It is indeed our fault as we planned the trip at the eleventh hour (I doubt if we could use the word "plan", in fact, we did not plan, it's kind of doing nothing after making decision, haha), 3 weeks prior to the departure date. No information has been gathered except the very brief information on the tourist spots by my friend. The hotel reservation has been made few hours prior to our arrival. I have no idea about the country, the only thing I know about the country is Mekong River, I could probably recall my geography teacher mentioned about it 20 years ago.
Why Hanoi?
Our target destination was ASEAN Country, Hanoi is the farthest place that we could think of, cousin brother has an office over there so we thought of joining him over the trip. To me, I chose Hanoi mainly because of the awesome water puppet show.
When we were in the aircraft, I was astonished while listening to the announcement by captain saying the weather in Hanoi was 35°C. I always think Vietnam experiences a tropical climate like Malaysia, and I am absolutely wrong!
We stayed up late every night before the trip, we even packed our luggage in the midnight though we had to catch the morning flight. You can imagine how busy and tired we were! Our initial plan was going there and had a good rest in the hotel. But who knows the weather was damn hot and most of the hotels' air conditioning were not functioning well, ended up we were suffering in the hotels all the time, and I did not have a good sleep for the entire trip, sigh!
We did not know if cousin bro was going to meet us up as he was pretty busy, hence we decided to book the tours on our own. We opined the 1 week holidays was a bit long for us, so the whole week was occupied by different kind of tours!
We were so hungry and tired after booking the tours, we walked and walked but couldn't find any restaurant but Little Hanoi. We had our dinner there, 2 bowls of white rice with sweet sour chicken soup and soy pork soup cost us USD１８，gosh，I consider it as an unscrupulous service provider.
We started with the city tour, we were picked up by a very short lady with a taxi (Not the tour bus!!) The tour guide couldn't speak English and she didn't even bother to explain to us (In fact, she doesn't have any knowledge at all) on the tourist attraction, her main role was calling a taxi to pick us up and throw us at the destination. The weather was so hot and I couldn't even breath properly. We decided to go back to the hotel after lunch, and the short lady asked me to take a stroll back to the hotel under the hot sun!! We thought we could have a good rest in the hotel, but the aircond was not cool at all, the temperature in the room was exactly the same as outside temparature, it was 38°C ! The worst part was I didn't bring any casual wear except the silk pajamas, it was like staying in an oven, almost going crazy!
The 2nd day tour to Hua Lu was not bad as we had a young tour guide who can speak Mandarin, there were 1 couple from Malaysia and another couple from Indonesia with us. It was quite fun but still spoilt by the boatmen, they kept asking for money, drinks and kept selling very poor quality thingy to us!
The tour to Ha Long Bay was quite torturing as well though the scene is superb! I gathered I might have a good sleep on the boat, unfortunately the air temperature in the room was pretty high too! The boatmen cut down the electric supply early in the morning, so wash and dress had to be done in the dark! Again, we met an irresponsible tour guide and we decided to shorten our 3-day trip to 2 days.
We were then told by an Australian tourist that the temparature in Hanoi before our arrival was even up to 45°C, it has never been so hot in Vietnam history. Also, we were advised by one of the Vietnamese that the tour agent that we engaged is one of the worst in Hanoi!
Sounds like we had a very bad trip in Hanoi? Ha, not really, our wonderful experiences began since we met Lain ……
