2/16 Ha Noi walk

Late night walk with Luis & Chio

Hanoi Opera House and The Hanoi Hilton

Fruit in the room. That's the Dragon Fruit on the left.

Scooters, scooters everywhere!

Ho Chi Ming Mausoleum

Street flower vendors

Mmm! Pho!

At the Hoan Kiem Lake with The Red Bridge of the Rising Sun behind.

We're back from a 4 1/2 walk around Hanoi. No rain. It’s just a little chilly for Connie. She had gloves and I was sweating. Situation normal. We tried to see Ho Chi Minh and no dice (closed). These dictators must be busy when they die. First Mao in Beijing and now Ho! Connie just read that if you want to see Ho Chi Mihn you have to be in the queue by 11:00am. We obviously missed that. Gayle Rediker literally tore pages out of her book and left with us at the front desk. Sadly, the people there this morning didn't know about it. When we got back from the walk the afternoon crew gave us the pages.

Hanoi may be even nuttier than Beijing with the scooters, if you can believe that. Connie says the best way to cross a street is not to look at all! Just go. If you keep moving they miss you.

We meet up with Luis and Chio (our travel buddies from Ecuador) tonight around 8:00. It’s just before 3 in the afternoon here on the 16th and I’m going to play with the images I took on our walk. I also used my new GPS watch to track where we walked for the first time. I can load it into a program that shows you exactly where you walked with either a street view or satellite. I swore I would never get lost again after my embarrassing moment the last trip in Ecuador! No more “Where’s Harvey”.

More fruit left for us on our return. Bananas, lyche and Dragon fruit. We had no idea what it was originally. I had to go down and ask how to eat it. They had about 3 names for it - Dragon Fruit for the big dumb American.

Dinner at the Cay Cau restaurant in our hotel was just right. Luis and Chio have arrived at the hotel from Bangkok and we will be going out for a walk around the lake in a few. It's 9:45 here in Hanoi and for some the night is just beginning. We'll be back and in bed in an hour!

Tomorrow we plan to do the "proper" Frommer's old town walk with Luis and Chio. There are quite a few things that are supposed to be of interest that we missed on our wander around the best we could tour. The Redikers and Steingarts will be back to the hotel around 3 and we have dinner reservations for 5:00. Then it's off to the train station for our overnight trip to the Victoria Hotel in Sa Pa. We arrive in Lao Cai at 6:30 the next morning. We meet up with the guide from Handspun for transport to a place for more pho for breakfast. Then it's biking all day and our first night in the North.

Hanoi!

Waiting for our luggage in Hanoi

As soon as I could get on I did. Free WI-FI in Shanghai Pudong Aueport worked fine!

We just arrived at the DeSyloia Hotel in Hanoi. The long day ended at 2:00a.m. on Wednesday the 16th over here after 26 hours of travel. We were able to check into the airport hotel in Shanghai for the "4 hour nap". The hotel was just fine for what we needed (a little shut-eye) and was just across an enclosed overpass from Terminal 2 where we arrived. Really never went outside at all.

The Shanghai Air people were a little befuddled as to how to handle us - luckilly we had printed off a document that had our ticket numbers on it. I would have thought that United would have handled this a little better since they organised all the flights. They took us over to a supervisor's desk at customs for some reason. Connie says because we were a transfer without a Chinese visa. In a few minutes all documents were stamped and we were good to go.

Shanghai Air flight to Hanoi uneventful - the driver from the hotel was there with a sign and he weaved his was to the hotel. I'm glad we weren't trying to find it!

Facebook doesn't seem to work either in China or here.

Time for sleep..........

Getting real close now.......

Tomorrow it's good bye to all of this!

Finishing up the packing and tomorrow the adventure begins. We arrive in Hanoi on Wednesday morning 1:00am on the 16th. (That's around noon Tuesday here). We'll be in the Shanghai airport 14.5 hours after we take off and I'll see if I can update this blog or Facebook to let everybody know we've arrived. Really looking forward to this - expectations are real high! Connie has a new phone from work that allegedly will be able to call internationally. We'll see - the problem is when we arrive in Shanghai it will be 2a.m. over here so you'd probably not want a call! (We have a 7.5 hour layover in Shanghai so I can try to connect). I'll try to post something on Facebook but the Chinese are finicky about some social networking sites. At the worst we should have access to the internet when we arrive at our hotel in Hanoi. So, until then "La gohn" or "Sok dee" (good bye or see ya in Lao) or "Mai mot gop lai" (we'll meet again soon in Vietnamese).

Pho

Some people say that Pho, the national dish of Viet Nam is the greatest eating experience in the world. Needless to say, we expect to eat LOTS of pho on our trip. I'm trying to learn the Vietnamese words for different types of pho. But that's just the starting point. Served with many additional garnishes, pho bo (beef) and pho ga (chicken) are amazing. I've been told of one local restaurant where you sit down at communal tables and select your pho from a menu. The server's then go to one of the family stalls that encircle the restaurant courtyard and bring your food back to you steaming hot. And that one is just one of literally thousands of little restaurants serving pho. I can't wait! Bring it on!!!!!!

Mekong River in Laos

We should see lots of kids like this along the way! I'm sure I'll have LOTS of images of people to bore everyone with!

After a couple of days in luxury in Luang Prabang at La Residence Phou Vao it's on to the Mekong River. Heading further north each time we'll arrive in Luang Namtha after 3 days. Biking and other adventures in the countryside at each stop along the way.

Places we'll stay at in Vietnam and Laos

I tried all the links and they seem to work. If you go to one and then hit the back arrow after it takes you there you will come back to this Blogspot.

Here's where we'll be staying on this next vacation starting with the DeSyloia Hotel in Ha Noi (That's it above) - http://www.desyloia.com/

We stay at the De Syloia for 2 days and then take a train north overnight to Sa Pa. We will be in Viet Nam for the first 5 days and then it's on to Laos.

Victoria Hotels Sa Pa, Vietnam - Click in the link below. Once there highlight Hotels in Viet Nam (click) and finally Sapa Spa and Resort:

http://www.victoriahotels-asia.com/

Residence Phou Vao, Luang Prabang, Laos. This is the fancy-pants hotel , staying 2 nights:

http://www.residencephouvao.com/

After 2 days in Luang Prabang we get onto boats and head north up the Mekong River staying at the following guesthouses:

Nong Kiau Riverside:

http://www.nongkiau.com/index.html#Home

Ning-Ning Guest House, further along the Mekong River, Laos:

http://www.travelfish.org/accommodation_profile/laos/northern_laos/luang_prabang/muang_ngoi/all/1899

The Boat Landing Guesthouse, Luang Namtha, Laos for 2 nights. The other 6 leave us after one day as we have separate arrangements to fly home:

http://www.theboatlanding.laopdr.com/

And finally, Connie and I will be transported to Chiang Rai, Thailand by car for a night here before we fly to Bangkok to start the return journey. One van (Laotians) will take us to the Thai border. Once across a 2nd van (Thai) will transport us to Chiang Rai.

http://www.thelegend-chiangrai.com/index.html

We leave pretty early in the morning and hope to be at our hotel in Chiang Rai by noon or 1 p.m. We'll explore Chiang Rai the rest of that day and see the night market. We then have a 4:00 flight the next day on Thai Airways to Bangkok that takes an hour.

The the LONG flights home begin.

We fly from Bangkok to Singapore on Singapore Air (Flight time 2 hours 25 minutes). Then a 6 hour layover (another airport hotel in the interim). Then fly from Singapore to Hong Kong, China on United (Flight time 4 hours). Real quick turn-around (1 hour, may not have to leave plane) and finally 12 more hours back to O'Hare also on United. Whee!

Viet Nam and Laos

Getting ready for our next trip with the "travel family". This time it's Viet Nam and Laos and it's coming SOON! I'm just trying to remember how this site works so I'm practicing a bit this morning. I can never remember how I send invites to my Blogspot to people find me so let's see what we can do.

We fly to Shanghai, China directly from Chicago on United (14.5 hours) and then have to spend 7 hours or so in the airport. There is a hotel right between the 2 major terminals in Shanghai and we plan to grab a room and "refresh" for a bit. Then it's a short 2 hour flight to Ha Noi on Shanghai Air. We arrive at 1:00a.m. and there will be transport for us to our hotel. We will be staying at this place in Ha Noi: http://www.desyloia.com/. Sleep for a while and get up around 10a.m. and head out. There is a real nice lake only a mile or so from the hotel and we plan to head over there and eventually have some Pho (Vietnamese soup with noodles). Connie and I will attempt to not get too lost in our wandering. Around 7:30 that evening another couple (Luis and Chio from Ecuador) will be arriving at the hotel. We'll look for them and see how they're feeling after their flight from Boston. I assume they'll be pretty tired. If they're up for it we'll explore the night markets for a while and then hit the sack.

The next day we have some time to explore before we meet up with the "Final Four" (Rich and Gayle Rediker and "Richie" and Bobi Steingart) back at the DeSyloia. These guys have been in Viet Nam for a few days before us and have been on a boat trip on Halong Bay. Rich has planned a nice dinner at the hotel around 5:00 before we are transported to the train station. We take the train in a nice sleeper car and magically will arrive in Sa Pa (north and west of Ha Noi) the following morning. We'll spend 3 days up in northern Viet Nam with bicycling trips and shopping at a local market before we take the train back to Ha Noi. Transport to the airport for a 1 hour flight to Luang Prabang, Laos. We spend another week in Laos and I'll try to detail that a bit later.

I'll publish this now and see if it looks any good. More later........