Home » Vietnam » LZ - Halong Bay - April 7th 2005

These are entries from my travel journal from www.travelbog.org.
They are descriptions/stories of my trip from Hanoi, Vietnam to Phi Phi Island, Thailand from April 2005 to May 2005.

LZ - Halong Bay - April 7th 2005

Lt.col.lewin
2006-01-02 03:38:42

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Ha - "descending"
Long - "dragon"

Little did the Vietnamese know that in just two short days the name of their beloved jewel and soon to be biggest tourist attraction would be renamed.

And so Operation Descending Stella begins...

I awoke in a haze of darkness and unusual silence. The haze because of a night pushing my luck with Hanoi's famous, "bia hoi" (draft beer), the darkness because the two windows in my $6 per night room faced a building that was no more than 18 inches from my hotel, and the unusual silence because there were no high pitched motorbike horns blaring as they consistently do from 6am to 1am every day. After checking the time, 5:40am, I had a look outside to find an interesting variety of life. The first thing I noticed was a woman who I had almost tripped over. She was stooping on the side of the street with two big baskets of, what looked like, glowing oranges. Next to her and on down the street were about a hundred more women stooping down on their haunches with baskets full of everything from lilly flowers to pineapples to raw meat. There were also women tossing ingredients into huge cauldrons of steaming hot soup. Perhaps it was coincidence or my mental status at the time, but as soon as I stumbled onto the street, the decibel levels of their voices and the noise seemed to rise tenfold.
As their squawking continued, I noticed a few people across the street making some interesting looking gyrations. Could this be exercise? It looked almost too painful for it to be, but indeed, that is exactly what it was. One gent was doing quick leg lifts that looked almost robotic. I would have surely pulled a hammy if I attempted his methods in such a forceful motion. Another lady looked as if she was a puppet, swiveling back and forth with one arm going as high as her opposite shoulder, while the other wrapping around her lower back. I think these methods are leftover teachings from Uncle Ho and his communist ...