The Presidential Palace that Uncle Ho refused to work in cos he deemed it too extravagant. Influenced architecturally by the French as it resembles the palaces I saw in Europe before
Instead, Uncle Ho chose to work in a smaller humble house
Children out on a school trip
We got this very confused guard to take a pic with us. At first he thought we wanted him to help us take a photo, but we dragged him in anw. I'm sure the girls did not mind!
The cap with the red star is a popular souvenir
Entrance to the One-Pillar Pagoda
Vietnamese come here to pray if they want to have a child, hence the bountiful presence of lotuses
Ho Chi Minh museum
A visit to the Temple of Literature next. It's the country's first university
This structure is a familiar sight on all the street signs in Hanoi
It is said that rubbing the head of the tortoise will bring good luck in the examinations. Damn....why din I do this b4? Maybe a CAP 5 from here?!
A crane standing upon a tortoise. Think it was meant to symbolise success
Was thinking of grabbing this for a friend. Vietnamese brides anyone? In the end we left with charms instead
Whole place gives me the very Chinese temple feel
Lunch at this popular but slightly more expensive than usual joint for pho noodles
Refused to have pho as I have been eating it for most of the time. Time for something different....broken rice with pork pie!
Broken rice just means the rice grains are finer. The pork pie comes as a lump of processed meat, unlike that served in Europe where it really comes like a rounded pie
Coffee anyone?
Creme caramel to top the dessert
Museum of Ethnology, which covers mainly the culture and ritual practices of the ethnic groups in Vietnam. My favourite museum here in Hanoi
Our little red dot in Vietnamese!
Baskets of traps on a bicycle
Santa Claus sure did customise his wheels on his trip to Vietnam! Anw the exhibit was more of showing the presence of Catholics in Vietnam
Stools!!
A personal favourite was the open-air museums which featured real exhibits of the kind of houses the different ethnic groups lived in. Over here, a water puppet theatre is featured
And this huge structure is a Bahnar communal house, with a height of 19 m. Think of it as a gathering spot for the villagers
Quenched my thirst from the kettle
The reason why the houses were built to tall was to allow the men who hunt in the jungles to find their way back effectively. Alternatively, can also view it as the taller it gets, the more power it represents
Our very own communal gathering
An Ede Longhouse that is over 42 m long
A Giarai tomb surrounded by sexually explicit wood carvings and other carvings of pregnant fertility. It's odd that the Giarai mix the dead with fertility...hmm...
Posing by one of the carvings.....nope no other poses for the other explicit ones...
Instead, Uncle Ho chose to work in a smaller humble house
Children out on a school trip
We got this very confused guard to take a pic with us. At first he thought we wanted him to help us take a photo, but we dragged him in anw. I'm sure the girls did not mind!
The cap with the red star is a popular souvenir
Entrance to the One-Pillar Pagoda
Vietnamese come here to pray if they want to have a child, hence the bountiful presence of lotuses
Ho Chi Minh museum
A visit to the Temple of Literature next. It's the country's first university
This structure is a familiar sight on all the street signs in Hanoi
It is said that rubbing the head of the tortoise will bring good luck in the examinations. Damn....why din I do this b4? Maybe a CAP 5 from here?!
A crane standing upon a tortoise. Think it was meant to symbolise success
Was thinking of grabbing this for a friend. Vietnamese brides anyone? In the end we left with charms instead
Whole place gives me the very Chinese temple feel
Lunch at this popular but slightly more expensive than usual joint for pho noodles
Refused to have pho as I have been eating it for most of the time. Time for something different....broken rice with pork pie!
Broken rice just means the rice grains are finer. The pork pie comes as a lump of processed meat, unlike that served in Europe where it really comes like a rounded pie
Coffee anyone?
Creme caramel to top the dessert
Museum of Ethnology, which covers mainly the culture and ritual practices of the ethnic groups in Vietnam. My favourite museum here in Hanoi
Our little red dot in Vietnamese!
Baskets of traps on a bicycle
Santa Claus sure did customise his wheels on his trip to Vietnam! Anw the exhibit was more of showing the presence of Catholics in Vietnam
Stools!!
A personal favourite was the open-air museums which featured real exhibits of the kind of houses the different ethnic groups lived in. Over here, a water puppet theatre is featured
And this huge structure is a Bahnar communal house, with a height of 19 m. Think of it as a gathering spot for the villagers
Quenched my thirst from the kettle
The reason why the houses were built to tall was to allow the men who hunt in the jungles to find their way back effectively. Alternatively, can also view it as the taller it gets, the more power it represents
Our very own communal gathering
An Ede Longhouse that is over 42 m long
A Giarai tomb surrounded by sexually explicit wood carvings and other carvings of pregnant fertility. It's odd that the Giarai mix the dead with fertility...hmm...
Posing by one of the carvings.....nope no other poses for the other explicit ones...
We ran a little late for the Army Museum which was kinda a bummer as I was hoping to learn a bit of the communist past and the Vietnam war from there. But the museum closed and we were whisked to one of the larger shopping outlets in Hanoi. Note: shopping ain't my thing and it resembled another one of our centres in SG. Anw dinner time was the catch here as we ate right outside the shopping centre by the roadside. It's amazing to see office ladies and common folk huddled around by the roadside for a meal. And what's more amazing, the place was run by a Uncle Ho lookalike...this nice Vietnamese old man that settled us down before whipping up our meals
Goose pho....been a long time since I ate goose meat....Mmmmmm
I tried stacking stools to try to elevate the height so that I could reach my bowl. No success.....
This dessert is fantastic! Resembles like our cheng teng mixed in a cup!
Our friendly and helpful Vietnamese friends
Ended the night at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. Found it enriching as I could roughly follow what the play was about. I don't understand why people would find this boring or fall asleep as it's just an hour long and there are various different acts in between that convey different meanings. For god's sake, read the brochure!!
Goose pho....been a long time since I ate goose meat....Mmmmmm
I tried stacking stools to try to elevate the height so that I could reach my bowl. No success.....
This dessert is fantastic! Resembles like our cheng teng mixed in a cup!
Our friendly and helpful Vietnamese friends
Ended the night at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. Found it enriching as I could roughly follow what the play was about. I don't understand why people would find this boring or fall asleep as it's just an hour long and there are various different acts in between that convey different meanings. For god's sake, read the brochure!!
The guys then decided to head over to club the night away. But being sceptical of the night scene in Vietnam, I decided to retire early. I was right. Not only did the clubs close by midnight (most Vietnamese, especially the girls, have a strict curfew), my friends ended up in Funky Monkey, some gay bar just round the corner of our hotel. Yep, a gay bar. Pass!
The next morning, Thao offered to take some of us on a motorbike ride around the place. The girls were clearly excited abt it as it was quite an experience to be weaving around the traffic in a bike.
The communal market. Bears some French influence in its design
Still remember the structure which I mentioned was present as a symbol on all the road signs in Hanoi? This is it.
Views around Hoan Kiem Lake. Hoan Kiem means "returned sword", and the name comes from a legend in which King Le Loi was given a magical sword by the gods, which he used to drive out the invading Chinese. Later, while boating on the lake, he encountered a giant turtle, who grabbed the sword and carried it down to its depths, returning it to the gods from whom it had come. This scene was re-enacted in the water puppet theatre too.
The turtle with the sword!
St Joseph Cathedral, suddenly feels like Europe all over again
One difference about the cathedral here and that in Europe is the window grilles. Over here, the grilles are patterned in a Chinese architectural fashion
Another interesting sight is seeing murals upon a backdrop of houses
The interior, while not as majestically decored as that in Europe, serves sufficiently for the mass services for the Catholics here
Sights along the Old Quarter in Hanoi
Plenty of cyclos carrying customers (pronounced sic lo)
Bought some water chesnuts from this lady
A busy and crazy traffic crossing we had to endure everytime for the past 2 days
The communal market. Bears some French influence in its design
Still remember the structure which I mentioned was present as a symbol on all the road signs in Hanoi? This is it.
Views around Hoan Kiem Lake. Hoan Kiem means "returned sword", and the name comes from a legend in which King Le Loi was given a magical sword by the gods, which he used to drive out the invading Chinese. Later, while boating on the lake, he encountered a giant turtle, who grabbed the sword and carried it down to its depths, returning it to the gods from whom it had come. This scene was re-enacted in the water puppet theatre too.
The turtle with the sword!
St Joseph Cathedral, suddenly feels like Europe all over again
One difference about the cathedral here and that in Europe is the window grilles. Over here, the grilles are patterned in a Chinese architectural fashion
Another interesting sight is seeing murals upon a backdrop of houses
The interior, while not as majestically decored as that in Europe, serves sufficiently for the mass services for the Catholics here
Sights along the Old Quarter in Hanoi
Plenty of cyclos carrying customers (pronounced sic lo)
Bought some water chesnuts from this lady
A busy and crazy traffic crossing we had to endure everytime for the past 2 days
And here ends a unique trip to Vietnam. Was particularly surprised and touched that our Vietnamese friends actually bought each one of us postcards. They certainly made the whole trip a lot more meaningful!
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