My Hanoi adventure started when we first arrived in Vietnam. I was greeted by lots of motorbikes roaming around the street. I wasn’t too terrified of the situation having stayed in Wuhan, China for a semester back in my poly days. Those days I get more of these and I am frankly kinda used to it. Crossing the roads can be a tad difficult and daunting but lucky me, I get to hold my boyfriend’s hand while crossing the road. :)
The street food culture is a little different in Vietnam. Most of the people there sit on little stools which I only get to sit at home. At certain stall, you get stool as table too! It can be quite uncomfortable in the beginning but as days goes, we were getting quite used to it! Well, as the saying goes, do what the Romans do so that you can get full experience of the locals’ lifestyle. This is also the reason why I am rather okay with trying new things and new food. I may not like everything I’ve tried but I won’t shun at the idea of trying. That’s the whole point of travelling, isn’t it?
So we had Pho, a type of guotiao soup noodle paired with chicken/beef/pork. It tasted pretty well and we had this as our breakfast for a few days! It is really quite awesome to be sipping hot soup in the cold mornings. If you ask me to recommend Vietnamese food, I would strongly recommend this dish to you. Any stall we visited, Pho almost never disappoint.
At night time, we visited the Hoan Kien Lake. I am not too impress with the lake though but it is nice taking a stroll by the river after dinner.
We went to catch the Water Puppet Show which is somewhere near the lake. May I say the show was FANTASTIC? If you are there, be sure to catch their Water Puppet Show. No pictures as I wanted to enjoy the show fully and I felt that it doesn’t show much respect to the ones behind the scenes of the show. It is simply amazing having the stage look like a mini river and puppets coming alive, telling different folk lores. I have played with puppets before on stage and I know it wasn’t easy controlling a puppet, what’s more to make it look alive and believable. But puppet on water? Boy, that’s even more challenging. I wish I know how they do it!
We also went up the Fort Cannon Hill which was about 20mins of upslope walk.
The living proof of how tiring the walk was. :p
This is the real proof though! Their mother made it with the help of her two sons.
Me and the Lee family.
A jump shot! I wonder if you can spot the la lang that she’s holding onto.
My jump shot looks kinda ….erm…awkward. HAHA.
My bf and me at the top of the fort cannon!
The MTV worthy rock walls. Looks like the mum maintained a good smile throughout. hahaha! My bf’s sister suddenly had this brillant idea of filming a MTV here. And we did. It was so funny but I can’t bear to let you guys watch how retarded we were. lol.
I was being annoying by singing “shoot me down but I won’t fall cos I am titanium~” with a weird Singaporean accent a few times that day. lol. I think I am funny! No? :D
We also went to a very nice cafe to have our coffee while viewing the scenary at the top level. Now the thing is, nobody is going to take your orders from the top level cos it is quite tiring to climb all the way up. So they took our order at the ground level. And if you have anything to let them know when you are at the top already, you gotta climb all the way down to tell them.
Saw two Caucasians having this so we got one to try.
Two other attractions which we went to were the Temple of Literature and Prison Hoa Lo. In the former attraction, you get to see statues of Confucian and his four disciples where people pray to for good results in studies. Nothing special since we get temples like this everywhere. In the latter attraction, you get to see the prison used by French colonist in Vietnam for politcal prisoners. This place is quite interesting but be prepared to see propaganda.
Well, I’m not blogging in chronological order because my mind has failed me and there were too many things to keep track of. But I think I have written enough about the interesting things I saw in Hanoi. It’s been a great trip! Will be blogging about Hoi An next so stay tune! ^^
With love,
Vivian
