Travel Zulu

I am finally getting round to uploading some of the videos I have taken on this trip. I must admit I haven’t used my video camera enough. After watching some of the videos I have taken, I feel more motivated to carry around my camera more often.

I think Bia Hoi just means draft beer in Vietnamese, but it also refers to a cheap draft beer that is sold in cafes across Vietnam. I noticed them more in Hanoi. In the old quarter of Hanoi there are a couple of cafes that spill out onto a busy intersection.

The places are popular with both foreigners and the locals and are good place to meet up with other travellers. Small plastic seats are set up outside on the street. A glass of draft beer is just 2000 dong (US $0.12), so you can get a pretty good buzz going for just a dollar. People come around selling snack food and there is guy selling kebabs nearby for just 10,000 dong (US $0.62).

Hanoi closes down pretty early. Most restaurants and bars close at around midnight. The police regularly come around to check that the bars have closed for the night. Midnight is pretty early so most bars just pretend to close down. They close the shutters and turn the music down. They employ people who stand around outside looking out for police.

If they get a warning that the police are coming, they turn off all of the power and tell everyone to be quiet. Once the police move on the party starts again. It seems like a pretty ridiculous charade and I saw at least once the police come into a bar and collect money.

I got back to my hotel yesterday feeling happy I had my passport, visa and plane ticket all fixed up. I was organizing my money and passports when I couldn’t find my ATM card. I searched in a panic looking in all of the obvious places. I generally don’t always carry around my cards unless I am going to get some cash out.

I retraced where I went the day before and came to the conclusion that I must have left it in the ATM. I had just withdrawn some money to pay for my visa. There was a chance still that I dropped it somewhere along the way, but if that was the case there would be no chance of getting it back.

The ATM was a machine in the front of a hotel. The guy at the reception desk said the machine would take back the card if you didn’t take it away. There was still the chance of course that someone could have swiped the card, as the machine faces the street.

The hotel doesn’t have access to the ATM and told me to come back the next day. I went in at lunch time the next day and a different girl told me someone only comes out once a week, so she kindly called the bank and said they would send someone in a couple of hours.

Fortunately they found my card in the machine. I was so happy. I gave the receptionist a generous tip which they were pretty happy with.

I have other cards for different accounts, but this was my Japanese bank account. I just knew it would have been a huge hassle to get a new card from Japan.

The experience reminded me I need to be more careful with my stuff.

Picked up my passport today with my visa and they only ended charging me $10 to get it done, which is much better than the $35 which the woman initially said it would cost.

I bought my plane ticket to Laos today and will be leaving on Saturday morning.

The feedback is that I don’t have enough pictures on the site, so here are a few that I took this afternoon.

Most people eat outside like this at road side cafes and noodle shops.

Walking down any street is a game of dodging motorcycles, cyclos and taxis.

You want banana, mister?

Fresh veggies.

When it rains, it pours.

I picked up my new Australian passport today from the embassy here in Hanoi. Another Australian guy was doing the same thing. He had just come back from the Vietnamese immigration office and they needed a letter from the Australian embassy for him to get a new visa. The Australian embassy official didn’t know this, so he made one up for me also.

This was just at around 11:30 and the immigration office closes for lunch between 11:30 and 1:30 pm, so I also took a break for lunch. Back at the immigration office I run into the Australian guy again. He had just finished submitting the paperwork and was complaining that it was going to take a week. Another week’s wait in Hanoi, I thought.

Fortunately the immigration lady said I could pick it up on the 21st - only three days of waiting, but would cost US$35. The Aussie guy said his was going to cost $10. I don’t really like arguing with immigration officials but wanted to know why my friend’s visa was only going to cost $10. She explained that since I was on my second visa or something that it would cost more.

Who knows the real story, but you can’t really negotiate too much with socialist government officials.

It was a hot and humid day today which didn’t make it any easier. I was thinking of going back to Thailand and then Laos, but I think now I will just fly to Laos from here and make my way by land to Thailand.

Le Pub is a nice bar, restaurant in the Old Quarter in Hanoi.

I just had “Bun bo Nam bo” which is pretty healthy beef and rice noodle dish with a refreshing sauce.

Just got an email from the Australian Embassy in Hanoi saying my new passport is ready. Less than a week!

I just have to now get my visa transferred over to the new one and I am free to travel. The question is where I am going to go next?

I spent most of today applying for a new passport. It expires in January 2008, but most countries require you to have more than six months valid when you apply for a visa. It takes up to 10 working days to process, but the guy at the embassy said it could be done in a week.

The photo requirements are much stricter now and it cost US$233 for a 64 page passport. I thought it would be worthwhile paying for the extra pages. Payment could only be made in US dollars, which I did not have. This seemed pretty ridiculous to me. I went to two banks and both did not sell US dollars. One bank suggested I go to a gold seller to buy dollars. I ended up going to a big hotel who exchanged the money for me at an unfavorable rate, but I didn’t have much choice.

By the time I had the photos, money and paperwork the embassy was closed for lunch. I went back at 1:30 pm and they were “temporarily” closed. I had to wait another 15 minutes, for them to collect my cash.

Fortunately, I still have my old passport as wherever you go travelling in Vietnam you need to show your passport and some hotels will even keep it throughout your stay.

Well at least a picture of one.

This was in the hotel we stayed at on Cat Ba Island on the tour I went on. At least it gave us something to talk about during dinner.