now is the time of enjoy.
you have to love long travel days when you have hours to kill waiting for a bus and you've spent the whole day walking around a wild city and all you want to do is rest your feet and then you find an inet cafe that charges less than thirty three cents an hour! perfect.
I'm just waiting for a bus right now... I have three more hours to go and nothing to do... and very very tired feet. I'm looking up and down all of the keyboards here in this inet cafe and they ALL have tons of cigarette burns all over them. Same with the tables here. So far that's been the worst thing about travelling here... so much smoking everywhere! I don't like it at all... I need to buy a bandana or something to breathe into!
So I spent today and the last two days wandering all around the Old Quarter in Hanoi... went to a few museums with Don.... saw the markets, went to a lot of cafes. I went to the military museum! They have TONS and TONS of old American warcraft there... damn, we must have just left loads of shit here when we finally pulled out of Nam. It was a really cool museum! And I saw the "hanoi hilton"... the old POW prison here during the Nam war and before that the place where the French imprisoned and executed hundreds of communist soldiers and supporters. It was a pretty crazy thing to see. John McCain was imprisoned there apparently. They have a display case with his jumpsuit from the Air Force in it and a couple of pictures of him visiting the prison again back in 2000.
This is actually a really great city! Its so easy to travel here and so interesting. The women here are so different from the women in India! A lot of them dress kind of sexy... lots of high heels and skirts and shorts. Not everyone of course, a lot of the older women are still pretty conservative. But no one would ever dress like that in India! They would get more attention than they could stand! Everyone here seems to have a motorbike... there are MILLIONS of them around this city! And all of the women ride them as well... with high heels and everything! They pack them pretty high was all kinds of junk just like they did in India, but they don't try to fit entire familes on them at least! And no side-saddle riding here!
This morning I woke up at 5:30 (AMAZING, I know!!!) and the city was already awake and busy... everyone goes out at does tai chi around the lake at 5 a.m. I had some breakfast and then hired one of the motorcycle wallahs (that's not what they're called here... but i don't know what the name is, and you know what i'm talking about when i say wallah) to take me to the bus station so I could buy a ticket to this place called Ninh Binh. My driver didn't speak one word of English and I don't speak one word of Vietnamese, but we managed somehow to understand each other okay. He took me to the bus station and walked in with me to help me buy a ticket (everyone is so kind here!) and no one at the station spoke any English at all. He took me to the Ninh Binh counter and told the lady what I wanted and she gave me a ticket, and I asked my driver if it was for today and what time and then he and the lady behind the counter started arguing like crazy and she gave me my money back and we walked away. Then she called me back and gave me another ticket and i paid here but then she started arguing with my driver again and then gave me my money back again. i have NO IDEA what happened... its saturday here though... maybe the bus wasn't running or something. so confusing. anyway i went back to the hotel with no ticket. So i just booked a tourist bus for tonight... it was more money and it doesn't leave until 6 pm, but at least its done.... you can really have a hard go getting around here if you get off the tourist route and try to do things on your own, i think! English is definitely not as common here as it was in India.
I don't really know anything at all about Ninh Binh, I just needed to make a move... get out of the city, and it was a highlight on a map in my book so I picked it! I have not a clue what to expect but I'm excited to find out!! Hopefully it will be a good surprise, but if not- all in the name of a good adventure, right!
ahhhh. travel. nothing so soul-stirring and transformative.
so pleased to be out in the world again... ready to hear some new ideas about life and learn new things about myself.
happy journey!
I'm just waiting for a bus right now... I have three more hours to go and nothing to do... and very very tired feet. I'm looking up and down all of the keyboards here in this inet cafe and they ALL have tons of cigarette burns all over them. Same with the tables here. So far that's been the worst thing about travelling here... so much smoking everywhere! I don't like it at all... I need to buy a bandana or something to breathe into!
So I spent today and the last two days wandering all around the Old Quarter in Hanoi... went to a few museums with Don.... saw the markets, went to a lot of cafes. I went to the military museum! They have TONS and TONS of old American warcraft there... damn, we must have just left loads of shit here when we finally pulled out of Nam. It was a really cool museum! And I saw the "hanoi hilton"... the old POW prison here during the Nam war and before that the place where the French imprisoned and executed hundreds of communist soldiers and supporters. It was a pretty crazy thing to see. John McCain was imprisoned there apparently. They have a display case with his jumpsuit from the Air Force in it and a couple of pictures of him visiting the prison again back in 2000.
This is actually a really great city! Its so easy to travel here and so interesting. The women here are so different from the women in India! A lot of them dress kind of sexy... lots of high heels and skirts and shorts. Not everyone of course, a lot of the older women are still pretty conservative. But no one would ever dress like that in India! They would get more attention than they could stand! Everyone here seems to have a motorbike... there are MILLIONS of them around this city! And all of the women ride them as well... with high heels and everything! They pack them pretty high was all kinds of junk just like they did in India, but they don't try to fit entire familes on them at least! And no side-saddle riding here!
This morning I woke up at 5:30 (AMAZING, I know!!!) and the city was already awake and busy... everyone goes out at does tai chi around the lake at 5 a.m. I had some breakfast and then hired one of the motorcycle wallahs (that's not what they're called here... but i don't know what the name is, and you know what i'm talking about when i say wallah) to take me to the bus station so I could buy a ticket to this place called Ninh Binh. My driver didn't speak one word of English and I don't speak one word of Vietnamese, but we managed somehow to understand each other okay. He took me to the bus station and walked in with me to help me buy a ticket (everyone is so kind here!) and no one at the station spoke any English at all. He took me to the Ninh Binh counter and told the lady what I wanted and she gave me a ticket, and I asked my driver if it was for today and what time and then he and the lady behind the counter started arguing like crazy and she gave me my money back and we walked away. Then she called me back and gave me another ticket and i paid here but then she started arguing with my driver again and then gave me my money back again. i have NO IDEA what happened... its saturday here though... maybe the bus wasn't running or something. so confusing. anyway i went back to the hotel with no ticket. So i just booked a tourist bus for tonight... it was more money and it doesn't leave until 6 pm, but at least its done.... you can really have a hard go getting around here if you get off the tourist route and try to do things on your own, i think! English is definitely not as common here as it was in India.
I don't really know anything at all about Ninh Binh, I just needed to make a move... get out of the city, and it was a highlight on a map in my book so I picked it! I have not a clue what to expect but I'm excited to find out!! Hopefully it will be a good surprise, but if not- all in the name of a good adventure, right!
ahhhh. travel. nothing so soul-stirring and transformative.
so pleased to be out in the world again... ready to hear some new ideas about life and learn new things about myself.
happy journey!