2 August 2007 - I know I’m terrible when it comes to blogging about vacations. Thing is, as eager as I am to share all our adventures and travel experiences, and of course photos, it always seems like such a colossal effort to cover everything that I don’t know where to begin, and hence often don’t. However, I did give my word that I would cover the entire process from the proposal to the honeymoon (NOT to say that this is the official one, better state that first before my hubby gets any funny ideas. Heh!), so here I am delivering my promise.

So when we told people that we were going to Hanoi for our honeymoon, the main response tended to be “Erh Hanoi? Nothing much to do one leh.” Well that may be true compared to some other places in the world, but seriously, we didn’t have enough time to do all the things we wanted to do. In fact, would you believe it? We were so caught up with whatever we were doing that we didn’t even have time to go pay Uncle Ho a visit, THE number one tourist attraction in Hanoi, save for Ha Long Bay of course. But what is even more unthinkable is that the whole time there, with seamstress, tailors and fabrics abound, in a city where even shoes can be made-to-measure, all I bought in terms of clothing was one dress! One single dress?!? And no, it wasn’t that there was a lack of choice, but somehow I just wasn’t particularly keen.

So what were we doing? Yeah, what did we do? Well, we were very busy taking our own sweet time to do much about nothing. Honestly. And it was hard not to. The vibe of the place commands it. Here’s an instance when we weren’t particularly productive…

…and here’s another…

Haha, another topless picture of poopie!

And it’s strange because actually if you look around, there’s quite a bit of hustle and bustle going on. The traffic never stops, nor does the honking, and the streets are lined with people and activities of all manner, so much so that one is often forced to walk off the pavement and onto the roads where one has to jostle with cars, buses, bikes and cyclos. And yet, for some odd inexplicable reason, there is at the same time a very idyllic mood in the air, almost as if you were caught in a dreamscape and everything was passing by in slow-mo. How can the two scenarios I’ve just painted co-exist you ask? Well, that is the mystery of Hanoi.
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