Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

☰

Vietnam — 17, morning in Halong and return to Hanoi

2011-06-07

As I wrote in the last post, for some reasons we decided not to stay in Halong for the carnival night, but to head back to Hanoi. At the hotel they booked us (not for free) a bus ticket, which, by tradition, stopped right outside the hotel.

And while we were waiting for it, we took another walk around Halong. I didn't write about its souvenir market, which operates in the evening as well under the light of lamps (that occasionally go out), and therefore is called "Night market". Well then, fixing the mistake. There's a lot of everything there: shitty t-shirts, chopsticks, junk  figurines, lousy identical magnets (finally!), and all the vendors jack up the prices like crazy.

IMG_6027

The hotel. There are a thousand more nearby, so bargain

The dudes in the hotel were funny - talkative, especially the main guy, and he looked like a cross between a dandy and a thug.

An intricate composition of edible materials: a miniature house made of bamboo shoots, a mountain of noodles, a pond with

Carving out of food, I think it's called carving

 Multi-tiered store shelves filled with hundreds of sweets wrapped in transparent film. Light layered flatbreads and dark brown brittle items resembling peanut cookies or gozinaki are visible.

Supermarket. Didn't try these flatbreads, it just didn't work out. It's a pity.

 Store shelves filled with rows of packaged products. They are dominated by transparent containers with red lids containing dark and light peanut candies, as well as round packages with raisins, some of the goods have inscriptions in Vietnamese.

An abundance of nuts and dried fruits

 A hand holds a white can of Birdy Robusta cold coffee with red-gold design. A street with cars and greenery is visible in the blurred background.

There is also coffee with milk - but worse than in the US

 A narrow concrete street of a Vietnamese city, going uphill between colorful multi-story houses and hotels. A dark car is parked on the road in the distance, numerous electrical wires hang over the street, and Vietnamese flags are visible on one of the buildings.

That's the kind of city it is

A two-story Asian-style residential building with a semicircular balcony on the second floor and gray concrete walls, approached by a rise with a decorative brick fence. 

There are also unpainted monstrosities

A lush kumquat tree, heavily sprinkled with small bright orange fruits, stands in front of a beige building with dark wooden doors and windows. The courtyard is paved with terracotta tiles.

A tangerine just calmly growing in the yard

 A concrete electrical pole, densely entangled with black wires, with several electricity meters and yellow advertisements in Vietnamese, stands next to a palm tree and city buildings.

An Asian pole loves wires

A bottom-up view of a multi-story cream building with curved balconies and turquoise railings. Numerous windows, air conditioners, and tangled black wires are visible on the facade.

In places it's nice to look at the houses

 Two people on the street, a woman and a man, peeling sugarcane; they sit on steps and a low chair among piles of peelings.

You can participate in street life, and even for free

 Three young women in shorts and hats walk down the street past a black car. One of them is holding an ice cream, and another is showing the peace sign; a hotel, a hair salon, and a child next to a scooter are visible in the background.

Girls!

 A showcase with many samples of ceramic tiles in various colors - from beige and brown to orange and gray. The tiles are displayed in overlapping stacks and fans, leaning against the wall of a building with signs and a closed metal grate.

Tiles!

A close-up of a complex interweaving of numerous black electrical wires and equipment on several concrete poles. Building facades with windows and air conditioners, as well as a sign in Vietnamese reading

Not Africa, of course, but close. They love this kind of thing there

A striped gray-and-white cat lies on cardboard boxes of Vietnamese

A cat sleeping on a shelf in the supermarket

 IMG_6055

Just sleeping like that, right among boxes and merchandise

 A row of frosted vodka bottles with blue caps and vertical

Selling Russian vodka

 A mantis shrimp in an aquarium with greenish water, turned sideways to the viewer. Its segmented shell, numerous thin legs, and folded claws are clearly visible.

And aliens

A large number of live gray shrimp swim at the bottom of a transparent aquarium filled with water. 

Of different kinds

A row of metal dumpsters on wheels stands along the sidewalk next to a stone wall covered with dense greenery. A city street with parked cars and scooters is visible in the background.

A rare case - there are trash cans

In the foreground - an overflowing green trash bin, against the background of a busy city street with cars, scooters, market stalls with Vietnamese signs, and trees. 

And these too

A young couple with backpacks smiling at the camera on a busy city street. The woman is leaning on the man's shoulder, and multi-story buildings, cars, and passersby are visible behind them.

Andrea and Christian

The guys from Argentina got unlucky - they came from Laos, where hotel prices tend towards zero, and found out that it's not like that in Vietnam, especially in Sapa. They kept going to Halong, and here on festival night the prices are absolutely crazy - reaching up to a hundred bucks, which by local standards is insanity. For the dudes from Argentina cash is critical, just like for me, so I get them. Next time I'll probably go with a more backpacking slant, no restaurants and fewer resorts and hotels.

A smiling young man with light hair in a blue tank top sitting in a wooden chair and giving two thumbs up. A black case with the word Gateway is resting on his lap.

Zac from Australia

Zac, on the contrary, was very happy with Vietnam, with its friendliness. And he quickly figured out my Russian accent, the sly dog. I gotta practice.

IMG_6066

Sweet taro root chips with no additives

Actually, vacuum-dried fruit and vegetable chips without additives are good stuff. Too bad we barely have anything like that back home. True, they're not that cheap.

In a bright workshop, several women are busy with hand embroidery, sitting at wooden frames with fabric. Finished embroidered pictures hang on the walls, and shelving with multi-colored threads is visible in the background. 

Sewing pictures

In past posts I lied to you about the tourist trap "Ruby Emperor", that wasn't on the way to Hanoi from Yen Binh, but right now.

A young woman with dark hair intensely embroidering a pattern on white fabric stretched over a frame in a studio where other craftswomen and finished embroidered pictures on the walls are visible in the background.

Sewing

 A young couple - a smiling woman of Asian appearance in a blue dress and gold pants showing the V sign, and a man in glasses, a black t-shirt and shorts - standing in a souvenir shop. Long counters with rows of pictures under bright lamps are visible behind them, and the ceiling is decorated with draping of red-orange-brown and green fabrics.

Took a pic for free, even though they were begging for dollars, bitches

 In a bus cabin, a young woman in a light tank top stands in the center of the frame, looking straight at the camera with a serious expression, and three men are sitting around her: one is sleeping, and the other two are looking forward.

The bus was shabby and packed with Czech tourists, plus one Estonian

The bus driver to Hanoi didn't take his hand off the horn, just kept twitching it so that it constantly made a sound. But he got us there relatively quickly. Dropped us off near the old quarter, where an endless number of shops are concentrated, and entire streets dedicated to selling just one type of good.

 A busy Asian street where pedestrians walk past numerous parked scooters, and people sit at tables of a street cafe near the entrance to establishments.

The exotic vibe is excellent, that's kind of how I imagined Istanbul, but here there's a million times more of everything

A woman in a traditional Vietnamese conical hat walks down the street carrying two baskets of goods on a shoulder yoke against the background of parked motorcycles.

Hauling it

 A male hand holds a plastic bottle of the Vietnamese drink Faith with a green cap and a light green label against the background of a gray sidewalk.

Nasty drink - sweet and salty. Probably for athletes

 A busy city street in Hanoi, Vietnam, full of motorcycles, buildings with shops, and pedestrians. In the foreground, a person sits in a red cycle rickshaw.

The square

 A busy street in a Vietnamese city with bright buildings, street clothing stores under awnings, filled with people and moving scooters, creating an atmosphere of urban bustle.

Everyone is selling everything, they badger you on the street too

Once (pretty soon after we arrived) a motorbike guy rode up to me, first he offered books like the Bible, then he was like: "Weed, ganja". For curiosity's sake I should have asked how much, but I kinda lagged out, because it was the first time. Alas, the only time too. So we never found out how much marijuana goes for in Hanoi (for dealing, by the way, you can catch the death penalty). We took a taxi to the hotel, which tried to rip us off by begging for more money, even though we already paid more than if it were on the meter. It's just sketchy to go by the meter, in case he starts driving in circles, like the guy drove us in Istanbul. My advice - take a taxi from serious megacorporations or a motorbike, if you're not scared.

 A two-story colonial building in bright yellow color in Hanoi with green shutters, balconies and a blue awning of the

The houses are cute, but the wires get in the way

A man and a woman squatting on the floor, cooking food on an electric stove. The woman is stirring something in a pot, and next to it on the floor is a tray with greens and a bowl of dark red liquid.

We returned to the same hotel where we were a couple of days ago

Ha (the receptionist) is cooking food right on the floor in the lobby. Despite the fact that the hotel is quite decent. Try imagining that in Europe, huh?

 A green plate with sliced fresh cucumbers and chopsticks in the foreground of a metal table. A metal container with spices and plates with vegetable salads stand nearby.

We went to our favorite steakhouse again, that's what the veggies are like there

A wall lamp in the form of a rectangular panel with orange neon lighting, through the slots of which the silhouettes of two dragonflies and stylized mushrooms glow.

The decorations in the hotel are cute. Shrooms, yum-yum

IMG_6099

We set up a photo slideshow and had a long chat with the staff. And on TV there's the carnival in Halong, which we bolted from

 A traditional home altar made of carved dark wood, decorated with an incense burner, red lamps, and a deity figurine. Offerings are placed on and near the altar: a bunch of bananas, small bowls on a tray, and vases with roses and gerberas.

Altar in the hotel

Ctrl + ←
Ctrl + →
To contents Ctrl + ↑