|
|
TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
|
|
“Adam has this fierce desire to try dog meat, but its an experience I could do without.” |
The ladies who run the Manh Dung guesthouse, a six-storey establishment tucked into a tiny laneway in the Old Quarter, are ostensibly charming, helpful and friendly, until you realise it's a ploy to get you to spend more money.
No sooner than we had arranged a room, and were asked to pay upfront in full, they start asking "where you go tomorrow?" in a bid to get you to book one of their tours, as well as train and bus tickets. They even advertise breakfast and laundry services, lest you dare think of going anywhere else. It's so hard to say no, even to tell them that you don't want to book right now, or that you want to think about it.
Now I may have mistaken Vietnamese nationalism for arrogance, but these people just do not stop going on about how great their particular hotel or tour service is - "very new, good price..etc etc." For all their bragging about the room, it turned out to be absolutely tiny - by far the smallest digs so far. The bathroom was so small that the shower nozzle sat above the toilet seat! At $20 US a night, it's surely not the best deal in town.
After a week chilling out in uber-slow Laos, arriving in Hanoi was an extremely rude shock. My impression of Northern Vietnam is that these guys are much more highly strung than their southern counterparts. They don't wait for anything, and if you're in their way, well they'll just push straight on through you.
One way to avoid constant touts and "where you going" interrogations is to make like a Viet and hire a motorscooter - which is exactly what we did. What a great idea that was - once you're on the road in the thick of it, the constant blaring of horns is actually not all that noticeable. I declined to hire my own moto, and instead tailed on the back of Adam's - having not ridden one in about 10 years, I didn't think the nightmarish Hanoi traffic was an appropriate place to learn.
Cruising around the narrow laneways and wide boulevards ringing the Hoan Kiem lake is absolutely the best way to see Hanoi - although it is noticeably harder to find shops/restaurants /monuments when you're flying past at high speed - although we rarely managed to top 40km/h due to all the traffic.
We decided to go upmarket for lunch, and found this great restaurant called Hoi An seafood. Its enormous menu gave you the option of having almost any kind of seafood - clams, oysters, prawns, scallops, fish, squid - done in any number of different sauces. We eventually chose scallops in XO sauce and clams in sambal chilli. Best of all, the dishes were a steal - all of them less than $4 each! We emerged, completely satisfied, only having spent $18.
Unfortunately we lucked out when we went out for drinks and a snack later on - the bar was pretty cool - a place called HIghway 4. It had a rooftop terrace with cushion seating, and an impressive-looking menu with all manner of creatures on it - including dog meat, snails and frog's legs. We chose spicy satay frogs legs but they were pretty crap -the batter was way to crispy and the legs too crunchy - I think they're better sauteed or something.
Adam has this fierce desire to try dog meat, but its an experience I could do without. I've heard that because dogs are carnivores, their flesh is really dark, almost black - ew. So luckily I managed to talk him out of it, although he is still disappointed he hasn't yet tried it.
previous travel blog entry
Would you like to comment or ask a question?
Sign up for a free account, or sign in (if you're already a member).