Welcome to Hanoi...Oh Vietnam...you were such a unique place and I must admit, not my favorite country to visit. I mean, I know The USA bombed your country but you could have been a little nicer!!!! I didn't fight in the war!
This is how i felt the WHOLE time I was in Vietnam...not exactly a welcoming place towards Americans. But we made the best of it and had a good time any way!
Maybe you know this place? The "Hanoi Hilton"...I didn't get any closer...there were guards all around this place. But it was a very interesting feeling being in the place that held so many Americans captive.
Very important lesson I learned in Vietnam...No matter how much you love your daddy you probably shouldn't wear one of his fire department shirts with an American flag on the back, while touring Vietnam. Just sayin', They weren't too excited about my presence in the place that held Ho Chi Minh's body:-( In the pic you can see I am wearing my jacket...but they made us take off all our jackets and bags, sooooo yeah...never again. Apparently they thought I was walking too loudly and the guards got on to me for being too loud. I was about to crawl out of my skin...I just walked through quickly at that point. I had to get out of there. The darkness that was in that place was sooo extreme.
After the crazy experience at the body of HCM we decided to find some lunch....haha..that was not exactly what we were expecting. We walked for about an hour and a half and got turned away from 2 restaurants...and finally had to eat street noodles. I'm thinkin' that it must have been dog meat because it was about the nastiest food I have ever had. It smelled pretty bad, but I tried to smile bigger to mask the overwhelming feeling of being sick. We were all pretty shot by this point and were ready for some down time. It had been a pretty stressful morning.
Before we left Hanoi we wanted to see the Lake and some kind of special "Hanoi scenery"...So we walked along this path and found the "World in the eyes of Vietnam". We didn't realize Vietnam took up so much of the world...I mean look at all that red area!!! It was quite amusing! But at this little area as we were walking Chelsie's Camera was stolen out of her purse:-( It was just about the straw that broke us all...We were ready to LEAVE!! So that night we flew out to the south of Vietnam..to Ho Chi Minh City, used to be know as Siagon.
The morning after we arrived, the sun was shining, it was in the 80s and everyone was instantly in an amazing mood:-) It didn't matter about how much Vietnam hated Americans at this point...we were all happy. We had a pretty rough time when we arrived the night before. We had a taxi to take us from the airport to our hostel and when we arrived they didn't have the room we reserved. Oh this was NOT good. Remember, it was the same day that all the horrible things had happened in Hanoi...so we tried to reason with the woman but she wanted to still charge us for more than we were going to stay and not give us the right room...after 30 min of getting no where we told her would find another place to stay(at midnight) and to give us our money back. She had our money in her hand at that point. But she looked at us and put her hands under the table and said she would not give it to us...lol, I wish I had a picture of Chelsie's face at this point...she had remained quiet most of the time. Paul and Jacqueline had been doing most of the negotiations but at this point Chelsie look right at the woman and in an amazingly firm voice said "GIVE HIME THE MONEY!"....The lady handed the money to Paul and we walked out. One of my favorite Chelsie moments of the whole trip! She was sooooo upset but held her composure amazingly well. After we got out of their we all congratulated her and then laughed for days about this. Oh the adventures we had!
We decided we hadn't heard enough about how horrible Americans were so we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are the tunnels the Vietnamese made to hide during the war. now remember how small Vietnamese people are...they were like you are all welcome to crawl through the tunnels...ha...OK! i was excited...but they were VERY small!
This was an American tank...YAY we all ran over to it and had our tour guide take a picture of us:-)
One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting to shoot an AK47!!!! WooHoo...i loved it!!! We paid for 10 shots and all shared them. It was a little strange shooting this gun on a war ground but lots of fun!
After hearing about how the "Devil loving Americans came to Vietnam and shot all the women and children and even the pots and pans" we left the Tunnels....We had had just about enough fun we could have. So we ended out day at the night market and then found Tutti Fruity! AHHHH Chelsie and I were so excited! Great ending to the day!
The next morning we got all packed up and headed to Cambodia!!! This was my new backpack I got in Hanoi! Best purchase EVER! It was about $20 American dollars...it is a 75lb pack and by the time I got home...it was at least that much! lol
No comments:
Post a Comment