The flight to Hanoi was freaking early that morning. Just after our ROM on 20th, we had to hectically return our wedding gown/suit to the bridal shop so that we could go for our honeymoon in peace. Even though our flight was at 8am, it meant we had to reach the airport by 6am, which also meant we had to wake up by 5am latest to take the cab down to the airport.. + washing up and all.
I think the 2hr pre-check-in is just to "scare" passengers and to play it safe, 1hr would suffice, but despite of it all, we didn't want to take our chances... ie. MIDNIGHT CHARGE for CABs! LUGIFYING! On the positive side, it also gives us more time at Hanoi.
Tiger airlines felt more spacious than Jetstar, at least that was how I remembered the cramped seats of Jetstar to be. But I think it's because we booked the seats nearer to the entrance (intentionally of course). The rear seats of any (I'm making a legit assumption) budget airlines will seriously stiffened up even the stillest of humans, forcing your body muscles to enter a state of forced hibernation mode. Somehow, the crampy seats bring out the claustrophobia in me...
We touched down in Hanoi, Noi Bai International Airport (only one in Hanoi) at around 10.20am, Vietnam time. The flight there takes around 3 hr 20 mins. At the customs, where the officers stamped our passports, the safety cubicle they were in were so high I bet they could only see our seemingly floating heads (w/o necks). The custom facilitator wasn't as scary as those at Cambodia, even though they were still rather serious.
Our luggage took a while to pop up onto the conveyor belts, and my dear painted such a worrisome face that she freaked me out a little too. But, phew~ our luggage, at least her luggage (which came out way way after mine) did appear after all.
At the arrival hall, we were greeted by... no one. We were supposed to have a pick up from Holiday Gold Hotel but there wasn't anyone holding our names up. (Hmm.. I overlooked that point in my previous post... perhaps I should lower its ratings? ;p) However, we did see a representative from Holiday Gold Hotel looking out for a Ms "Caucasian-name-which-I-forgot".
I approached him, the coordinator made a call, spoke in Vietnamese, and said, "Ok, follow." I was kinda scratching my head and was pretty worried about the Ms "Caucasian" they were supposed to look out for. We later found out that they made a mistake, her arrival time was supposed to be at night.
The ride from the airport to Old French Quarter, which our hotel (Hang Manh) was at took around an hour. We were warmly greeted by chinese-speaking bellboy, and the front desk staff Mina, then Tina (in order) when we arrived at the hotel. There, Mina told us that we were able to check into the room even though it was only around 11.30am (2 points added), but had to wait a bit, about 15 mins for them to check the room. While waiting, we made small talk with them and they asked about our itinerary and I told them about Ha Long Bay.
It would seem whenever I tell the kaypo staff (not just this occasion, the guides from the day tours and the hotel staff at Charming hotel also asked) that we were gonna visit Ha Long Bay, they also enquired about which cruise/junk ship we booked. So I told them, Victory Star, which was pretty atas and expensive.
Not wanting them to think that we're some rich couple from Singapore, I told them cos we were on our honeymoon, so didn't mind spending a bit more on a better cruise ship... and reiterated that it was EXPENSIVE indeed.
The staff were stunned, and sang praises of the cruise ship, saying it's a very good 4 star cruise. I guess telling them about the trip being our honeymoon was the best unintentional info I shared with the staff over there because after knowing that, they went 2 extra miles to make our honeymoon as perfect as it could.
They upgraded our room, not sure if it was before or after we told them, and that night when we returned to our hotel room, the staff had painstakingly decorated our room with heart-shaped balloons, set rose petals on one of our beds (we had 2 twin-sized beds in our room, how awesomely redundant is that?! But it really came in handy in the days to come, 1 clean bed, 1 dirty bed... And before you think dirty about the dirty bed, it's the bed on which we could lie on after we came back. The clean bed was for sleeping after our baths.), prepared a vase of roses on our bedside table... and before we could recover from our gasps of awe, there was a knock on the door...
The night shift front desk staff, Minh brought a chocolate cake up (about the size of a pan pizza) with the words Happy Honeymoon written with cream. It was such a pleasant surprise and a memorable "touch" from the hotel's service that it was a +++ added after that. Even though we were pretty full that night, I managed to downed half the cake, before returning it to Minh because I didn't want no exposed food lying around in our room.
Opps, it seems that I had fastforwarded to our night experience... but thought I might as well mention it since it was related. Let's rewire the chronological order... where was I? Oh.. the waiting for hotel room to be ready part.
While waiting, we mingled with Tina and her service and meticulousness was highly commendable. She had provided my dear with a map of Hanoi, circled out the main attractions and began on her recommendations and directions. At a certain point, though trivial but exceptionally epic, she showed us a ripped off map (just a small corner on the top right) and exclaimed cheekily, (not her exact words but the idea was there) "Oh, what happened to the map? *pointing to the ripped off part* It's bitten by a rat!... Where's the rat? *looks around, lifts up a flower vase on the table we were discussing our plans on* There! Murderer!"
I think at that point both me and my dear pengsanded, I was like "What?!", but started laughing at how silly-ly cute it was. Even after the trip, as we reminiscence about our time there, the "joke" by Tina shed light on the definition of EPICNESS.
Anyways, when we got our room, we wasted no time bumming in our room and headed out to our first destination on our itinerary, Hua Lo Prison.
The prison we went to in Cambodia, was utterly depressing. The S21 Genocide Museum. I had my reservations on whether it was wise for us to make a prison our first stop in Vietnam... but later realised, it was a mistake to think this way. Hua Lo Prison was no where near depressing... Now I know why the Americans call it Hanoi Hilton back then when it was still active.
Before I go on anymore about the prison, we grabbed a quick bite at Pho 10, which only sold beef Pho, just a few minutes walk from our hotel, situated at Ly Quoc Su Street. It's a rather spacious, modest and filthy (Singapore's standards of 'cleanliness', and apologies for the mismatched link of adjectives) eating house which serves possibly one of the best Phos we ate over there (ate a total of 3-4 Phos). The beef was thinly sliced, and my dear who's not a beef eater, was actually enjoying eating it... as quoted by her "She has never eaten so much beef at one go ever in her life".
The eating house (about 2 storeys high) was nothing you would ever experience in Singapore, our first prelude to the cleansing system in Vietnam. There was a sea of used tissue papers on the ground, like sea foam surrounding your feet. Used chopsticks, fallen food, and who knows what else blended in with the "polluted sea".
I wasn't particularly disturbed by it because as long as it's not poop or vomit, everything else is bearable.
The entrance fee to Hua Lo Prison situated at 1 Hoa Lo cost around 20,000-30,000 USD, which is the "standard" entrance fees to the main attractions in Hanoi (as of 2012). According to the informative map we received from the hotel, the opening hours are from 8.00-11.30 & 13.30-16.30). After giving you so much info... here's the funny thing... don't bother going there.
I personally thought it was a rather waste of time, because the compound was small and it felt more like a museum instead of a prison (ironic cos Cambodia's prison, the S21 Genocide Museum felt more like a prison than a museum). Don't get me wrong, I'm not a sadist, and while I'm glad I wasn't depressed after checking Hoa Lo Prison out, it's seriously an attraction you could miss without missing out on. The Americans who were captured and imprisoned there during the Vietnam war included then-pilot current senator John McCain and were strangely treated very well (hence called Hanoi Hilton?)... they were given much freedom, weren't tortured and were even allowed to let their creative juices flow by drawing cute and artsy pictures (now on display in the prison).
Our next few stops were to check out buildings and Pagodas around the area, but we ended up en route to The Temple of Literature based on high recommendations by Tina. We passed by Ambassador's Pagoda (aka Quan Su Pagoda) @ Quan Su Street unintentionally, even though it was on our itinerary. At least that was what I inferred with the lack of photo proof because of the route we had to take to the Temple of Literature. Vietnam has so many yellow temple like structures that it became too mediocre to stop and figure out what "special building" it was.
We were really thankful that we visited Temple of Literature because it was initially on our if-we-have-enough-time-then-visit list. The Temple of Literature is the Temple of Confucius in Hanoi, because there was a time... when troubles seemed too much for us to take, but we er.. opps. Wrong time. But there was a time when Vietnam was under a huge influence by Chinese culture (it was built in 1070, wth?!), perhaps more on religious purposes (lotsa zenness can be felt inside), because there were many scholars and sages who prestigiously graduated from this Temple, cum university. In fact, it's Vietnam's first University! One of the pride's of Vietnam.
An interesting trivia is that the temple is featured on the back of the 100,000 Vietnamese dong, which I obviously didn't know only until seconds ago! Well, I missed my chance to see it because I only brought back 2,000 dong to Singapore.
If I'm not mistaken, the attraction is free of charge. There were many locals there, and we saw a group of graduates taking photos. It's a picturesque attraction, which comprise of 4 main compounds (by my definitition of course). The first compound is this big open greenery walkway, with "you mo shui" chinese words presented here and there. After which, we came upon this youth Olympic sized pond, with Vietnam's characteristic 2 flags, the country flag and the elements flag. That's the compound where the statues of turtles carrying tablets of the scholars' names were found, flanked both left and right.
The 3rd and 4th compounds are open spaced temple compounds, each leading to a mini temple, with the altars of deities inside. Actually, correction, the temple of the 3rd compound had deities (cos I don't really know who they are w/o a guide), an open space full of landscaped bonsais and the figurine of a gold plated turtle.
The 4th compound, was double storeys, and that's why you get to finally "meet" Confucius. The statue of Confucius is truly the highlight of the Temple. When I saw his altar and his statue, I was like "Wow." Yup, that was it. Needless to say, I was speechless. There was a really respectable and calming feel when I stood in front of him...
We also saw a couple of girls dressed in what looked like their traditionally graduation uniform with several photographers snapping shots of them as if they were to be featured on Vietnam's postcards. The outfit they wore was this silky-like maroon-colored long dress and what was so interesting about the overall outlook is this black halo-like hair/hat which they styled/wore.
Our next pit stop was this nice park we saw just across the road (directly opposite) of the temple. There was a big lake in the middle, and a little house stood in the middle of the lake, probably only accessible by the open boats we saw at the side of the lake. Surprisingly, even though I saw huge mosquitoes, they didn't seem to bite us, either they were the Aedes mosquitoes (bite only during the day) or the male mosquitoes (an entirely different species cos normally the males are smaller sized than the female mosquitoes).
I was initially very bothered by the hovering mosquitoes but was glad that they were simply sightseeing like we did. We decided to walk around the park to get a feel of the locals and to also check out the park from different angles. It was there and then that I noticed something very intriguing, tried to bring that realisation to my dear but she didn't quite figure it out (cos I was speaking in riddles) only until we nearly reached the end of our round.
We were the only 2 clowns walking 1 direction (anti-clockwise) while everyone else were either walking/jogging the other way. In Vietnam, expect lotsa systematic, almost regimental-like "order". The only chaos one would find is on the roads, possibly the only platform the citizens could just "heck it all, heck the rules, heck the system, I'm doing it my way!".
The park was a pleasant experience, as the skies gradually turned dark, we made our way back to our hotel room, of course not forgetting dinner and checking out their local delights. We tried a pork Pho, I tried the pork Pho (cause my dear's not fond of pork) and it was really savoury as well. However, I couldn't recall which street it was on or what they were called.
They also served small slices of tomatoes which tasted heavenly sweet, soup base was tasty, different from the beef-based soup, pork was tender and didn't have a strong pork taste, and there was a particular chewy part of the pig which I have not taste before, and which I liked (I found out days later it was actually pig's heart!).
We also tried bubble tea along the way, looking back, I was so ridiculously desperate that I actually bought 2 cups of (sucky) bubble tea. Initially, we only bought 1, just to try out. One of the local guys (patron) pointed to a picture of a particular type of bubble tea (menu was mostly in Vietnamese) and said, "Good, Good'. However, I decided to go for the safer option, what looked like milk tea.
It was a bad choice. The milk tea was very sweet, and the pearls lacked the chewyness. Convinced it was my bad choice of drink, I decided to try out what the man had initially recommended. There was this weird beige-colored cubes in the drink, an add-on like pearls (they don't call pearls, we later inferred they called it tapioca) and as for the biege-colored cubes which looked like suspended tofu, tasted... tasteless. Ok, they weren't entirely tasteless, but they were tasteless enough for one not familiar with it to find it very difficult to catch the taste and say, EUREKA! I know what it is! But I didn't...
Our final "dessert" that night was a roadside stall selling what looked like egg puff balls. Puff balls?! Yup, beats me too. I have no idea what puff balls are, but that's the first description that comes to my mind. Ok, they're somewhat like Petit Doughnuts (selling at the Basement of Takashimaya, Singapore) without the filing... only they taste nicer!
They were chewy and the flour was flavourful... faintly sweet and easy on the chewing and on the tastebuds. It was the only food we tried twice over there in Vietnam, from 2 different stalls but tasted almost exactly the same (can't say the same for the Phos because they were all from different stalls, with different style, presentation, ingredients and soup base so it wouldn't be a fair comparison).
Feeling super full, we decided to head back to our hotel to turn in for the night. And because it was our first day in Hanoi, we took a bit of time navigating the streets and crossing the menacing roads which drained the mental power out of me... and that was when... we had a sweet and pleasant surprise prepared by Holiday Gold Hotel. Scroll up if your memory is that of a Dory fish. ;p
We got comfortable and were psyched for the next day of our Vietnam trip... to the much talked about Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where we get to see the Father of Vietnam, the national hero, Uncle Ho.
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