Sunday, May 20, 2012

Day 2 of Vietnam @ Halong Bay

We were told our bus pick-up is at 7.30am local time and breakfast will be ready by 6.30am. But unfortunately we had to wait 15-20minutes. It was small serving and we picked "Australian breakfast" as it comes with bacon and sausage.

After breakfast, we had to wait for 15minutes for our bus that goes around the whole Hanoi town to pick-up other people until the bus is full. Journey to Halong harbour is 3 hours. We stopped at a marble-sculpture-factory for toilet-break. This really helped me to 'fix' my aching-soaring buttock. Had naps along the rest of the trip because bus can only go maximum 50km/hour and the roads are rather bumping at some smaller towns we passes by. Along the journey from Hanoi to Halong Bay pier, I noticed lots of tombstone in the middle of the paddy-field or a village; which is an open-field.

At the harbour/jetty, we bumped into the two Filipino men we met at the airport-bus whom are going for 1-day trip to Halong Bay. Feeling hungry while waiting for our boat ride, luckily I still have some leftover bread from Malaysia. First impression of the jetty and bay wasn't so great. We first had to take a motor-driven boat to our Cruise-boat and on the Cruise-boat, we were welcomed with cold towel and it was so refreshing!

Our room is ok but the toilet has a lot of small cockroaches and the lights are very deem thus difficult to see much inside. The windows cannot open unfortunately. The aircond won't be able to function until evening due to the generator is being used to generate power for the Cruise-boat to move along the bay. After putting our 1-day-bag, we meet the rest of them at the dining area and had lunch while enjoying the bay-breeze while it sails.

After lunch, we visit Hang Đầu Gỗ (Wooden stakes cave). Good and we took lots of pictures here.

Kayaking followed after caving and it's Yen Lin's first time on a kayak. For the first 30minutes, we stay at the inner-side of the village and nearer to the cliffs as there are alot of big boats at the outer side of the village. When it's almost time, we tried to go out and was purposely knocked by one of the motor-driven boat that passes by. So scary as I can't swim in open-sea!!

We returned to the cruise-boat for those of us that want to change into swimwears. Nothing impressive of the beach at Đảo Ti Tốp (TiTop Island). We did a 30minutes stairs-climbing upwards to the peak for this small island but it felt like a longer-exhausting climb of 1hour! I need to stop many times along the way to catch-my-breath. The view can consider breath-taking especially with a panaromic camera shot taken and that's when I realised why it's a UNESCO World Heritage site. You got to be up here to "know why".

Sadly, we can't see sunset from our cruise as it's parked rather inner of a cove and it's view is blocked. We had red wine before dinner and I slowly sipped mine at the upper-deck while watching the sunset-orange-rays slowly dissapears into the horizon. The breeze was simply lovely too. Some smaller-rowed-boats returned to their village.

After dinner, I went back to our room for a shower so I can enjoy my complimentary foot massage. Gosh! Showering is a bad experience onboard this cruise! Water is so so hot that it can boil my skin! So, I end-up scooping water from the basin and bidet to wash myself. Lucky, it's not my wash-hair day. 10 minutes of foot massage was simply blissful to get rid of our soars from the climbing. After that, we had a boring experience trying to catch squid wifh a bamboo-stick and it comes along with a neon green-colour artificial miniature octopus as bait. We spend 1 hour and decided to leave it to get our beauty sleep.

No TV in the room and AC was a little weird. At night, felt 2 times some creature crawling on my exposed foot so decided to get into the covers. Gggrrrr... Very hard bed and didn't had a good rest after all.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Day 1 of Vietnam @ Hanoi

Yen Lin and I landed Noi Bai International Airport on time @ 8.30am local time.

First impression is good because AirAsia's flight don't require us to take the stairs out from the plane. Had the luxury of the "connector". After exiting the custom, we looked for tourist counter which surprisingly many that have the "free map" signboards but in actual there isn't any! English is a BIG issue here in Hanoi

We couldn't figure out where to take the bus to "old-quarter" that cost VND10,000 per person so we end up taking the airport-bus that cost us VND40,000 per person. This also, we had difficulties trying to get back the VND100,000 from the bus-driver who kept ignoring us. Initially, he scammed  us by telling us the bus is leaving and get us to board it quickly but in actual he wanted it fully-occupied before departing. The journey took us about 1hour.

We stopped for something to eat once we get down the bus. We decided to get some light food at the "kaki-lima"(5-foot walk-way) where we see other people also eating. No harm blending in the crowd despite it's very obvious Yen Lin and me are tourists as I was lugging my luggage along the street. We ordered a plate of 'bahn-ram-it'(from Hue) to share. Turns out to be crackers, some sticky-kueh texture and dried shrimps-floss. Taste interesting for we are hungry. Funny, everyone here eat on low tables & stools.

The bus agent said we just need to walk 5-10minutes to reach our hotel from the stop the bus let us down. Unfotunately, it took us more than 40minutes and me with my luggage; I almost give-up!! Yen Lin was very patience with my slowness and she complimented that the people that we asked for direction were helpful and did not mis-directed us.

An Hung Hotel is ok. We were welcomed with smiles, cold towels and cold drinks.

After putting the luggage, we head out to get our lunch that we almost forgotten due to our exhaustion of walking in search of our hotel. We tried the food-street near the hotel. BBQ-pork-noodle is yummy!! Unfortunately, we were so exhausted that we forgotten our camera too. The fried-beancurd noodle is rather plain. We ordered sugarcane drink and it tasted different. It has a natural-limey taste to it. We stopped to buy my favourite green-tea drink that I saw earlier while walking on the street in search of the hotel and Yen Lin got herself a big bottle of mineral water.

We returned to hotel. Showered and took 1.5hours of nap. By 4pm, we get ready to go out for our shops-hopping before the night market that starts at 7.30pm. We saw "beca"(trishaw) so was tempted and it was a good choice of transport as the trishaw-man bring us to almost every single street. And one will noticed that each street sells different specialty items. For example, one street sells all coffee. Another street sells all bamboo and another street sells all latterns and so on.

We even went around the Hoan Kiem Lake. Think the trishaw-man wanted to rest for a while so he asked us to go inside a temple by the lake and we spend some time taking pictures and wondering what's his intention. We returned to our trishaw-ride and after more than 1hour, we were concerned about the charges and somehow, the trishaw-man just don't stop; just continue street after street. Think; this is a very common scam by "trishaw-men" to take more hours than agreed. We decided to request the trishaw to stop us near a food-street and paid for our 1.5hours ride; VND200,000.


Ordered a bowl of phở gà (chicken noodle soup) for VND35,000. But the stall man is not too friendly and don't speak English. We walked back to the lake on foot as the Cho Dem Dong Xuan night market is not ready yet.


Tried to buy ice cream at the lake but no english speaking seller so at the end, we cannot enjoy ice cream or even an ice-drink like the rest of the passerby.



Night market was nothing interesting! But, we picked a cup of Chè (sweet beverage/dessert soup) that have jackfruit, black-glutinious rice, sago, coconut-milk and jellies. Simply-sweety-refreshingly-cool!! :P

Still feeling hungry so had a beef-kebab for VND25,000 with Yen Lin sharing it half with me. Very thirsty so bought 2 glasses of sugarcane for us each. Once we got back to hotel, I still felt very thirsty so I finished the green-tea drink that I like. Enjoyed 3 korean dramas before I fall asleep...

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Love Juice for Mee's & Dee's Day


How the idea of "love juice" came up?
It all started with a colleague; Pee asking about "beetroot" during lunch break last week. We actually go in circles-of-guessing what she was refering to. Finally, I google up and showed her the picture. She helped to purchase 1 kilogram of beetroot from her neigbourhood-market. Another colleague; Mei Ying wanted it so I decided to share the portion with her as it was rather alot. She paid for it all as I was helping her with the labour of "peeling, cleaning and extracting". Hehehe...


Since, Dad warned me about it's "messy-ness", I had to ensure everything is planned properly and the most important thing will be the plastic-glove that Dad bought when Mom also requested it for future use. This important because I do not wanna ruin my Rm100+ french-manicure either!

So happened it's Mother's Day today and in actual, Mom and I both have low-blood-pressure so the juice ideally should be for Dad and Bro! So, I thought... why not call it "Love Juice" from my heart with love. To Daniel: You will have your "love share" when you come back.


 
Mei Ying wanted pure "beetroot" juice so still got "love" inside but I can't imagine the taste.


For the rest of us at home, I added Apple, Carrot and "Jambu-Air" to the Beetroot.


Peeling of the Beetroot turns out not so bad after all but it kept flying-out from my plastic-glove grip and cause a mess when it rolled to the floor where I didn't put newspaper. And well, it's messy and the colour... purple... and when you put it in the juice-extractor, it's like your blood-gushing out during a "heart-surgery"!!


For the 3rd one that I did for myself, there is no juice coming out and that's when Dad came back from church. My hero! Why? Because Dad asked me why I didn't use his "Green-toy" and I told him, "Oh.. I didn't know it can do the same function." And it's such good machine! It can actually juice-out 1 beer-mug of "love juice" from all the pulps from the other Juice-Extractor! And it's 10x easier to clean and dispose the "pulp".




Cheers! Happy Mee & Dee's Day!