We were up early for our day tour yet again. But the trip to Tam Coc ("3 caves") was well worth it. The seemingly dark and dodgy narrow street in front of our hotel transformed into a bustling wet market that morning. With thick slabs of meat laid out on wet-market-styled metal tables and fresh out-of-the-water fish still swapping their tails in a frantic struggle for survival, the locals flock to the wet market to get their fresh produce. It was quite the sight, an eye-opener indeed.
Hoa Lu was our very first stop, which back in the 10th & 11th centuries, was the capital of Vietnam. Vietnam has seen a change of its capital a few times already, due to the country's sovereignty. I don't really know the chronological order, but all I know is that Hanoi is the current capital of Vietnam and so was Saigon/Ho Chi Minh city.
Hoa Lu is an old district, and has an ancient feel to it. It kinda reminded me of Cambodia's Angkor Wat. The structures around were built by the all-too-familiar dense-looking, dark-colored, dangerously coarse building blocks/bricks. The district felt more like a rural area with spots of ancient architecture resonating a rich and cutural history.
We entered what looked like a "city gate", into a main compound with 3 temples compounds built slightly apart. They were less than 15 minutes away from one another, and even though I recalled the tour guide saying there were 3 such compounds, I only remembered visiting 2 of those. No loss there because the cookie-cutter temples weren't that fantastic.
The place, however, was bustling with the local school kids, probably because it was school holiday. The contradicting part was that that was what the guide, Tony told us, and yet... the school kids were easily recognisable because they were all wearing the same blue white jackets. Whatever the occasion was, the school kids amped up the mood.
There was even a mini performance by a couple of free-style local boys, grooving to Korean music in front of a chunk load of clueless kids. The performers took turns to show off their moves, which, in all honesty and even though I'm in no position to criticize them, fell flat to the ground. Well, not like anyone there cared how well they danced, because it attracted quite a crowd with the upbeat music in a slowbeat "town".
Before I move on, if you're wondering, the temple compounds were spacious and looked like a nice place to chill out if you have the time, but if you're running on a tight schedule like us, there wasn't any memorable highlights there... nothing like we haven't seen already.
We stopped by a buffet place, by the name of "The Long" which served a decent spread of local dishes. Buffet spread was pretty long, which kinda explained the orginal and random name of the restaurant. Though the food wasn't that great, I'm not complaining cos' I really had my fill there... wacking whatever my Singapore tastebuds could handle. We sat together with a couple from America, whom we got to mingle a lot with throughout our entire trip, and who were the friendiest tourists we met over there during our holiday.
Next, was the highly anticipated highlight of the tour... the boat ride around Tam Coc. Even though my fire simmered a little after the mutiple boat rides we took, the boat ride at Tam Coc was one of the best... ah, hell, I'm gonna even put my reputation at stake by saying it is the best boat ride I took during my trip in Vietnam.
As the description aptly states, Tam Coc is Halong Bay on Land. It's not a small scale Halong Bay with miniature islets all around but it's actually very similar to Halong Bay, with the exception that it's more enclosed and there's a fixed route in the lake which meanders through the karsts islets and water-soaked padi fields.
It was a good 2 hours ride, to-and-fro, booby-trapped with hard-selling of souvenirs midway. It was very romantic, and peaceful, despite a "heavy" traffic of boats going 2 ways, and we passed by lotsa scenic views, went under "caves", fiercely rowed by this local grandma who used both her hands and feet to paddle. She stopped midway to retrieve this metal box from another boat which we didn't take much notice of... until later.
The metal box turned out to be their tool for hard-selling. When we reached mid point (actually end point of the "to" trip), there was a big group of stationary boats selling souvenirs. The peace was sorta broken there and there was this weird and uncomfortable vibe emitting from powerpuff grandma. She tapped me on my shoulders, and even though I pretended to be oblivious, she persisted.
I felt so bad I thought, heck it, I'll just get something from her to shut her up. You see, she's this very loud grandma who would shout across and talk to most of the rowers while she rowed... however it was indeed pretty peaceful because we were all zenly immersed in the moment... the view of beauty.
I thought wrong... she insisted that I bought a couple more things from her, which I counter insisted of course. And when it was about to reach the end, demanded for tips. She felt offended when I gave her close to a dollar tips and seemingly started to complain about the pathetic tips she got from rowing us. Not to sound cheapskate and to justify for what I did, I actually bought a common pouch for a rather expensive price, hoping that it would cover for her tips and to avoid being constantly pestered.
And even though my dear would always say I have a knack for remembering the bad stuff, and even though I dedicated 3 whole paragraphs to talk about the hard-selling and tips, I really enjoyed the boat ride. As long as you're able to harden the heart of yours, yet offer appreciation and not pity, you'll get by like I did.
The Hong Kong girls we met on our day trip to Perfume Pagoda actually pre-emped us about it and they said they didn't like it at all... me on the contrary, thought it was ok, wasn't over the top, not like the grandma was hurling vulgarities or scolding me of any sort.
Our next activity, and final one for the day was the cycling! We rented, actually all paid for as part of the tour, a rather chui bike each and cycled around the rural town. We passed by lakes, local houses, and even rode along a dirt path which cuts through into the residences. The bike was chui because of the seats primarily, the arrow-shaped cushioned seats were so hard I could hardly last 5 minutes of sitting on it. I kept having to stand on the pedals of my bike to ease the pain... ouch*!
The cycling, though short (lasted around 45 mins) was also a fairly memorable experience for us, allowing us to capture the local feel on a more intimate 2-wheeled tour.
Tony bought miniature apples for everyone, a smart move, because he soon became the only other Vietnamese who recieved tips from us. I'm not trying to make my tipping a big deal, but generally I won't tip unless I feel that they really deserve it. Even though he smokes, he pays extra effort to help us, volunteered to take photos, tried to explain things to us, and finished off by leading us on the bike tour and constantly checking to see that everyone is safe and that no one is left behind. Well, I know it's kinda like his job but it all amounted to being more "you xin (got heart)" than most other guides.
The ride back took quite a while, think it was a 3-4 hours car ride back to Hanoi city and they dropped us at St. Joseph's Cathedral, or Hanoi Cathedral. Initially, I was confused, because one of the other tourist couple alighted there, and when I saw the Cathedral, they said it was the Hanoi Cathedral. I asked if it was the St. Joseph's Cathedral but they weren't too sure. It sure looked majestic... and it looked calmingly holy at night, with the christmas lights lit at the side, where the decorations were. Essentially, they're the same thing.
We had tried to locate the cathedral during one of our first few days over there but failed to do so because somehow it wasn't exactly at the location on the map that Holiday Gold Hotel gave us. It was tricky business to find the cathedral because of the out-of-scale map we had, don't get me wrong, the map was very good and extremely useful, just somehow the picture of the cathedral was too big and took up an entire empty plot of land when it fact it was just situated at one of the fork roads (near Au Trieu and Nha Chung streets).
We got to experience the local gospel singing (in Vietnamese) and couple of their songs of praise. They were very smoothing and injected a warm feeling in us during the festive season. The interior of St. Joseph's Cathedral was holy gorgeous. Unlike the exterior, which looked rustic and old, the interior was the total opposite.
The front altar glowed due to the gold plated furnishings, the bright spotlights laminated the pearly white pillars and ceiling, and the backlight shot the beauty of 3 planes of stained glass (such a coincidence, to signify the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?) right in front of my naked eyes, and our camera lenses of course.
St. Joseph's Cathedral was a hidden gem in Hanoi city indeed. Couples on bikes would ride to the mini roundabout just in front of the church to view the beautifully lit up cathedral.
We went on to have a bowl of hot porridge for the both of us at a stall we happened to pass by, well that was the idea at least, but the cute stallholder mistook our order and assumed I was ordering for the both of us (I just wanted to try out their local porridge). Oh, did I unknowingly (like real) add the word cute in front of stallholder? Well, because I felt bad for wasting their unpaid bowl of porridge, and because the stallholder's daughter was cute and she put in effort to communicate with us in English, we ended up with 2 large bowls of porridge.
I recalled it was more congee-like and the meat were all minced up and blended well, almost so well I don't even recall munching on any piece of meat. Well there wasn't anything special about the congee, it was a good meal nonetheless, value for money, and leaves stomachs satisfyingly filled.
We took a slight detour back to our hotel, passed by another smaller cathedral (we just popped our heads in), put our stuff down in our hotel room, and headed over to a nearby coffee place, by the name of Huong Mai Cafe, just across the road from our hotel. I had wanted to drink the civet-cat-poo-ed coffee Vietnam was so famous for, more commonly called the Kopi Luwak.
I've tried it once at Highlands Cafe, didn't like it because it was very strong and bitter, but decided to give it another go at the seemingly authentic looking Huong Mai Cafe... which sells only coffee! Thankfully caffeine has no effect on me, but it turned out that the only coffee I could appreciate is the Blue Mountain served locally at our very own TCC (The Coffee Connoisseur) cafes. Guess I'll never be a fan of thick coffee... but I'm sure it'll appeal to avid coffee drinkers.
We made our way to the souvenir shop at Hang Bac street to do our final souvenir shopping and also ate our favourite Banh Trung (egg kueh? The english name should be "Eggtalk") at Dong Xuan market. Dong Xuan market looked different during the weekdays, it wasn't the jam-packed-human-sardine condition we experienced during the first part of our trip, before we left for Halong Bay. The roads were no longer cordoned off for walking and was the usual jam-packed-motorists condition similar to every other roads in Hanoi. Ie. to say, we weren't able to get this souvenir my dear had eyes for. Darn*
So a word of advice, Dong Xuan Market is like a weekend market, and springs to life only during the weekend. So if you see something there you like, get it! You never know when's the next time you'll be coming back!
Anyhows, the Banh Trung was the perfect goodbye night snack. Light, healthy (I think?) and absolutely yummylicious! If you see a logo of 2 happy eggs there, which starts with a "B" and a "T", be sure to get it! I had initially wanted to leave the description out because I'm currently experiencing a mental block but if I could describe it in 5 words, it would be, soft, sweet, fluffy, egg dough. The standard and taste is consistent throughout the city (only tried from 2 pushcarts but I'm confident of generalising it as such).
That basically ends the night of our romantic final night stroll in Hanoi city.
That basically ends the night of our romantic final night stroll in Hanoi city.
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