Vietnam to Laos

Hanoi, Vietnam – Day 23 (Feb-21)

We arrive in Hanoi at 5AM and taxi to our hotel without incident. Our hotel has their metal door pulled down. The only thing open is a noodle shop across the street, where three women are busy setting up shop. Soup noodle is the breakfast staple in Vietnam. We watch them working for an hour. Apparently their restaurant has no running water, as they cross the street and use a hose on the street next to our hotel to fill their pots and buckets. They fire up coal on the street, which they use to cook the soup noodles. Vana has their chicken soup noodle later for breakfast and says it tastes great.

noodle shop

6AM comes, I tell Vana she can probably knock on the hotel door. While one of the guys rolls up the metal door, another is seated neatly at the hotel reception desk, and a third is scurrying to fix up the lobby. Vana is bent at the waist in hysterical laughter because one of the guys is sporting some major bed head. They try their best to pretend they were not asleep on the lobby floor just a few minutes ago.

We like the Viet Fun Hotel because the staff is really nice, friendly, and we enjoy talking with them while waiting for our room to be ready. We make fun of them for waking up, and pretending to be working. We help them with their English, and play with the owner’s little one who comes in around 9AM daily. Vana give him a nickname – Little Buddha.

Little Buddha

After lunch we walk to the lake in Old Town, and buy tickets for the Water Puppet show. Then, we taxi to the Temple of Literature. The taxi driver has a completely bogus meter, and asks for $50 for the ride. We tell him no way, and pay him $5. Vana gets a nice shot of his license plate. The temple is nothing special, and we spend about 15 minutes to look around.

Temple of Literature gate

We are pissed about the taxi. We taxi back to the hotel. This taxi has a more legitimate looking meter, but is also bogus, and he charges us $5. While I am paying him, Vana gets lots of shots of his car and the driver. We learned from the hotel stuff that each ride should cost $2-3, and we overpaid two to three times. The travel book says you should always negotiate the price ahead or get a fixed price, but we are tired of negotiating all the time for everything. Our taxi from the train station in the morning used a valid meter and was cheaper than the typical negotiated price.

We are upset and complain to our hotel stuff about this experience. For the second taxi, the hotel calls the company to complain, and they say they will fire the driver (we doubt it). For the first taxi ride, we go to the police station to report him. Ironically, we take a taxi to the police station. We get sent (and walk) to two other stations, and by that time, we are only a few blocks from our hotel.

The police station is an interesting sight with a portrait of Ho Chi Minh on one wall, and a Sir Roger Moore movie playing on the opposite wall. It seems Ho Chi Minh spends as much time watching western TV as the police do. They don’t seem to be happy to be interrupted during the film.

The police get a nearby shop worker to translate. It turns out the guy who tried to charge us $50 was a fake taxi. We show them a nice shot with license plate number, but they don’t take a report, because we did not have significant damage. I feel better because I did my part, and don’t need to press the issue. After leaving the station, Vana gets really upset because they don’t do anything. Also, they don’t show her any respect. They are frustrated that she doesn’t speak Vietnamese. Vana hates getting the local treatment because she has Asian features.

We were not expecting much with the police, but decided to try. In our China trip in 2005, when we lost Vana’s green card and needed a police report, we were sent to three different police stations, and they didn’t take a report until Vana pulled out a mobile phone and started to dial 911 (inside the police station).

Dear Vietnamese Police: Here is a fake taxi if you decide to look him up; license plate 29M7760

The second overcharging taxi

All said, it’s not much bother because the incident kills a few hours before our Water Puppet show. We tire of Vietnam and eat dinner in a KFC near the lake. Their kitchen is clean, and they have soap in the bathroom; incredible!

The Water Puppet show is much better than we expected. I thought it would be mechanical like “It’s a Small World”, but they have live music, and the puppeteers are waist deep in water behind a curtain, controlling the puppets with rods in the water.




A particular highlight is an instrumental piece featuring a 1000 year old instrument called dan bau. The instrument is placed horizontally in front of her, and has one string. The musician plays with a pick, at different points on the string. The musician uses the palm of her right picking hand to make every plucked note a harmonic. In her left hand, she uses a vertical chopstick looking pitch control, which provides large and very fast changes in pitch. Apparently, they now use modern guitar electronics, and that chopstick thing rocks it out; making Floyd Rose’s wammy bar sound like Sunday church.

Dan Bau

CLICK HERE to see pictures from Water Puppet show.
CLICK HERE to see more Hanoi pictures.



Hanoi to Vientiane, Laos by Plane – Day 24 (Feb-22)

Today we fly to Laos. To sum up Vietnam:

• The cities are crazy, unpleasant places to walk on the street. There are too many people cramming in and out of every corner. We constantly felt like we are in someone’s way.
• The south of Vietnam could be skipped. The sights around Hanoi in the north are the best.
• Northern Vietnam seems more educated and modern than Southern Vietnam (from our observation). They also speak a different dialect which is 20-30% similarity to Cantonese.
• The food is pretty good, but not very distinctive. Compared with Chinese food; you could say “Same, same, but different”.
• The Vietnamese people are hard working, courteous, and very helpful. Whether or not they work efficiently is a different story.
• The hawkers are annoying. You’ll start to say no thank you in your sleep.
• We also observed that there are a lot of westerners traveling in Vietnam in all ages. According to our hotel stuff, there are 50% European visitors, 20% Australian/New Zealand, 15% American.

We arrive in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and purchase our Visa on Arrival without incident. On arrival, we notice the airport is mosquitoes infested, despite having air conditioning. The weather is a steamy and humid 90 deg. The air quality is poor from burning vegetation.

view from the plane, you can see the poor air quality

We arrive at a hotel we picked out of the book and go through our routine. The first room is minimal, and doesn’t seem worth the price. The next room smells like a sewer. The third room seems fine, but this hotel screams mediocrity. We check another hotel from the book next door. It seems much nicer, but it is full. Around the corner, we choose a room in the New Laos Paris Hotel. The room seems ok, and the hotel is a bit nicer than the first. Laos is malaria area, and we didn’t bring sleeping nets, so we choose a room with AC. Unfortunately, the AC craps out in the middle of the night.