walked through a section where all merchants sold hats, and one where salespeople only sold produce, and one where they sold only fabric, etc. A very colorful and interesting stop.
A less compelling stop was a tour of the former South Vietnamese president’s headquarters. A very propagandized version of the fall of South Vietnam in 1975 was recited to us as we toured the hot and sticky former palace. It was interesting, but not overwhelmingly so.
Other highlights of the day included a tour of a Buddhist temple, where incense burned everywhere, a visit to a French Indochina (Vietnam's previous name)-era post office designed by the architect for the Eiffel Tower and a visit to Notre Dame Cathedral, another French era throwback across the street from the post office.
I was surprised at the number of modern buildings and shopping arcades in the city. There is one structure that is 68 stories tall with its own helicopter pad on a predestal far above the ground.
Our tour day ended with a general driving tour, during which Thuy showed us restaurant areas, shopping centers and good coffee places. Vietnamese coffee is very strong – just the way I like it.
By around 3 p.m., Thuy and Mr. Ho dropped us back at the hotel and we cherished some quiet rest time. We vowed to nap and then go out to dinner.
Day 4: March 19:. We caught up on our sleep by skipping dinner and nighttime activities and just staying in the room. I woke at about midnight and reviewed e-mails and news, and then went to sleep aagain until about 4:30 a.m.
We drank coffee and talked until the restaurant opened at 6, and we went down there for our "free" breakfast, which was part of our package. The place was terrific, with every kind of food imaginable on a buffet. Both western and Vietnamese food was offered.
Afterwards, we went walking at a large city park across from the hotel. There were people doing all sorts of exercises, and we found one area with a covered dance floor where couples of all ages were doing ballroom dancing. Music was being piped in from who knows where. Sharon and I got onto the floor and did a rumba along with the locals, and they gave us an ovation when we left. Very fun - ballroom dancing at 8 a.m.
Our destination this morning was the Cu Chi Tunnels, located about an hour and a half from Saigon. This is where the Vietnamese guerillas, later called the Viet Cong, built underground tunnels over the course of 20 years from which they attacked the French and later the Americans during the Vietnam War. To the victors go the revisionist history, and this place is a shrine to the Viet Cong. Statues of their soldiers sit near and in the tunnels, and one area even has animated VC soldiers that move.
The U.S. carpet bombed the area trying to knock out the tunnels, and the huge craters left by B-52 bombs are marked and left unfilled. Otherwise, there is little mention of the Americans at ths site.
Propaganda aside, the place is very interesting. The guerillas built about 100 miles of these tunnels all over the place, with Cu Chi being the center of the tunnel effort. The tunnels had meeting rooms, kitchens, restroom areas, weapons storage and all sorts of features. Ventilation shafts were disguised as termite hills, and entrances to the tunnels had trap doors that were covered with leaves.
The days when I could fit into one of these tunnels were many waistline sizes ago, but visitors are allowed to go down into them if they wish. Two slimmer, braver members of our group, Novis and Jed, did an excursion underground for about five to 10 minutes, emerging at another hole in the ground later. We watched one young American woman get stuck in a tunnel entrance and have to be pulled out.
We also saw a display of the booby traps and bamboo spikes that awaited those who tried to invade the tunnels. A friend from high school, Louis Frazier, who was a short and compactly built pole vaulter on the track team, died in these tunnels when he served in the U.S. Army as a "tunnel rat." Being there made me think about Louis all morning and made me sad.
The gift and resfreshment shop featured an item commonly sold in Vietnam - bottles of rice wine with scorpions and/or cobras floating inside. Like the worms in tequila, the items are considered delicacies.
Our trip back to Saigon featured some discussion of Vietnamese life and customs led by our guide, Thuy. She also gave us some basics in the Vietnamese language, which has all kinds of tricky pronunciations to tackle, but none of the verb tenses that we have in English. It was interesting.
I also have been having fun shooting pictures of the mess of wiring that adorns many sections of the city. Telephone, electric and cable wires just get installed on top of one another, with nothing getting removed as it is phased out. Check the attached photos.
We rested for a while during the afternoon rains and then had dinner with our four friends from our South American trip. We ate at a fun Vietnamese place (as opposed to French, Chinese, etc. They have everything here) called Temple Club. The room where we ate on the second floor of the place was lively because a group of University of Michigan students doing the semester at sea program was there celebrating one of the students' 21st birthday. The birthday girl's parents flew to Vietnam for the event.
I had barbecued prawns, which were very good, and the group shared appetizers and desserts.
Day 5: March 20, The Mekong Delta/Ho Chi Min City. Now this was a day to remember.
After another great breakfast at the hotel, we boarded our van for a trip to the Mekong Delta, about an hour and a half south of Saigon. The roads were congested at first with motorcycles, but the national highway provided us faster transportation for most of the way because it bans motorcycle traffic. We made a stop at a colorful Buddhist temple along the road.
From there, we went to a boat dock area and boarded our private tour boat for a ride on the Mekong. It was about a half hour ride - very pleasant - to one of the islands in that area. There, we walked for a while through the jungle to an open air shop where they make coconut candy. We saw how coconut milk is produced, dried and then cut by hand into small squares, wrapped and sold at the candy shop. The texture is similar to that of caramel. The shop also featured a rice wine tasting area, including wine that has been fermented with cobras and scorptions in the bottle.
We then were taken by mule-drawn buggies to an outdoor restaurant where we were entertained by Vietnamese singers and musicians while we ate samples of local fruits.
Nearby were gondola-style boats that then took us down a narrow tributary of the Mekong through coconut groves. Fish nets were strung through trees along the way. It was a beautiful and interesting ride.
That smaller boat looped back to the Mekong and eventually took us right up to the side of our original larger river boat for the ride back to the mainland.
Next on the itinerary was a stop at the Mekong Rest Stop, a place that looks far different than its Truck Stops of America-level name. It is a huge open air banquet center surrounded by beautiful garden and ponds. Our eight-course lunch included a prawn appetizer, squash soup, huge calamari rings, chicken, a giant puffed sticky rice ball that was interesting to watch as it cooked, and some sort of sweet coconut based soup for dessert.
The trip back took us by rice paddies, farms and other sights. We were very tired when we reached our hotel, and we took a long nap.
Our dinner was with our group from the night before, with the French restaurant La Comargue being the destination. This was a very attractively designed open air restaurant, and the food was great. Vietnam, having once been ruled by the French, has French cuisine mixed in with the local fare. We see baguette vendors on the street each morning, for instance.
We seem to have a knack for picking Saigon restaurants that attract noisy American college kids. Last night, we were next to a rowdy bunch from the University of Michigan. Tonight's crowd included a busload of enthusiastic University of California Irvine students.
Sharon and I both had a scallop appetizer and rack of lamb and they were very tasty. It was a good way to spend our final night in Saigon.
Day 6: March 21, Hanoi. This was mostly a travel day, with us flying from Ho Chi Min City to Hanoi.
Sharon and I got going around 6:30, enjoying the breakfast buffet and then heading to the city market around 9. Just the walk there – all three blocks of it – is an adventure because crossing the street with all the motorcycle and other traffic is taking your life into your hands at every crossing.
Then there are warnings about pickpockets and camera thieves, so walking around can make you pretty paranoid even if nothing happens to you.
The market is chaotic. There is stall after stall of fabric merchants, leather salespeople, jewelry peddlers – you name it. Most are overly aggressive in trying to talk you into their stalls. I often wonder how much more business third world merchants would get if they would just let visitors shop without being hassled. But the constant pestering made me want to be somewhere else ASAP.
Sharon purchased a nice red purse – probably a knock-off, for $35. The price started at $80 before Sharon and the tiny merchant lady began haggling. A few minutes later, the lady declared that she was having a “morning sale” and the price started dropping. Deal done.
Sharon’s real goal was finding some fabric for a dance dress, which she probably would have done had it not been for obnoxiously anxious salespeople, sweltering humidity and an impatient husband.
Thuy and Mr. Ho picked us up at 11 to head to the airport for our 1 p.m. flight. She followed us into the airport to make sure all luggage was secured, seats were assigned and everyone was happy. We said our goodbyes and headed to the gate. She was a very good guide and we’ll miss her.
I didn’t imagine before we came here that the Saigon and Hanoi airports would be about on par with the best in the U.S. or that Vietnam Air would have decent planes. But all of these proved to be true. Our flight was aboard a Boeing 777-200, a very large plane that holds 325 passengers. Every one of them was filled today.
Though the flight is under two hours, we were served a rice and chicken dish with a side serving of three fruits. The flight had movie screens and one of those “cockpit cams” we saw on China Air.
The only difference between this flight and a decent one back home was that there was a small lizard loose in the economy section and it crawled up our friend Novis’s leg. Good material for kidding for a while.
Hanoi has a different feel than Saigon as soon as you get into it. Whereas Saigon was very urban, the road from the airport in Hanoi takes you by rice paddies one after another.
They are interrupted at times by very attractive homes that reminded me of New Orleans manors. Probably the French influence in Vietnam. We also went past side-by-side Canon, Yamaha and Panasonic factories, all of them quite large.
Our new guide, Ha, said workers in those factories make about $150 a month, which is considered a decent wage here. He also told us that while Japan is a large investor in Vietnam, the U.S. recently moved to the top as the #1 investor in Vietnam.
Most U.S. investments are in real estate and hospitality investments such as hotels. The U.S. dollar is coveted here, with everyone accepting them and many people stashing them as a hedge against runaway Vietnamese inflation. Good to know someone thinks we are a good investment! must say that we saw far more Jaanese businessmen in Vietnam than we did American ones. If Americans are big investors here, they are doing it much more quietly.
It takes almost 60 minutes at rush hour to get from the airport to the Nikko, our Japanese owned hotel. Rooms and amenities here are very nice and some parks and attractions are nearby. I would rate it bheind our Saigon Hotel, however.
The Nikko, Our Hotel In Hanoi:
Day 7: March 22, Hanoi. Breakfast at the hotel in Saigon was something you looked forward to all night. The one in Hanoi is not nearly as appealing. Nothing wrong with it, but just not stellar. One big difference is that it tips heavily toward Vietnamese breakfast traditions like pho soup and grilled fish.
Pho, by the way, is a very tasty dish with lots of variety. You get broth boiling and then start dropping things in. The usual Vietnamese pho starts with a broth made with either chicken or beef, and then you add whatever other things you want in there. A pho “bar” will offer hot red peppers, various herbs, bean sprouts, seaweed, all sorts of things. Just add what you want.
My breakfast today was half western, half Vietnamese. I had an omelet, rice noodles and steamed rice with herbs. Sharon had an omelet and some yogurt with granola mixed in.
Our touring started at 8 a.m., with the first stop being the mausoleum of Vietnamese hero (particularly in North Vietnam) Ho Chi Min. The former leader, who once worked as a hotel butler in Boston, led resistance to the French at two times in his life, to a Catholic-led uprising of Vietnamese at another and to the Americans during the Vietnam War.
A visit to his tomb is a kind of scary experience. You are warned ahead of time about attire (no bare shoulders, ladies. No tattoos showing, guys.) And then you get there and you are warned not to speak, not to put your hands in your pockets, not to put your hands behind you back and to walk only in two-by-two formation into the mausoleum. Your camera is temporarily taken away while you are in there, too.
Once inside, there he is: Ho Ch Min, laying there on a pallet, looking like he died 10 minutes ago. We were told that his embalmers were sent from Russia in 1969 after his death at 79, and those guys did a really nice job. All around the famous corpse are Vietnamese soldiers, all watching to make sure you don’t break any of the rules on that list.
We were in and out of there in 90 seconds. Once outside, our attitude lightened. Not a single member of our travel group broke any of the Ho reverence rules, and we were much relieved. Then we were given our cameras and were permitted to shoot pictures of the building from the outside. Next to the mausoleum are the home and grounds where Ho lived. Very nice places around a big pond.
Next stop on our list was the Museum of Ethnology that celebrates the various cultures of Vietnam and of Southeast Asia. The models of homes from various clans in Vietnam were interesting, the museum was not.
On to the “Hanoi Hilton,” or Hoa Lo Prison, where John McCain and many, many U.S. airmen were held during the Vietnam War. The prison has been turned into a museum, and its focus is almost entirely on the torture and imprisonment of Vietnamese by the French during the prison’s early days, and later at the hands of the Japanese during World War II.
Almost laughable is its historic treatment of the American prisoners, who are shown in photos playing volleyball, chess and other activities. Sharon and I recently watched a documentary during which several of those former inmates were interviewed, and they told of torture and gross mistreatment.
McCain has been back to the prison a couple of times since he and the others were released toward the end of the war. There is small piece of the museum dedicated to McCain, wth several photos of him on the wall of his cellblock area, and with his flight suit on display.
After the prison visit, we had lunch at a very good Vietnamese restaurant in an old historic home. Sharon and I had fried sea bass and grilled pork wrapped in rice paper. Very, very good.
After lunch we took an hour’s rickshaw ride through the Old Quarter of Hanoi. It was a blast! We dodged through taxis, motorcycles and people as we wove up and down old market streets. I had fun shooting photos and people watching along the way. Each street of the Old Quarter has its own market items - a hardware street, a produce and flowers street, a clothing street, etc.
In the early evening, we went to a water puppet show, an 11-century old Vietnamese tradition. Amusing puppets seemingly float on water while musicians and singers perform next to a water stage. Hopefully my pics can explain it better than I can. It was a very fun experience.
Day 8: March 23, Hanoi-Halong Bay: We had to pack overnight bags for our Halong Bay cruise, check out of the Nikko Hotel and store most of our luggage until our return.
Sharon and I were the only two in our small tour group who opted to do the overnight cruise on Halong Bay. The others were going to the bay, doing a shorter cruise, and heading back to Hanoi for the night. We are glad we opted for the overnight cruise, because it was a great experience.
The trip from Hanoi to Halong Bay is pretty tedious, but there are some interesting aspects to it. You basically travel northeast from Hanoi past hundreds of rice paddies and through dozens of small towns. Some of the small cities along the way thrive on coal mining, others on industries like the Canon printer factory that dominates the place. We also passed many schools and a teachers’ college.
Ha, our tour guide from Hanoi, went with Sharon and me. We had a large van, driver and guide all to ourselves. Ha, who is originally from a small village in North Vietnam, was trained to become an English and French teacher, but quickly switched to being a tour guide after making only $35 a month in 1996 as a teacher. He is a bit serious, but very likeable and very, very well-spoken.
One of our discussions during our nearly four-hour ride to Halong Bay centered on the Communist government’s censorship of cable broadcasts such as CNN. He said the screen goes blue if CNN or another network has a controversial report on Vietnam. But he laughingly told us that most educated Vietnamese people can get whatever information they need via the Internet, so TV censorship wasn’t blocking the desired info.
We discussed political corruption that can run rampant here, particularly with road building projects, as well as the upcoming elections. Only 5 percent of the Vietnamese people are members of the Communist Party, but about 85 percent of the elected positions go to party members.
Capitalism seems to be the prevailing philosophy these days, though, and the government will have a hard time containing things now that information and capitalism are taking hold.
Ha told us about everything from Vietnamese weddings to burial practices. (They bury the deceased for three years, then dig up the bones and inter them permanently in a box marked by a large monument (often pink and often set where the person worked. For instance a person who worked in a rice paddy would be buried in that same rice paddy.)
Halong Bay is a branch of what the Vietnamese call the Eastern Sea. Others have always referred to the body of water as the China Sea, but dislike of the Chinese here is very evident, particularly in North Vietnam. Disputes with the Chinese abound, including recent feuding over oil rights and ownership of an island where oil is plentiful. While Saigon has many Chinese immigrants, there are hardly any in the north. Yet China is right near here.
The bay is under consideration for a “Wonder of the World” status and has already been proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage site. It has more than 3,000 “karsts,” or limestone islands, with 700 of them being in the World Heritage zone. These towering islands rise out of the sea in dramatic fashion and a cruise through the bay is spectacular. It was hazy today, but the haze burned off quite a bit by evening. The haze gives the islands dramatic touches anyway. I had a great time shooting pictures.
By mid-afternoon, we arrived at “Surprise Cave,” lodged deep inside one of the karsts. We switched to a smaller boat, which took us to the island. We climbed up the side the small mountain via stairs and entered the first if three connected caves.
The caves were one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen. They were beautiful. We climbed around in them, going from one cave to the next, for about an hour. You eventually emerge at another hole in the mountain about an eighth of a mile from the first, and then you climb back down to your boat.
Once back on the ship, we sat for a few minutes and then Sharon, who is game for any adventure, went kayaking around the ship.
Dinner was a very good buffet featuring pork, fish, chicken, spring rolls and all kinds of other foods. They had marshmallow cake and bananas flambé for dessert. We sat on the deck of the ship after dinner to watch the sun go down. Our ship, the Emeraude, which is a replica of an old wooden bay cruise ship with 35 cabins, anchored for the night near some of the karsts.
Our cabin on the Emeraude is very cute, with wooden trim and bamboo on the walls. There are two twin beds and a small table in the room, a washstand room and a toilet that doubles as a shower. The shower actually pours down on the toilet and water-protected toilet paper holder. No chair in the room, no closet. But we were very pleased with it.
I watched part of a French movie called Indochine, which was being shown outdoors on the top deck, while Sharon went on to bed. I was in bed, too, by 10 p.m. What a day!
Thursday, March 24, 2011: Halong-Hanoi: We got up early today so we could watch the sunrise and enjoy the sights of Halong Bay one last time. We were on the top deck drinking coffee by 6 a.m., and Sharon volunteered to be in the early morning tai chi class. In fact, she was the only passenger to join in. Three of the ship’s staff also participated.
The sunrise wasn’t really a sunrise, because today was very overcast. But it was still fun to watch the rocks emerge from the haze as the islands revealed themselves one by one. Ships large and small that had anchored near us started to stir and some moved out of the area at first light.
We had a good breakfast at around 7, and then enjoyed the final journey back to the docks, where we disembarked at 9:30. Ha and our driver were waiting for us.
The drive back to Hanoi was as slow and taxing as the day before’s, maybe even more so because we had seen everything along the way on Wednesday. We seem to have a knack for being on the road whenever a school lets out, and in Vietnam that means slowing down while hundreds of uniformed kids pedal home on their bikes.
Friendly Planet is good about not having you stop at tourist traps, a sidelight for tour guides wanting kickbacks in some places. But we did stop at a big touristy place both going and coming to Halong. Ha didn’t push is to buy anything, and Sharon and I just used the restroom and had a cup of coffee. We were out of there in 20 minutes.
Sharon ventured off to the Hanoi city market when we got back to town, while I answered e-mails, uploaded photos and worked on my blog. Sharon came back about an hour and a half later with some good deals for which she bargained. She was proud to have found her way to the market and back.
We had dinner at a place called the Wild Lotus. It was very good and very reasonably priced. We had some crab/pork spring rolls in rice paper, fried scallops, roasted sea bass and fried rice with chicken.
It was a long day, so we just went back to the hotel to read and rest up for our long journey home, which starts tomorrow. But.....
After I had tucked the blog in for the night and started reading my Kindle book, the hotel room started shaking and moving. The curtains were swaying back and forth. I woke Sharon and told her I thought we were having an earthquake, which turned out to be the case. I threw on some street clothes and called the front desk. They told me it was nothing to worry about, though I heard people screaming in the background.
We decided to stay put unless they told us to move, so we did. I slept rather fitfully because I was worried that more tremors would happen. All was quiet the rest of the night.
Here is a story from this morning:
Tremor felt in Hanoi after earthquake hits Myanmar
English.news.cn 2011-03-25 00:46:16 FeedbackPrintRSS
HANOI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Residents in Hanoi reported tremors on Thursday night after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hits Myanmar.
According to Vietnam News Agency, buildings in Hanoi shook when the earthquake happened, causing panic among residents of apartment blocks. Residents in tall buildings felt dizzy and heard the shattering of the windows.
Le Huy Minh, Vice Director of Institute of Geology and Geophysics under Vietnam Science Research Center, quoted as saying that the tremor was caused by the earthquake happened in Myanmar Thursday night.
A strong earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale jolted northeastern Myanmar on Thursday night at 20:29 local time (1369 GMT), but so far there were no immediate reports of casualties or property damage, according to Myanmar's Meteorology and Hydrology Department.
March 25: Hanoi-Taipei-L.A.: We had several hours of free time in Hanoi before our trip to the airport and our 5:05 flight to Taiwan, the first in a string of flights over the next day or two, depending on how you count it.
We had breakfast in the Nikko Hotel. Breakfast each day is included as part of our travel package. As usual, they offered a mixture of eastern and western choices, and we each had a little of both.
Sharon went walking and rickshaw riding after breakfast and I stayed in the room to answer e-mails, reporting in after the earthquake that everything was okay with us.
At about 11, the two of us started walking through the neighborhoods around the hotel. Hanoi has 44 lakes which have been incorporated into the city park system, and we walked by one of those. We also drove by a lake today where John McCain landed after he was shot down over Hanoi. A plaque marks the spot.
Most of the area around our hotel is occupied by very small storefront businesses. Typical lunchtime in Hanoi sees hundreds of people sitting on tiny plastic stools along sidewalks, huddled around tiny plastic tables eating Pho (noodle soup), or chicken or fish with rice.
The sidewalks get so congested during lunchtime, with a mixture of people and motorcycles contributing to the problem, that you have to walk in the busy streets at times to get around. We have learned some techniques for avoiding motorcycles and cars and we used the skills again this afternoon. You basically are supposed to walk right in front of speeding motorcycles, but keep your pace steady so they can maneuver around you.
Our ultimate destination after some exploring was a French restaurant tucked away on a side street. Good thing we brought a map from the hotel, because this place was on an alley-like street. But La Verticale was worth the walk. We were greeted on the patio by the French chef (and probably the owner) of the place, and he advised us to sit indoors due to the cool weather.
We were escorted to an attractive upstairs room where we were the only customers at first. A prix fix menu was a great deal, so we ordered from that. Sharon had a pate’ appetizer, veal cordon bleu and crème brulee for dessert. I had roasted oysters with brie and almonds on top, the cordon bleu and some chocolate cake with cinnamon ice cream.
We walked some more after lunch and then returned to the hotel, where we read and rested in the lobby. Ha soon showed up, and after we filled out his evaluation form we all headed to the airport with our driver.
The Hanoi airport is a long way from town and the drive took about an hour. Once there, Ha escorted us to the ticket desk, helped us secure some good seats on the Vietnam Airlines plane and then we said our goodbyes. He rates as one of our best tour guides ever – great guy with great knowledge. Thuy was also great, so we were very fortunate on this trip. Guides can make a huge difference in a place where language and culture are a challenge.
The Hanoi airport is nice, but the shop owners are obnoxious and the prices are pretty bad (except Sharon’s beers, which were a dollar a can.) I finally decided to sit down, read and avoid contact with the airport merchants.
Our flight to Taipei left on time and was fairly uneventful. We are in the Taipei Airport at the moment, killing time before our flight at midnight. It is 9:30 Taiwan time.
This airport is the nicest I have seen. It has free Internet lounges and free Internet everywhere. It has a shopping mall about the size of Green Hills Mall. Its child play area is like a public playground, only made of sparkling plastic. One area has a gigantic wall covered with TV screens. Free luggage carts, lots of electrical sockets, moving walkways, TV viewing rooms, you name it.
Our flight to L.A. was 10 and a half hours, which was quite a bit shorter than the ride over to Taiwan a week ago. We had a 300-plus mile-an-hour tail wind, which accounts for the better time. I had an exit row seat, though it was very tight width-wise. I chatted with a retired high school teacher named Greg from Napa Valley. Sharon opted to move to a row behind us where seats were wider.
Once at LAX - Los Angeles Airport, we went through all kind of long lines and hassles to get through immigration and customs. It is a horriby run airport with inadequate facilities for the amount of travelers it tries to accomodate. We hit snags there almost every time we go through L.A. Two and half hours after we arrived, we finally got out of the airport and over to the Airport Hilton.
Great trip all around. I would recoomend Vietnam if you are looking for a good, affordable place to go. And Friendly Planet did a good job with the tour at a very reasonable price: around $2,000 apiece inclusive of everything.
Day 10: Depart Vietnam/Arrive USA.
