Getaway to Việt Nam

Vietnam is the eighth country that I have visited in the past three years :)

Usually every trip for us will have some thrilling unexpected experience and for this trip the thrill quotient was extreme and it started in Singapore itself the day before our travel.

6th Nov, 6.30pm i am in my office attending a meeting with M.D and I received numerous call from sujai, muni, venki. I couldn't attend the call in meeting so I ignored, later after 15 mins I called venki and came the shocker, he told me that we have to get visa to vietnam. Imagine its 7pm and our flight to vietnam is tomorrow 8am and we are yet to get visa; earlier we thought visa is on arrival. Atleast we got reminded of it at 7pm, thanks to the casual talk between venki, sujai, muni about visa. Immediately we called few vietnal travel agencies and embassy, found that there is an emergency visa option(for people like us); wow that was a huge relief for us. By 8.30pm we payed the visa fee and got the letter, emergency visa is where a visa agency will get an approval letter from government agent that you are allowed to enter vietnam and will get visa upon arrival in hanoi airport.

Special entry letter...

our names at 3,4,5,6,7 & 8

 Doing our math we found that we paid only 15usd extra for the emergency visa. Totally it will cost 95usd for vietnam visa if you hold indian passport, for us it cost 115usd.We started packing our baggage and could complete only by midnight.

7th Nov; 5.30am we booked a mpv and started on time to airport, reached airport by 6am that's 2 hours ahead of flight departure. This trip buddies are venki, muni, sujai, senthil and santhosh. Immidiately we got the boarding pass and yes it is tiger airlines our best partner for cheap travel.

Some of the guys took photo at the auto printing photo kiosk, then we went to have breakfast. If you are a person who read my travellog regularly then I don't have to mention that we went to anandha bhavan to have pongal with vada(our usual).

7.20am we cleared the immigration, bought C2H2OH at the duty free shop. Since it is tiger air, the flight is at gate F59, it is 15mins walk and at the extreme end of the airport. This time we managed to reach 15 mins before wheels up and there were even few people who boarded came after us. It doesn't matter whether we are 10 mins or 15mins before wheels up as long as there are people who come after us then we are early, pat yourself boys this time we made it. The flight took off on time and reached 15mins early to the arrival time(that's 10.15am local time). In flight entertainment was pandiyannadu movie in our mobiles.

Our visa guide who helped on the emergency visa was waiting for us at the arrival terminal holding our name pla card(it was like வா டா என் செல்லாகுட்டி). He welcomed us, made us sit at the benches, got our passport and got visa stamped for us; we didn't have to move a muscle except to go to restroom. If you hold an indian passport you have to pay 45 usd as visa fee and 10 usd as service fee.

Our Visa guide...

After immigration check we went to meet our driver who will take us to halong bay from airport. We had booked golden sun hotel at hanoi since our first location is halong bay, the agreement with golden sun hotel transport service is that their driver will pick us at hanoi airport and drop us at halong bay. The driver who came to airport couldn't speak English at all, good that our visa guide was with us and translated for us.

see venkatesh???

We thanked our visa guide and took the 14 seater mini van to golden sun hotel and from there we have to go to halongbay. Reached hotel at 12.00pm, had watermelon juice as welcome drink, discussed with the hotel manager on our itinerary for the 4 days in vietnam. 12.20pm we went to have food at the nearby gecko restaurant. The streets were almost like walking in teynampet road, well this country is also very close to home.

Gecko restaurant is a local cheap restaurant but the ambiance doesn't make it look cheap. Hanoi beer was sold at 1usd per bottle and its happy hour so buy one get one free for 1 usd. We had some local dishes, I forgot the name something like vietnamese coconut sea food rice, if you go to this restaurant then don't try the beef(not cooked well). After food and drinks we left gecko at 1.30pm and started to halong bay.

14 Nov; 9pm singapore, as I am writing this blog I got an alert from times of india app in my mobile that it is sachin's 200th last test match and he scored 30+ runs not out. Sachin is one of the living legends, there were times when sachin gets out people swith off their tv and consider india will lose. We are fortunate to have witnessed and enjoyed sachin's batting.

Back to vietnam, it takes 3.5 hours from hanoi to halong bay, after a hours travel we had to piss. Around 10 mins we struggled to make the driver understand that we want to piss, the driver don't even understand the english word 'Toilet'. Santhosh made some hand action and he finally understood and stopped by the highway, there is much pleasure in unleashing a closed/exploding tap.

Free fllooowwww

Slept for some time during the travel, at 4.30pm the driver stopped again at a marble statue shop for buying souvenirs & for toilet. Well I can say this place is an marvellous marble paradise, all the marble statues are carved to perfection. Ladies statues with/without dress are the eye catcher. If you are a very rich person and have a bungalow house then this place is for you, lots off extraordinary statue to place in your garden but costly. The seller will export the statue directly to your home, may be if I buy a bungalow house at my old age then I will come here buy few for my home.
 

Took pictures with those gorgeous statues then we went on to the souvinier shop, there were lot of paintings and stuff but it was costly so we bought very few things. Half of the workers are physically challenged who paints, and the sales assistants sells them, their attire was traditional, venki was very much attracted towards their attire.

We started again from that place, our driver was driving damn slow even on the highways. In just 30 mins city area came and road was also bad & traffic; so even slow was our transport. By the time we reached halong bay it was 6.30pm, the driver didn't know how to go to our hotel so started asking local people for route. It was 7.30pm we finally managed to reach halong bay dc hotel, checked in and quickly came out of the hotel to experience night life. Well in halong bay there is only night, no life after night, it was dark on the streets, no street lights on some of the streets. Before coming out of the hotel we asked our receptionist for a good restaurant for dinner, she mentioned about a sea view hotel then took out a printed copy of the google maps street view and marked for us(they didn't even have a proper halong bay map). We walked down the street searching for the restaurant it is 10min walk from the hotel, half way down no street lights the place looked deserted. After walking few distance in the dark we found some lights at a restaurant, and thats the restaurant we are searching for.

It is a big restaurant and no customers were there when we went inside, just two old people went out when we went inside and it was just 9pm. It had a sea view table, we ordered 1kg crab, 1/2kg prawn, cuttle fish and some fried rice for dinner. No one knows english there, we communicated through images on the iphone and even the cooking style we showed as pictures from the phone. After 15mins the food was served, prawn was outstanding, crab was good and cuttle fish was mediocre, everyone concentrated on the sea creatures so rice was left over. Yet nothing stopped senthil and santhosh for a clean sweep. Totally it came up to 100 usd for 6 people, by 10pm we finished our dinner and only the billing person was in the restaurant all other employees have left for the day. I forgot the name of the restaurant and we didn't take photo of the restaurant, never-mind if you ever come to halong bay I will not recommend to book hotel in this area as it is very deserted. By 10.45pm we reached back to our hotel, after short night walk(nothing to see also). Shawshank redemption movie telecasted in the tv, watched for few minutes had the coke we bought side and slept for the night.

8th Nov: got up at 5.15am because 6am breakfast will be served at the hotels restaurant and 7.15am we have to take taxi to Bai Chay Pier for 6 hour halong bay cruise tour.

View from our room

We booked the cruise trip with the help of our hotel receptionist last night. It was very difficult for us to decide what tour & which tour agency to book as there were no pamplets or any advertisements for that matter. Vietnam should definetly improve in promoting their tourism in making a better tourist destination. 6.15am we went to have breakfast, not a grand breakfast menu but a pretty decent one. We spent about 45 mins in having our breakfast, as usual santhosh and senthil hit boundaries.

7.30am we took the taxi one way, 6usd to the ferry terminal, the guide welcomed us, we paid the guide 35usd for the tickets. Bought some snacks, drinks and hats for the one day cruise trip of halong bay.

Halong bay is one of the new7 natural wonders of the world, it has an area of around 1,553 km², including 1,960–2,000 islets, most of which are limestone rocks.

Around 8.15am we boarded the boat for the one day tour, the boat was not like the one I imagined or the one you see in google images when you search halong bay. It is a pretty ordinary boat and mainly it didn't have main sail or any sail for that matter. The boat started and in few mins we went to the upper open deck and then few others in the boat also joined us. The boat stopped at a gas station where they pumped up petrol, that's where we saw this yo yo dude.

The moment we saw him we liked him, waved our hands at him, whistled, made some sounds to get his attention. Later when the boat resumed its journey, the boy signaled and made some noise back. He didn't stop making noise until the boat was at quite a distance from the station. While we were enjoying the view, making noise, shooting photos; this vietnamese girl became our fan and took photo with us.

Our first stop was at heaven place driftwood cave where we took a small row boat to two of the cave passages. The view of the first cave passage is a splendid one, if they had allowed us to swim at this location then it would have been quite a day.

After taking pictures we went to another cave passage which was also good. Then we kayaked for a while(may be 20mins) starting, pickup, speed everything was good except parking. It is not that parking lot was full but dont know how to turn the kayak, struggled for a while to park, good that no one noticed us.

We boarded the boat again and headed to Sung Sot cave, on the way we saw this cock fight stone(resemblance of two cock fighting with its beak) after which we hit the cave. This cave is inside the lime rock, quite high from the sea level, its damn big. Inside the cave it is well maintained with colourfull lights everywhere and guided pathways layed along, it is really really big and long. We spent about 45 minutes in that place and had an tender coconut on the way back. The coconut was very tasty and was sold at 2usd, in cambodia you get tender coconut for 1 usd and double the size as you get in vietnam.

The boat then stopped at an fish farm in midway on the sea. We just went around seeing the fish types they nurture, then a lady worker from the boat told us if we buy fish she will cook for us in the boat.  We caught a fish, the worker killed the fish, weighed it and took back. Another person came with a calculator and told us 1kg is 32 usd and the fish weighed 3.5 he rounded off to 4 kg and told us to pay 128usd. We were shocked and really felt bad that we didn't ask for price earlier, never knew it would be so costly. Now no option the fish is already dead and we have to pay for the whole fish, we negotiated and rounded off to 90usd. That itself is damn costly and the lady who said who will cook for us got 10 dollars as cooking charges. Totally 100usd for the fish, to everyone in the boat we seemed to be royal guys. We asked the lady to fry the fish instead of steaming it, but the she didn't fry well some interior parts was raw, along with the fish we had some rice, vegetables & omelet. In the boat they sold some souvenirs, since we seemed the royal guys on the boat every sale came to us first. 

Then we went on to Ti Top island, it has a beach and has a very high view point  x metres above sea level. As we neared the Ti Top island parking zone there was not enough space for our boat as there were lot of boats already parked. The way our captain parked our boat was outstanding, squeezing between the boats literally it seemed like the boats were fighting.

I wanted to swim at the beach but the beach didn't have white sand and it was hot it didn't appeal much to me for swim. So we took the path to the view point, it was very steep and tiring. Many old people took the path and reached the top, even people who seemed they will die next day took the path; that old.

We did halt midway and took some pictures, reached the top around 1pm. It was a breathtaking view from the top, nature at its best. There was a speed boat cruising around it was really nice to view from that angle. Spent around 15 mins took some photos and headed back to the boat. The ti top island marks the end of our 1 day trip and we headed back to the shore, since we were tired we slept in the boat for some time. Once I woke after some time I saw the boat is moving very very slow, i counted nearly 6 boats overtook us. If I had swam I would have reached 30 mins before the boat it was that slow, finally we reached shore at 4.00pm.

Best still of the day...

There is a night market at a distance of 1 km from here, so we took a walk down the street. There are lot of hotels in this area and it is more lively with the beach just across, the road name is Ha Long if you ever visit halong bay then try to book a hotel in this location. We wanted to drink coffee, few metres down we saw this saigon hotel with restaurant, we wanted to freshen up too. Since this place looked good we went inside, freshen up and ordered coffee. Vietnam is famous for coffee, so we ordered for it, it took us less than a minute to drink coffee and guess what we had to wait for nearly 30 minutes for the coffee to be prepared. It is filter coffee system so it took 30 minutes to get the coffee brew and by the time it came to us it was very cold and we gulped it in less than a minute.

Then we walked few meters down and found the night market area and it was 6pm by then, venki and muni made friends with some locals there. The nigth market place is a shopping paradise it has lot of thinks to buy and we indeed bought lot of things, spent around 2 hours there. For shopping in vietnam there are two place where you can buy cheap things, this halong bay night market and hanoi walking street.

At around 8pm we left to our hotel, got freshen up and went to have dinner, our hotel has a bar in which we have complimentary drinks. So went there to get the drinks, the bar's ambiance was good so we had our dinner there. After dinner we went down for a short walk, it was really short as there was a gang fight that night. We saw few people on their bikes with baseball bat, like you see in road rash game. We slept early that night, since there is nothing much to do in halong bay we asked our driver to pick up us early at 8.30am in the morning to hanoi.

09-Nov: 7am we saw news that Typoon Haiyan is crossing philippines at a speed of 316km/hr, it is the strongest typhoon recorded in the history and guess what it is vietnam after philippines. 7.30 am we went to have breakfast and sharp 8.30am we checked out of our hotel back to hanoi. This time the driver was different and it was a 7 seater toyota fortuna. Since we bought lot of things and each one had two bags, so it was pretty congested in the car. On our way back we stopped by a roadside shop and had tender coconut. Don't know what natural flavor it had, it was damn tasty and we felt the energy within us.

Back on track, since the car was congested we stopped by few places to stretch our legs. Reached hanoi at 1pm and we checked in at golden sun hotel. Went to the same gecko restaurant to have food, this time we had burgers and sandwiches. Back to our hotel got the local map and started city tour ourselves.

Golden Sun Receptionist

Since hanoi is also a small place  we planned to finish the city tour today and go to Ninh Binh tomorrow. We started at 3pm for the city tour, Our first location to our city tour is hon kiem lake, its just backside of our hotel, a 5 min walk. This place is famous for its red color small bridge above the lake. After you cross there is a small temple kind of place, where the entry ticket was 2 usd, we were not interested, so we just took pictures on the bridge.

Didn't spend much time there, took a taxi and went to our next destination. In vietnam you don't need to bargain for taxi fares as they have good working condition meters installed. We reached Ho Chi Min Mausoleum in 10 minutes, it is a large memorial in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is located in the centre of Ba Dinh Square,  the place where Vietminh leader Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence on September 2, 1945, establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. . Near it there was a small buddha temple named as one pagoda, said 'hi' to god and moved on.

It is located on a huge open space lot of guards guarding the location. The Mausoleum itself is not a attractive place since there are lot of space surrounding and lot of people made it a good location.

Our next location was west lake, our hotel receptionist said it is an romantic location. Since it was near from the Mausoleum we started walking, as we hit the streets lot of people noticed us. Don't know why, may be they rarely see indians at this location there was one person who even stopped by to look at us. Using sign language we were able to reach the so called romantic spot, guess what better don't go to this place, had to walk 15mins. Nothing romantic, the place itself looked very ordinary just two lakes split by a densly traffic road. We were tired after walking for long distance so we had some refreshments. For everyone of us it was an pretty average spot except for senthil, the remo in him came out in this spot.

Senthil laughing like his Grandfather...

Remo mama

Spent around 20 mins here as senthil forced us  to stay, he also felt sad that this is the last location of our city tour. He kept on asked us if we are missing any location in the city tour, hanoi is a small place with very few city attractions. We completed the entire city tour in 2.5 hours, we desperately wanted to take taxi back to our hotel but there was none. 5.30pm itself it gets dark there we spent almost 20 mins walking and searching for taxi, finally we got a taxi, was a great relief for us. Senthil, venki, santhosh went in that taxi to our hotel and in 5 mins we got another taxi and by 6.30pm we reached our hotel.

The place near our hotel is where the shopping area is located, we went for shopping immediately. Bought few souvenir items, went again to the hon kiem lake to get night view of the red bridge. It was 8pm by then and we went for traditional massage, forgot the name of the massage parlor. It is a good traditional massage parlor for 10 usd, must go if you are nearby hon kiem lake.

After an hour we went to have dinner at the thai restaurant and had fried rice and juice, the taste was good. It was 9.45pm when we finished our dinner, nearby was this walking street night market; shopping paradise we went on a shopping spree. It spans across three streets and is very long probably few kms. To be frank vietnam girls are beautiful the best of all the asian countries that I have visited so far. We finished our shopping at 12 am and slept by 12.30 am, today is the last day of our trip and we have get ready by 6.00am to go to ninh binh.

10 Nov: 5.15am as usual I was the first one to get up and wake up other guys. 6.15am we checked out of our hotel, got our takeaway breakfast from the hotel and started to ninh binh in our 14 seater van.

Today we have flight back to singapore at 4pm, the place ninh binh is 2.5hr drive from hanoi and from there is 3 hour drive to airport so today is very tight schedule for us. This place we planned only yesterday evening as there is nothing much to do in hanoi. Actually this place we saw in trip advisor few days back but didn't add in our itinerary due to time constraint. Yet unexpectedly we managed to hit this place and it is a wonder on earth. The tourist attraction is Tam Cốc-Bích Động, it is an excursion by small boat along the Ngô Đồng River, beginning at the village of Van Lam and proceeding through a scenic landscape dominated by rice fields.

We reached the place at 8.30am itself half an hour before schedule, forgot to mention about the breakfast we packed it was just a slice of bread and some fruits; the fruits saved us. When we reached at 8.30am it was raining heavily,  we almost thought that the excursion is cancelled. Still we saw people taking the boats with rain coats, seemed its very common.

We too bought tickets raincoats and started, it was just 8usd per person. It is 2 seater boat, me and sujai with a young boy driver, santhosh and senthil with experienced old lady, muni and venki with a young novice girl. It was raining heavily when we started, I took my cam and mobile with me. As we moved few distance the rain intensity reduced and became mild showers, it is the perfect weather to travel in that place. The rain stopped in 15 mins and the place turns out to be a pinnacle of beauty; by far the most romantic place I have been but with no one to romance. Took lot of pictures with my cam and mobile and there was photographer also in his boat taking lot of pictures of us.

Kung Fu Panda...

The boy in our boat was peddling using his legs and the old lady in senthil's boat also used her legs to peddle, she was extreme even did a cycling style. The young lady in muni and venki boat is not experienced to use legs and turns out to be a vacationer who helps her mom at times to take her shift. After sometime she was tired and couldn't peddle , then the two brave hearts muni and venki started to peddle while she enjoyed the view.

We crossed around 3 caves, saw a temple on the way, few people selling drinks on thier boats, the river is endless but they turned back after a partiular point. We started make noise, singing song and few travellers were attracted, waived at us, made noise with us. On the way back we stopped by the temple to get blessings from vietnam god.

Old lady teasing santhosh, venki and muni struggling to row the boat, me and sujai hearing songs and enjoying the nature's majectic view. The entire boat ride was over in just few hours and we were back at the land received by our photographs. Remember I told about the photographer who took photo of us, yes by the time we were back they had it printed and gave to us in an album for 10 usd. It was 10.45 by then, we left the place to have food at a restaurant nearby.

Ordered some fried rice and soup, by the time we finished our lunch it was 11.30am, schedule delayed by half an hour. We paid the bill in usd as we didnt have dong, the cashier didn't accept the 100 dollar note, it was not even torn just a bit old. We almost fought with the cashier, we didn't have enough money, finally got reserve money from santhosh and paid them.

We started to airport in our van, slept half way and fortunately reached early at 2pm itself; our flight is at 4pm. Got our boarding pass quickly and went outside of the airport to finish some unfinished business. Came back to have burgers since we were hungry, after which we went to the gate 30 mins before time. The flight was on time and we reached singapore at 8.30pm, couldn't have pongal at anandha bhavan so went home cooked and had dinner.

              

Vietnam turned out to be yet another memorable pleasant trip. A place like halong bay you can get chance to visit in thailand or malaysia but Ninh Binh's Tam Cốc-Bích Động you cannot see anywhere else on earth but vietnam. Ninh Binh is a strong contendor for your bucket list; must go either with your wife/girl friend.

To conclude, in vietnam trip lot of expected things happened unexpectedly.