Vietnam Backpack Dec 2008

I fell in love with Backpacking ever since I came back from United States last year. Since then, I've been planning to go backpack in other countries. It's a natural choice to choose Vietnam and Cambodia since these 2 destinations are more affordable and more suitable for beginners like us ( well, probably not , i realized after the trip ). So , a gang of 8, including 3 Atlantiz members and 5 of my friends embarked on this eventful journey.

I'm not going to write much , instead I'll  just show some (perhaps alot) photos and adding some comments here n there where appropriate . If you got any question about the backpacking experience (cost, planning, place of interests etc ), please leave a comment here, I'll try my best to answer.

let's get the photos rolling !

Fly ... and we fly ...


An ubiquitous scene in Vietnam


Typical street in Hanoi


Night in Hanoi


A very warm and kind Auntie, she made us some super-delicious baguet( french bread , stuffed with some char siew + vegetables ). We met here while we were strolling around Hanoi's old street looking for cheap lunch. She's our savior while we thought all hope's lost.


A very authentic Vietnam morning market. We found that most places that are accessible to the tourists becoming more touristy and have already evolved to suit the needs of the tourists. We were lucky to find this secluded section of the old streets and experienced some really unique bargaining with local vietnamese.


Ong cheekily hides behind this camera-shy auntie. So cute this photo.



We were extremely interested in local delicacies .. Here you see is a typical scenario where we bargain for the food. Bargaining is an important factor in buying food... or you'll end up broke after just a few meals.


One of the Streets in the 36-old streets.





This is an interesting picture. In vietnam, people like to sit down by the roadside and start eating. The benches are extremely small and definitely unfit for the westerners. It was a lot of fun eating out vietnamese style in Hanoi. Tho the hygiene of the food is highly questioned.


There are the cables that can be found anywhere in Big cities in Vietnam. Quite impressive eh ? I wonder how the technician figure out which cable's faulty when doing maintainance.





If you have the chance to visit Hanoi , look for this auntie. She sells the best Pho( beef noodles ) in Vietnam. I guarantee that.















Here , notice the sahkat (long live RO !) wore by the locals. Almost everyone wears a hat like that. And the way they carry stuffs around , they'll just choose to sit anywhere they like and start doing business at as early as 4-5 a.m. .


Vietnamese ren shen guo ... I remember asking the lady to cut the fruit for us so that we can taste it on the spot. Yummy ~


Ong took this photo. What's he thinking ? He wanna bring out the " laid back" lifestyle in Vietnam ? Haha. A cute photo too.


I dont know why i included this picture, but I thought this's quite cute...




That's it for the first post ... more to come !

Best regards,
Xu shen aka 0 aka the manager

p/s: the layout of this blog will be changed shortly , and I'm setting the blogs to be shown per page to 2 blog posts to reduce loading lagging. Feedbacks are welcomed !