1 Dong & 1 Fried Yolk
Hanoi, 12th May 2002 (Part 1)
Gilad & I decided to get an early start today to get as much stuff
done as possible. The first port of call, though, was the Western
Union branch so that Gilad could get some money wired to him. As
he's had his credit card stolen in Bangkok, he didn't have any other
way to get some cash.
We had to wait in the bank for about 30 minutes, which passed
quickly while we chatted with a very nice old Vietnamese lady. She
spoke brilliant English and she told us about her daughter who is
studying in England. The lady was very excited to meet us and
insisted I swap e-mail addresses so I could contact her daughter
when I'm back in England!
Once the money had been sorted out, we grabbed some breakfast then
took the longish walk to the Army Museum. We got there at the start
of the 2 hour lunch break, so of course we were hassled by taxi
drivers who had dozens of ideas of what we could do to pass the
time. One of them kept saying the ride to the pagoda with him was
'very cheap'. I said, "Ok, we'll go for 1 Dong (note that the
smallest denomination is 500 Dong, because 1 Dong is pretty much
worthless). He said 'ok ok', but I said first I want my 999 Dong
change from the 1000Dong note I was waving. He said ok, but then
stalled because he obviously couldn't. He eventually started
laughing and we managed to escape.
We passed the time at a nearby internet cafe, then headed back to
the Army Museum at 1:30pm. It was ok, but it wasn't very well laid
out so it was hard to follow & I didn't find it that interesting. We
did, however, bump into a guy, Andy, that we knew from the bus trip
from Vientiane to Hanoi. After chatting with him, it turned out he
was staying in quite an expensive hotel, so we all agreed that he
should join us in our hotel, which was the same standard but quarter
the price.
On the way out of the museum, we passed a huge crowd of Vietnamese
soldiers in training, obviously receiving some sort of history
lesson. We tried to chat with them, but our Vietnamese was limited
and their English even more limited, so after Gilad shared some
cigarettes with them, we moved on.
We wanted to visit Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, where Ho Chi Minh's
embalmed body is kept on display, however, we didn't realise it was
only open in the mornings. We tried to approach the door, but a
senior guard (the mausoleum is surrounded by troops) waved us away.
We thought it was best to do what he said. We stood back and watched
the two guards in shining white standing motionless by the main
doors, like the guards at Buckingham Palace.
Next Diary Entry >>
|
