My journey through Vietnam, Malaysia & Thailand. First off: VIETNAM, HANOI.

*Edit: Just wanna thank u all for all the lovely comments I´ve gotten while I´ve been away! :* You´re all so sweet :) 

I didn´t get to answer any of u while I was on vaca, so my first thought was to answer u all when I got back. But it just takes some time with all this catching up;P I appreciate every one of them and I will for sure be visiting your blogs :) Some of you I already visit daily:) Thank Youuuuuuu<3*

OK, so I´m home from my fantastic journey in Asia, and I gotta tell you - coming home was not fun! I miss it already, and I really gotta get myself togheter or I will be suffering from severe depressions during the time until my next vacation..;) he he.

Ofc my Canon 400D died on me already the first day, so I didn´t get to take any pictures like I wanted to. I was hoping to get some great shots, of like architechture, people, food, whatever... Thankfully we had my bfs Lumix camera, but it´s nowhere near the Canon one.. So, that was a real bummer...:/ So I´m left with a lot less pictures that I wanted to.. I just gotta travel there again ;)

We were not on a typical backpacker trip, but we were travelling around to a few places in Vietnam and to Malaysia and Thailand.

Kuala Lumpur was just a huge shopping spree and Bangkok even worse ;)

It was simply a wonderful vacation, I got to see and experience so much and I had just the loveliest time with my bf.

I don´t have any specific reason, but all in all I enjoyed Vietnam the most. It was just amazing, lovely people, we were doing a lot of tourist stuff and it was so much interesting things to do! The heat were probably slightly extreme, but we all survived ;)

We traveled during low season/rain season, and had expected some bad weather, clouded sky and some heavy rain at times.. Especially in Hue, which is known for it´s bad and rainy weather! But guess what, we were gone for about four weeks and the sun was shining almost EVERY SINGLE day.. We did´t even experience rain once.

We left Oslo Saturday 1st of June, 6 hrs to Doha, Qatar, and the 6 new hrs to Bangkok:) The long flight went surprisingly enough quite well! We travelled with Qatar Airways and I got no complaints :)

We arrived in Bangkok in the middle of the day, we checked in to our room, great location, the room was totally okay and last but not least it was cheap. We had time to go around and check out the city, eat some food and pick out places to go next time we arrived here :) Went to bed rather early, as we were leaving for Vietnam already the same night. Took a cab to the airport and then we were off to Hanoi, Vietnam! :-)

This time we were flying with Air Asia, everything went smooth and the flight didn´t take longer than a couple of hours. Cheap too! You could compare Air Asia with Ryanair, it´s pretty much the same, just that Air Asia was better;)

The first thing we did was to get to the ATM, the currency here is pretty confusing, thank god I got my bf to keep track of it all:P

We got out of the airport and went by taxi to the hotel, be sure to ask for the use of taximeter, if not. Get another cab;) We had printed all the information with adress etc, and it was quite necessary as rather few people spoke english and it was at times hard to communicate, but no biggie, everything went fine :)

We had the cutes taxidriver! It was a guy, quite young and rather feminine, he was singing his heart out for like 45 mins all the way from the airport to the hotel. And it was like the worst kpop and vietnamese music ever, so fun hi hi :-)

I really enjoyed looking out the window and seeing all the architecture and everything, Hanoi looked like a really interesting city! We arrived at the hotel and the sweetest people welcomed us and gave us such service! They served us coffee (vietnamese coffee, new experience!), and gave us a map, pointed out some places for us to go, informed us about opening hours, and some general tips.. And even tho we had done our research this was great! :) We arrived quite early, I guess our room wasn´t ready yet, because I think they actually upgraded our room too! It was much nicer than I had expected..:) Even had a computer and internet.. hihi:)

The days in Hanoi was really exciting, so much to look at and try out, so many new impressions to take on.. We had plans for what to do and went right on it;) The heat was as I mentioned before extreme and I still had SOME issues adjusting to it. I was sweating all the time, simple as that;) I just gotta say, sweating is on my top three list of what I hate the most. Actually I think it´s up there on #1... Actually I don´t think I can imagine anything worse that to be covered in sweat, and to be so warm that your body won´t stop sweating.. U feel so gross and ...well SWEATY! du-uh, Who like to be feeling sweaty? I guess the word sweaty speaks for itself;) haha, please don´t get me wrong - I LOVE the heat and the sun, and coming from freaking cold Norway makes me love it and long for the sun even more.. But that sweat part, please...;) ANYWAY I have to admit that I let that sweat part control me a little bit, nagging all the time to my boyfriend, ‘‘does my face look okay, are my makeup in place, do I look like a sweaty toad now?’’ Etc. But I don´t see how I could go on not doing that, so sweaty or not I had a GREAT TIME!!! :-))))

We were doing a lot of fun stuff in Hanoi, got up early every morning and headed out right after breakfast.

We were at the Temple of Literature, a temple of Confucius built in 1070. It hosts the Imperial Academy, Vietnam´s first national university.

Hỏa Lò Prison, or Hanoi Hilton sarcastically known to American prisoners. Prison used by the French colonists in Vietnam for political prisoners and later by North Vietnam for prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Many probably know of this prison because of John MacCain was taken as prisoner here.

How the prisoners were treated....

A HUGE butterfly like creature which scared the hell outta me! Gosh.. I called it killerbutterfly.. Dunno what it is, but it was huge and scarylooking...:P

Feeling a little scared, wandering all alone in these dark corridors...:p

Guillotine from when the french colonists used the prison..

Many probably know this; John McCains flight suit..

Prisoners actually escaped through this little hole!

Another nice little temple in the middle of the lake Hoan Kiem in Hanoi city.

Water Puppet Show - fun and cute :)

We were going through the Old Quarter, each street here is specialized in a particular trade, such as jewelry, silk, shoes, etc etc.

‘‘The night market opens every friday, saturday and sunday evening. Be sure to visit this for a variety of food, souvenirs and clothing :) But it´s crowded there, both with locals and tourists.’’

The heat was taking on and we relaxed with some cold coke, ice coffee  and ice cream at the Hanoi City View Cafe. I have to say that the coffee and ice cream wasn´t much to brag about, but the view over the lake Hoan Kiem was :)

Something that is impossible to NOT experience, is the traffic in Vietnam.. he he.. There´s not much of transport rules here.. Well, I guess there are, but people just don´t seem to bother following them;) At least that´s how it seems. Everybody seems to be driving like crazy, he he, and the noise.. They just don´t wanna stop pumping that horn..!

Crossing the street was almost a life/death situation, ha ha, what an experience...:) And what they load on those motorbikes! Gosh, they got great skills on how to move things and people around. Four/five people on one motorbike, at least one or two of them babies/infants, and let´s not forget all their luggage on top of that... I saw one guy in Hue, whatever he was transporting it was stacked in front of him, on top of the steering wheel, and it was like HUGE.. like I guess 7 times his own size. He couldn´t even see the road! But there he goes, just driving round like mad with this ridiculous amount of boxes or whatever..:)

The photos above isn´t even near how it normally was, this is an extremely rare moment where the traffic wasn´t crazy.. Wait until rush hour, omg;)


People fishing some random place...:)

The Hanoi Opera House.

The REAL Hanoi Hilton ;-)

This was some pictures from Hanoi!

I should probably work on this entry a little more, but it´s taking forever and I figured I´m just gonna post it for now and if needed I will edit and add to it later :)

Don´t forget, this is only from my two/three days in Hanoi..

I got Hue, Hoi An, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Pattaya left ;) ha ha ;)

Stay Tuned please! And do ask me if there´s anything you wonder about the trip, tips, anything..:-)