Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hanoi, Vietnam Part 3

Hanoi, on the 3rd day.. What to do? Shopping!!!! But there isn't much things to buy. We went to the night market 2 days in a row, but just can't seem to find anything nice. So we decided to... EAT!!

We went to this cutesy little Italian restaurant called Mediterraneo.

The camera was balanced on top of a Sprite bottle

View outside the restaurant from where we are seated

Pizza, Ham and Cheese I think. Soooo delicious, much better than pizza hut and dominoes combined

Fettuccine Carbonara. Sooooooo goooood.. The noodles you can see are hand made, because it doesn't resemble the packet ones you buy from Jusco.

Before you start blasting off with, "These are terrible pictures!!". The restaurant has this really romantic atmosphere, so everything we take in here are red. (And May is taking the pictures, not me :P)

Like the 'Green Tangerine', this place is also an eatery mostly catered for foreigners.

In the afternoon, we took a stroll down the Hoan Kiem Lake. It's easier to take a picture in the day time rather than night.



Some kind of turtle temple, according to the map book, the turtles are like 100 years old and sometimes will crawl out of the lake to rest. We didn't see any..

peek a boo

So later, we went to have lunch at Pho24. It was recommended in the guide book as a must go for Pho, which is pronounce 'Furr'.

I'm not a really big fan of this... Because it's really vege.. the soup taste like vege soup, the noodle taste like vege.. It's okaaaaay, I guess. And it also comes with a plate of raw vege..

Yum?

After eating pho, we tried looking for Bobby Chin's restaurant, but we couldn't find the restaurant :( so we decided to venture to yet another restaurant. On the way, May found this really cute place, a cafe out of nowhere, it's right beside the museum (no, we were not venturing into the musuem), so we decided to hang around there till our bloated belly's calm down.


It's a really nice place to just hang out, play your laptop and just chat with your friends. The weather is really nice too. It's breezy and a little cold. When we walk in, the stares that we got are really strange. It's a mixture of, "Where are these people from" and "What the hell are they doing here??". Yeah, this is the place where the high class Vietnamese hang out. I think..

Our food and drinks. I was so stuffed I couldn't even eat a piece of that cake, but according to May it was goood.

A shop with 2 addresses. Strange??

So after relaxing at the cafe, May decides to continue our journey to the restaurant downtown. So after 10 minutes of walking, the restaurant we wanted to visit... is closed for construction..

We notice a lot of this around Hanoi. Damn scary.. no birds will dare sit there for even just a while. Electrocuted in a second.


So, disappointed after walking so far to a 'close for renovation' restaurant, we walked all the way back to our hotel, and we notice something very strange.

People are staring at us everywhere we go!!! And then we think, "Ohh, maybe because we are foreigners". So we stop at a park and saw an American walking pass a couple of Vietnamese but there were no reaction from them. But when we walk passed the same vietnamese people, they stared... What's going on??? And then it suddenly hits me, they are not staring at us, they staring at May!! This old lady, she actually stops walking to stare at May when she walks passed the old lady. HAHA, that was sooo funny!

When May finally notices that people are staring at her, she quickly runs back to the hotel and refuses to come out. HILARIOUS!

That's May hiding underneath the blanket

Since it is our last day, we can't just stay in the hotel just watching tv (there's HBO and Cineplax and Disney and AXN!!), we went down to try a Vietnamese dinner instead of eating western. We actually went to a tourist information center to find the restaurants!

So in the end, we chose to come to "Mon Ah Viet".

Another cutsie place. It's small but it's got a nice environment in there. Both Vietnamese and foreigners come here to eat.

Reading the menu

The food was realllly good. You know why? Cause it taste exactly like chinese dishes. The name of the food is in vietnamese but basically they cook it exactly the way we do it back here, so basically, nothing special. There was one thing which fascinate both me and May though.

The do's and dont's on the chopstick wrapper

The 1st one, Do not use chopsticks to drum the bowl
(Calling homeless and hunger ghost)

2nd, Do not cross chopsticks
(Bad weather for the rice crops)

3rd, Do not suck chopsticks for too long. (Too bad there's no picture illustration)

Hmm, what would Donkey Kong taste like???

The lady who took our orders was super nice! She tried to explain the 3rd don't on the chopstick do's and don't for us in English, and May ask her on where we could get tea leaves (because it's kinda known in Vietnam), and the lady marked it on our maps, and even wrote on a piece of paper translating the name of the tea's we wanted into Vietnamese so the tea seller would understand what we want! SO nice!!!

On the way back to the hotel, we saw this little store which sells some sort of croissant and it smelt soo good, May wanted to try it. So we ordered and sat inside. I told May to take a picture of the place, not of the lady's ass, and she insisted that she was trying to take a picture of the croissant's on the shelf..

This is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted in Vietnam. Basically it's vege, onion, beef, pork and fried egg in there. It was soooo good that later when we went back to the hotel, we decided to go back down again to the store and get another sandwich!

It's hot, but May won't put it down till she gulps it all

So overall, Hanoi is nice, Halong Bay was nice, the whistles we get from numerous trishaw drivers and motorcyclist asking us if we needed a ride are not, the weather is nice, people in Hanoi are genuinely very nice. So yes, Hanoi is nice I guess. I miss the croissant though!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Hanoi, Vietnam Part 2

Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Vietnam. I was told we muuuust come to Halong Bay when you visit Vietnam, so we went on the 2nd day.

So the package we took was this, 4 hours bus drive from 8am (!!), from the Hotel to Halong Bay. Takes at least 15 minutes of boat ride from the port to Halong Bay, where we will be served lunch (not very good), play around on the boat, see some staglamites in a cave, then 15 minutes boat ride back to the port, and another 4 hours drive back to Hanoi.

So for 4 hours, we were sitting ass to ass with a couple of tourist (a pack van). We thought at least the tour guide would have the decency to tell us some history on Halong Bay or Hanoi, but noo, he sat in front and just chatted with the driver. Man!!


So we amuse ourselves by taking a couple of pictures in the van and made a deal with each other. If either falls asleep and starts snoring, we're suppose to nudge the other person up to stop it. Hehe. Mostly May is the one snoring though..

This place is a tourist spot, so there are so many many people here, and the sad part is when you see the boats leaving the port, the water here is extremely polluted, the dirty water or oil from the boat can be seen pouring out of the boat into the sea. It's just so sad to see a UNESCO heritage place being so dirty and smelly. The amount of boats parked at the bay are too many to count.































The fishing village


















Huuh, at sea also got people sell fruits??

































I think this is suppose to resemble a lion. It kinda looks like one though




























Okay, next are the stalagmites. First time I see a cave so brightly lighted with different colors and packed with tourist. Inside is pretty cool. Basically, our tour guide uses his laser pen and points out some stones, and said to use our "imagination" to point our some different animals and lookalike human stones in there. Ya sure, that's sooooo something I want to see..

I think this was suppose to be something about from hell, looking up to heaven, hence the small bright light at the top of the cave.

Some kinda waterfall. A couple of coins in there, is it a wishing pond?

The boats waiting outside the cave

After Halong Bay, it's back to the 4 hour journey back to Hanoi. During the toilet break, the driver dropped us off at some ceramic place, which was quite a snooze. Everything in there is in USD though. Strange isn't it, that nearly everything in Vietnam is in USD instead of Dong's.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Hanoi, Vietnam Part 1

1st Day in Hanoi


Hanoi, what can I say about Hanoi.. When me and May were driven to our hotel, Phudo Hotel, all we could see were many many many paddy fields. And it is kinda cold there, but not cold enough to wear a winter wear.


Our room was really really nice. Just one complain, the beds are really really tough! And the shampoo quality sucks! But other than that, everything was good. The customer service was excellent, the AC was excellent. And they also provide fresh fruits everyday, so May die die also must eat all the fruits! HAHA! When we walk into the room, my eyes immediately went to the other door of the room. So when I open it, it was..

hmm, nothing. And when I turn around... May has conquered the king size bed.. :(
Okay, so off to find stuff to eat. I mean, we're in Vietnam right, so I wanna eat Vietnamese food! But according to May, the things we should eat here are French and Italian cause it's.. known here?? What the.. So okay, fine. We went to this French restaurant called "The Green Tangerine"

The ambiance here is truly amazing. Candlelight dinner, (of course it's not suppose to be romantic for me and.. my sister), trees everywhere, and we were seated outside because inside is a smoking area.. Erm.. isn't it the other way round???

People whom are dining here are mostly foreigners and couples.

Our Appetizer

3 Kings Pleasure (All salmon)

Red Garrupa tartar with tropical fruits and zucchini spaghetti / rau thien vua (not a big fan)

Boneless chicken leg stuffed with vege boiled in vietnamese tea

P.S; By the way, if you haven't notice yet, me and May love to take pictures of what we eat, and I like to post up what we took :D

After dinner, May was raving about how cheap the food was and how delicious her food was (mine was not), but all I could think is, I'm never going to a French Restaurant no more.. Okay, maybe I shouldn't pass judgment on a first time basis thing, but I don't want to risk a 2nd time, eating my tropical fruit dish..

So after dinner, we went back to the Hotel. I wasn't very sure where I was going. All I know is on the way back, there are many stands selling dried squids. By the way, I notice that Vietnamese people love to eat on small little stools (or either that, no choice..)

Thursday, October 2, 2008

What's New In The Cheong Family

The tv is broken

Mum's home from Saudi and finally gets to try Kit's cooking!

Mum bought a shoe rack but could only fit all of May's shoes.. (yes the shoe on the floor is ALSO may's pair and the one on top)

Was a little giddy when I drank my first Paulaner

There was a weird bump on the floor which Kit thought was termites, which turns out to be nothing when he pulled the woods apart. (That night I trip over the bump and woke up both Kit and May because I shouted really loud)

Grandma has a new puppy (sooooo cute)

Mum bought me a new cooler because my room was too hot

May's got a new Blackberry

So I took her Nokia 8600 Luna cell phone to use
(There is a crack on the surface because I "accidentally" dropped it on the floor, May was not pleased..)

Had a very tough exam (I hate Economics, period)

oh, and had a burger in class, hehe

The Goodies Saga Continues..

Good chinese food (yums!)

Kit's version of a pizza

Kitty version of Pesto

Fried Apple (because he said we don't eat fresh ones, so he has to fry them to make us eat apples )

Fish and Chips

Bolognese (looks weird in a close up)

and lastly, jam flavored apple pie!