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Tuesday, October 20, 2015 • 11:42 PM • 0 Sweet hearts
18, 20, 21 September - Hanoi Hotel
19 September - Halong Bay Cruise
Other than the ride on the plane, I enjoyed most of this Vietnam trip. I would say Vietnam is really worth the go for a relaxing vacation.
Their local delicacies is so fantastic, you'll not likely get this kind of taste anywhere else.
Reached the airport on time, walked around the duty free shops and both of them went to the OSIM chair for foot massage, while I facetime my jie jie, suddenly announced that it was last call for boarding, ran like mad.
  
This is the very 1st authentic Vietnam Spring Roll that I got at their airport while waiting for the driver.
I was expecting to see the driver holding on to the name plate once we step out of the gate, but 3 of us see no plates with our names on it. Joe walked around and saw him holding to the plate at a height where nobody could spot. LOL.
oow to hotel.
We booked the Golden Sun Villa Hotel, it was introduced by my mom's Vietnam friend, Johnny. Few days before we left for this vacation, Joe showed me a online photo of how this hotel looks like from the exterior. It's not very impressive judging by the looks. But ching ching! The hotel exterior might not look as grand as the rest but interior was definitely clean, and spacious. We got 2 rather huge family room. One with kitchen and 2 bedrooms. 
Met up with my aunt, cousin and ahyi in the hotel.
  
There's quite a number of statues on the street.
Photos are not in order. Took some of it with my iphone and the rest with camera.
Taken using selfie stick by Joe, he can never be a good photographer.
See?
It makes whole lots of difference if I'm the one holding on to the camera!
    We had our dinner at one of the restaurants in their "hustle and bustle" roundabout. Their food is somewhat expensive, likely due to their location and view. Service was excellent.     
This is the Vietnam yogurt, super love it. Nothing like the usual ones we have. It's somewhat like beancurd texture, but damn tasty! The hotel serves this every morning, one for each guest.
I've ordered countless omelette during our 3 nights stay in this hotel. It was served with banh mi for every serving, after the first time telling the waitress to leave that out, our subsequent order was automatically served without that. Lol. Not that their bread was not good, but we ordered many dishes every morning, so leaving the bread out would be a better choice.
They wrote dumpling in their menu, and this was what they were referring to.
Introducing the famous local delight!
Pho!
1st time eaing such pancake that taste like egg.
No meat in their fresh springroll.
Johnny works in the Signature Halong Bay Cruise company, so we get good discounted rate for stay in their cruise. It was 4 star, already very luxury for us. They picked us up at the hotel lobby on the second day, and drove us to their check in place. (You'll see it later in the pictures below).
JUSCO!
Taken with hp, this should be the day when we were on our way to the cruise, it is somehow 4 hours ride, so the driver dropped us here to see if we would buy anything along the way.
  
Wanted to get this for my sis, but when I turned over to check on the price, it shows USD300.
Siao.
    Such a long drive to get to their jetty. I literally fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep, the cycle continues for 4 hours. Vietnam driver are very slow. Their speed limit is kept at roughly 50 + -. 
This is how our cruise looks like.
Got onto a speedboat or whatever they call it.
  
Their restaurant looks really elegant I would say.
What's there to say?
            
Jacuzzi in every room.
The guide was really nice, he downloaded movies into the thumbdrive for us and I told him I wanted horror movie for us.
Caught the glimpse of this wintermelon-lookalike rabbit during our shopping.
There you go, this is the banh mi I was talking about, you could order it with beef, chicken, crab etc. Can't get enough of this. Joe even dabao this for me on the last day when departing to airport.
That's the dinner we had with Johnny and Tony.
  
Herbal soup was ok, but I don't really like the idea of cooking the entire raw chopped chicken by throwing it into the soup like this.
That's Johnny.
     
The green guy's my bf, nothing to do with the performer at the back. HAHHHAHAH.
We were told by the local - Johnny and Tony that we should not buy the candies from this guy, they usually go around the tables asking the diners to purchase and their price can be hefty. So we only gave him some tips. He handed me 2 lollipops for free as after that. lol.  Street walk after the dinner, they sell a lot of cheap goods! 
Mom enjoying the sugarcane break, bought so many cups for us!
 
Visited the jail, one of the famous tourist attractions in Hanoi.
Saw this dog on the roadside, looks like Shiba inu, so immediately send to my jie jie. Wah Shiba in Hanoi leh. A bit hard to believe.
Their pho is so good we just have to buy it back. I think I bought about 22 packets of it.
Not sure which day was it, but the adults were out for massage, so Joe, Woon and I went out to the streets to explore.Saw some Vietnam officers grabbing the clothes from a woman's pushcart. It makes some sense that she was selling clothes illegally on the street and she was stopped by them. Just some minutes back, we were still discussing why Vietnam officers use pick ups as their mode of transport, it now turns out that they need the space to hold the innocent civilians' stuff as their loots. Still, there was 1 officer who was secretly helping the lady to steer clear from that big evil head of officer. Look at the idiot below.    
They then proceeded down the lane trying to make life difficult for the rest of the civilians.
Joe kept trying to stop me from taking video and photos of the incident, lol, he was scared that either me or the camera gets confiscated by the police. 
That's another favourite street snacks I like.
Vietnam's work life is damn carefree, they can leave their job for a nap or like what Tony did, brought me and Jo out for coffee!!!   
It was his 1st ride on a motorbike as a driver, I would say he is very hiong.
Look at the traffic in Hanoi, all motors coming towards you in different direction.
 
Joe didn't wanted to drive me because of his inexperience driving. Lol. So I took Tony's ride instead. He's so pro! I'm beginning to love riding on bikes! From holding on tight to letting go of hands, yes I'm that excited!
At Water Puppet show in Hanoi, I fell asleep on and off throughout the show.
 
One of the breakfast served in the hotel.
 
20 over packets of instant pho wasn't enough! I regretted not bringing back at least 3 dozens.
On our way back.
Enough of iphones taken photos, all below are in the right sequence starting from Day 1, using my camera. =) Day 1 / 18 September 2015: 
Remember the kuey tiao look a like that I mention earlier? This is the stall. It's so popular you could find at least 5 stalls down the same street.
       We walked around the Old Quarter streets on Day 1 after checking in. The hotel was situated right in the heart of the tourist attraction, so it's accessible to most of the places including hypermart.     
This is one of their famous lake.
                    
We see many locals buying this, so we got 1 and tried, nothing special, just glutinous rice with some bah hu like.
                   Day 2 / 19 September 2015:                                                   
That's Love!
 
His tummy really is prominent lah.
     
Back to the connecting rooms.
We were giving the senior suite connecting rooms with own deck. Imagine how shiok this is. Even if you go for Carribean cruise or what, you will not get this luxury, I believe.
We were then brought to see how pearls are being grown, somewhat similar to those that we see in Hainan island. The sampan ride was extremely hot.                                               
Rower kept on hitting my head when she rows. Every 1 minute I'll be shifting my butt further away from her.
   Realize that there are very sharp cuts on every piece of these rocks?            
I'm not sure whether we should call this artificial pearls? The guide told us that they will pry open it to some extend and insert some whitish "colgate" like cream and let it grow. Since so, what should it be called?
    Because there is seriously nothing nice about these, I was strolling around this kelong like place and mom told me that the bunch of people out there were looking at the dogs. Without hesitation I chiong out! 
Like sausage man!
He/She is super shy, no matter how I lure him, he just stood still.
I wanna go and pat him but scared he ki siao come bite me. LOL.
Mom geruming it, this boy very buey giah strangers, so we took turns to cuddle him.
He doesn't seems to know what's happening.
 Apparently we left without buying anything there and I think the rest of the tourists didn't too. The boat got us back to the cruise. I think all the adults went to the cooking class for spring roll, and I took the chance to idle around the cruise.           I was watching the sunset myself at our deck while joe and my cousin were lazing around in the room. It's so beautiful!    We only had 1 dinner in the cruise, because it's only a 1 night stay. Their food were rather tasty. I would say this is of pretty high standards if you compare it with the restaurant in Hanoi.  Even settings also very chio.    
Their roast beef wasn't tough.
Lots more food served in their buffet but hungry me decided to tuck in without photo shooting. Their grilled squid was very tender, so tender that we kinda suspect whether it's fully cooked. I had a lot of it though. I practically tried close to every single dishes that I could see on the table. So tempting, how to resist?
Back to our deck, enjoying the breeze.
 The guide told us that there were night squid fishing later that night. So I went with my cousin and Joe. No luck that night. We saw a bunch of up to 7 squids swimming together, every few seconds they would swim by our bait but showed no interest in it at all. Wa lao, their squids are either too smart for this or they're just playing us out. Day 3 / 20 September 2015: Set our alarm at 5 trying to catch the sun rise. Joe, me and cousin hurried to the top deck. Total disappointment. We didn't know whether we were too late for sunrise or it has been covered by the rocks.     
Captain's bedroom, they even have tilam inside so he could drive and sleep at the same time. Lol.
        So anyway they served us light snacks before bringing us to the cave. Croissant and pastries.       
We climbed up to this.
 
Group photo!
      
This cave amaze me in someway. It is not the 1st time that I went for cave exploration but I don't know why, I just like this one a lot.
            Guide suddenly turn to me and said something cheeky. Then he pointed right infront. Can you see what is he referring to?         
Chinese words!
Lots of tourists there, we took quite some time to get out of this cave. The paths were going round and round, some were like u-turns. One white angmo lady even went there wearing only her shorts and bra.  
We bought steamed corns and peanuts from this seller.
The corns were super soft and mushy.
1 bite, that is it.
  Left the Halong Cruise and back to Hanoi on the same day. Got back to the same hotel and headed out to their night market on the same day. Day 4 / 21 September 2015: Ho Chi Minh is one of the attractions but it was closed for some retouch or something. So we only took some shots while in the cab.       Temple visit    
I took this birdie shots, pro right lol.
           Next visit was to the jail. He said that the distance was walkable, i think it's still ok, at least there's some things to see on our way there. 
Vietnam wedding. The locals on the left spotted me and Joe taking photos of them at the back alley, then signaled us to go in.
        
Many fruit sellers on the street. Ah yi bought some persimmons back.
  Not sure what this jail is called but it is now tourist attraction, with air con yay!         
Prisoners get their legs locked up like this. Some had both legs locked up, we thought that those are heavily crime criminals.
 This is the story of how some of the prisoners break free from their dungeon. They climbed through some sewage pipes after the acids corroded the steel, it was said that one of the lady secretly brought it, in order to assist them in the escape. There's photos of the ex-prisoners returning to this dungeon decades later after end of war.        
Level 2 is the only level with chairs, air con and TV. Lol.
Tired of walking?
Sit here, relax and watch the documentary.
This is the lady who brought the acids in, I wonder how did she do it without getting caught?
Heroes
  
That's the stall we bought the banh mi!
Anyway, we saw the wife digging the husband's ear. =D
Got lots of the pho noodles through this hypermart. Got stool to rest somemore, so worth it.
 I was talking bt the evil police squads earlier on, taking the woman's clothes and chucking it into their mini van. He's the one infront with the woman walking behind. Look at their van, it is 1/4 filled with the woman's clothes that she had to sell to make a living. The clothes were not the only loots they got for the day, they had other things that they 'robbed' from the civilians in broad day light. You should have seen how rough they were, I really wished I could help that woman in some ways or other, but I know I'm not in a position to do this in a foreign land. But still, one of the officer, probably the one on the left was kind enough to push her cart for her and we saw him whispering something to her ears trying to get her off trouble.  Water puppet show started at around 8pm. We walked from our hotel to the roundabout where we had our 1st dinner on Day 1. It was somewhere near the restuarant.      
The lady behind had a mini-guzheng lookalike. It doesnt sound very alike but I was still impressed.
          
Entire show was done in Vietnam language, totally catch no ball throughout, I ended up dozing off every other minute lol.
  Left the puppet theater at about 9pm, and walked down the streets looking for restaurants. Stopped by local shop and the adults spent close to an hour getting their local delights. By the time we were to leave, it's heavy downpour. Good thing the shop owner gave us 5 raincoats for free, Joe was at the other lane buying backpack so he didn't get one. I was courageous enough to brave through the thunder and storm to get him at the other side. Not easy ok. Anyway he got for himself a windbreaker. Lol. Reached the restaurant at 1030pm or so. Damn hungry! We were the only Chinese diners in the restaurant.     
Fish & Chips.
Their portion is so small, look at their slices of fish, so little, how to feel full after eating this?
  Rain only got a little better after our dinner, at least not as heavy, so we walked back to the hotel.     Coincidentally met this white lady wearing the same clothes as him, HAHHAAHHH. He should have wore his vietnam cap to match hers.     Day 5 / 22 September 2015: Time to bid goodbye to our Hanoi friends. Cousin and aunts left earlier to the airport, our flight was later in the afternoon. Tony was so nice, he told us that we can have the room until we're ready to head to the Hanoi airport.      Had tea break in the airport, I'm not a huge fan of Popeye but tenders are always my first choice!  Wish we can go holiday again soon, though we're constantly thinking of the rabbits. Lol.
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