Hanoi Trip 2015 Summary

Hanoi Trip 2015 Summary

Part 1 Tour Around City

Part 2 Tour Around City

Part 3 Halong Bay

Part 4 Halong Bay, Tour Around City

Part 5 Hoa Lu-Tam Coc

Enjoy and have a nice day =)

Hanoi Trip (25 till 29 October 2015) Part 5

As for the last day of our trip before heading back to KL, we booked a trip to Hoa Lu - Tam Coc which was the ancient capital city of Vietnam/ Halong Bay on land. Each of its architecture has its history and the city itself was the previous capital city of Vietnam for many past dynasties before Hanoi! Due to its location which was not strategic for war and various reasons, they shifted to Hanoi until now. These places were located quite far from the city center which took us about 1.5 hours to get there and the tour guide was very good in explaining everything to us before we reached there.

At Hoa Lu to visit both Dinh and Le Dynasties temples

At the front of Dinh temple, the temple was very well located because it was by the hills and water/lake

Old Vietnam flag whereby each colour has its own meaning which later replaced by the communist flag!

The emperor with his 3 sons during the Dinh dynasty, they have very long and interesting stories! 

Le dynasty temple

Le dynasty temple was under refurbishment when we were there

The last remnants from the war

Beautiful landscape surrounding the 2 temples =) 

After visiting the temples at Hoa Lu, we moved on to Tam Coc for lunch and some other activites, for example sampan ride through the caves and riding on a bicycle to visit a temple. One tips, remember to prepare some tips (about VND 20,000) for the sampan ride or else you will be staying on the sampan forever!

The whole sampan ride took about 1 hour and remember to carry a umbrella or a hat!

Rest point at half way.. Everything that they sell were in USD!

Bicycle ride along the countryside to a temple uphill..

If you wish to do so, you can hike up to this point but just be careful because it was super dangerous and a slip would send you up to heaven straight!

A fellow friend from Canada who hiked up with me! =)

The temple at mid point

Time to say bye-bye with the Japanese aunty in front of me!

Last dinner, cha ca, VND 120,000/ pax (grilled fish with noodle).. A very simple kind of dish served with noodle with peanuts, mint leave and fish sauce.

And something that I bought back to KL, the meat loaf! 

And that was the end of our trip! We spent about MYR 2000 per person including the air tickets and accommodation. And it would be a lot cheap if the exchange rate was lower! USD 1 was about MYR 4.2 and VND 1M was about MYR 200!

Enjoy and have a nice day!

Hanoi Trip (25 till 29 October 2015) Part 4

I didn't have a good sleep on the boat but Susan did because it was a quite noisy at night. I heard many "tic-toc tic-toc" sound which people walking on planks middle of the night and the oil tanker gave a big bang early in the morning to refuel the boat! And only after that, I had a good sleep but it was a short sleeping time for me because it was time to get up for breakfast! After having a quick breakfast, we headed to Halong Pearl Museum for our last destination before heading back to Hanoi city!

Halong Pearl Museum, it's purely a tourist hot spot! Even a simple small pearl would cost more than USD 30.. No cash no worries, they accept credit cards! =)

Other than selling pearls incorporate into various jewelries, they even demonstrated how they breed the oysters to produce high quality pearls!

Multi-purpose tour guide who can explain every details at the Pearl Museum..

Time to say good bye to Pearl Museum =)

And lastly, this was our boat which we spent a night! Dragon Gold Cruise, by AP Travel... Thanks AP Travel and time to head back to Hanoi city for dinner

As usual, we took our map and followed the recommendations by the hotel receptionist for dinner. Everything that we had were at affordable price range (equivalent to about MYR 10 per bowl of noodle). 

Pho 10 for beef noodle.. A famous shop for both tourists and locals.. Service was superb and even the noodle was "super good"!

It was quite a big bowl and we thought of trying out some other things after this, so we shared 1 bowl for 2!

Roasted beef noodle (dinner #2) at a local restaurant.. If you want to have a more meaty broth, you would like this more than the first one.. But the bad part was we couldn't communicate with each other, so I just pay VND 50,000 with no balance and he gave me what he can offer with that price!

Tadaa.. But it turned out great! Looks like the Korean beef bone soup (which you need to adjust the taste with pepper and salt to suit you) but this broth doesn't need any adjustment except if you want it to be more spicy!

When we left that place around 8pm, the crowd was still queuing up! 

Just to make sure that we stuffed our stomach 100% before we go back to our hotel, we stopped by at this road side stall to enjoy street food!

Dinner #3 a.k.a supper, rice rolls with meat loaf (VND 60,000).. Freshly prepared and everything was good! Goes well with a cup of sugar cane drink with lime! =)

And our 3rd night ended here! It was a Tuesday on this busy street though it was about 10pm at night..

To be continued...