Vietnam

This actually happpened in February but I am only posting it now -- yeah, yeah -- so I procrastinated. In any case, while I was in Singapore for my somewhat irregular visit, my parents and I took a trip to Vietnam and China over the Chinese New Year holiday. A word of advise, don't go to Vietnam during Chinese New Year (at least not the first few days) -- everything is CLOSED. Granted, we didn't go south, only north Vietnam, but from the looks of things, seems like it is a prevalent practice. We arrived in Hanoi in the afternoon on the first day of Chinese New Year. Immigration was really slow -- don't know if this is a phenomenon of the holiday or if it is just how things are. There were twenty four of us in the group and perhaps the smallest and dingiest bus on the lot was there to pick us up. Most of the people in the group are from Singapore and, as Singaporeans go, started complaining abuot the bus. There is a certain amount of legitimacy to the complaints -- the bus is too small -- really, it is. There is this huge bump inside the bus where the wheels are so even if they put seats there, you can't really comfortably seat a person there. The luggage compartment is too small -- come on, its a Singaporean group and this is day one -- we haven't started shopping yet! It was so small that they had to put some luggages stacked in the back seats of the bus, which is a major safety issue. If the driver should have to perform an emergency brake, the bags would have gone flying and someone would either end up with a nasty bruise to the melon or be decapticated. Anyway, bus issue aside, we went sight seeing directly from the airport. There really wasn't anything much to see -- everything was closed. The only place open was the Ho Chih Minh Memorial Square and you can't get too close to see anything and a temple. Next to the temple was a museum but that was closed to. After that, it is dinner and the hotel to sleep.