Day 3- April 19, 2009

Day 3: Halong Bay

We left Hanoi at 8:30am after having a 5-star buffet breakfast at the Melia Hanoi Hotel. It’s a 4-hour ride to Halong City. The freeway has only 2 lanes for both directions that are separated by a yellow line in the middle. It’s kind of scary to see fast traffic of both lanes seemingly running into each other. But of course, magically everyone did their best and managed to drive on the freeway safely. We saw rice fields along the way and interesting housing being developed. The houses tended to be tall, up to 4-storys high. They looked kind of skinny since the widths of the houses were mostly around 12 feet. The houses have many kinds of architectural styles that resemble those from Europe. We had a bathroom break after our 2-hour ride at a giant gift shop of the White Marble Factory. The marble sculptures were beautiful and extremely heavy so no one bought anything.
Halong City has many restaurants and hotels, gift shops and services to accommodate millions of visitors a year. We boarded our private boat at our private dock, which had the view of the brand new bridge that was built by a Japanese company. Two small water taxis took up to our boat, Bhaya. Our Bhaya had 4 deck levels. The first two were for cabins. The third was the dining area. The top one was the viewing deck. The whole ship accommodated our 38-person group nicely and charmingly. The crewmembers welcomed us with a red carpet, shower of rose petals, cold towels and water. We were immediately led to our dining area where a buffet lunch style was served with complimentary grapefruit mimosa. The food included dishes of local crab, fish and shrimp. They tasted amazingly fresh and sweet. The ship was crewed along the bay, which has more than 1,700 islands. Most of the islands were not inhabited because of their small size and steepness. The scenery is breath taking with blue water, sunlight, breeze and the quietness of nature.

After lunch, I went on a scenery trip on the water taxi. We then moved to small rowing boats in groups of 4. We were so relaxed and enjoyed the scenery as our local lady rowed us through the Sky Gate, which is the open space under a giant island. We saw a fishing village along the way. With $15,000, you can buy a float house and live here! There are small schools that go up to fifth grade for local children.

We came back to the top deck at 5 pm for a cooking lesson. We were taught about the ingredients of the seafood crispy rolls and rolled them ourselves for the staff to fry them. People were delighted with the happy hour at the satellite bar and enjoyed the freshly made crispy rolls that we had just put together.

The dinner was so amazing. A six-course meal was served. The staff was very detail oriented and attentive. I enjoyed my sea bass dish very much. At 9pm, I was totally beat so I headed back to my room. On my way, I saw the staff catching calamari, which would then be used for the next-day meal. While I was in my deep sleep, the rest of the group enjoyed watching “Indochine”, a classic movie about Vietnam in the 1940s. Part of the movie was filmed in Halong Bay.

Day 2- April 17, 2009

Day 2: Hanoi

After a long night sleep, everyone had their complimentary breakfast at the Melia Hotel, which served Vietnamese tropical fruit,noodle soup, eggs and a Western style breakfast. The weather was still cloudy and humid with just a few droplets of rain.



After breakfast everyone met up for the tour at the Hoa Lo Prison, the Infamous Hanoi Hilton
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoa_Lo). After that, we went to the Temple of Literature, the oldest university of Vietnam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Literature). At 12:30pm, everyone was taken to the 100 year-old, most famous restaurant of Hanoi, Cha Ca La Vong Restaurant. We indulged in the fish cake which was served with rice noodles, herbs, peanuts, and shrimp sauce. After lunch we all went off and explored on our own and then reconnected at 7pm for dinner. During our break from each other I spent my time walking around the 36-business districts. I really enjoyed taking pictures of the street vendors and talking with them.

The dinner at the Season Restaurant was excellent; we had an 8-course menu.

Day 1- April 16, 2009

Day 1: Hanoi

Without any delays and after 13.5 hours of flying from SFO to Hong Kong and another 3-hour flight from Hong Kong, everyone landed safely at Noi Bai Airport at 9:45 am. We got checked out quickly at customs and then we were taken on a bus to Hanoi. During the 25-minute bus drive we passed by The Red River and also through the countryside that had rice, flower and orchard fields. As we approached Hanoi, the roads became covered with more and more scooters, cars, people and bicycles. Hanoi has doubled its population in the last 10 years. The bus moved slowly through Hanoi Streets as the traffic got heavier. It was amazing to see how people moved around on the road. There are very few traffic lights around here and the scooter drivers, bicyclists, car drivers and pedestrians come out from all directions. It seemed like traffic accidents were about to happen but never did. People just know how to "sense" each other on the road.

The first eating stop was Pho at Pho Vuong Restaurant. I had a bowl of noodle soup with chicken, which tasted fresh and delicious. It had a squeeze of lemon, some thin slices of red hot peppers and some fried rice cake. After that, everyone got checked in at 5-star Melia Hanoi Hotel, which is located in the heart of Hanoi. We reconnected again at 3 pm. After we met up, we went on a one-hour tour on "cyclo's", which used to be a common way of public transportation and now is mostly used for tourists. Each of us had our own cyclist and they took us through all of the 36-business streets of Hanoi (http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/1001). We would see dozens of shops selling the same products made from bamboo, paper, and bronze... After that, we went to see Temple Ngoc Son, which is located on Hoan Kiem Lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Kiem_Lake). We got there by passing through a small and beautiful wooden red bridge called The Huc Bridge. The temple was the oldest and most beautiful temple in Hanoi where the locals worshiped the old-time generals who helped Vietnam to fight its enemies and kept the peace for the country. The following link is a water puppet show (http://www.thanglongwaterpuppet.org/homepage.asp) which we went to and was a 5-minute walk from the temple. The show had a live band and singers who performed traditional Vietnamese songs as background music for its main showcase. Puppeteers skillfully manipulated the wooden, handcrafted puppets and told the stories of everyday lives of farmers who would go fishing, ride water buffalos, and also dance and sing. The water puppet show also told the legendary story of Hoan Kiem Lake where a golden turtle took back the helping sword from King Le after his victory over a Chinese enemy.

The dinner was held at the charming Indochine Restaurant that was hidden on a small road. The restaurant used to be an old French Villa. The dinning room gave a sense of intimacy and family. People sat together in groups of 8 and shared a 9-course meal of crab soup, barbecued shrimp, baked beef in bamboo, fried fish with tamarind sauce, fried rice with seafood, sautéed chicken with cashew, and more... Everyone enjoyed the amazing dinner and the delicious desert afterwards. After dinner we left the restaurant and got back to the hotel at 8:30pm (local time) for some sweet dreams before we reconnected the next day at 8:30am.