We spent the majority of today going around the sites of Hanoi! We found the Hanoi City Tour Hop on- Hop off bus and bought a day pass! There were 14 possible stops for the city tour, but we only had about half a day, so we picked our favorites and set out! I loved the bus because it was a double decker bus with an open air top deck. The bus also provided headphones and an audio tour of all the sites we passed. I preferred sitting on the top deck, I felt I got a better un-obstructive view.
The first and last stop of our tour was at the Hanoi Opera House. The opera house is a beautiful rich yellow gigantic building! There was a large tourist group about to go inside the building, so I quickly rushed to get a picture. The opera house was constructed during the French colonization of Vietnam in the early 1900's. It was beautiful with its French influenced architecture.
We jumped back on the bus and headed to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and One Pillar Pagoda. We had to skip the stops at the St. Joseph's Cathedral and the Flag Tower of Hanoi. I was sad missing all the sites and history, but we just didn't have the time to do all the stops. The Mausoleum is another gigantic building. There were many guards all around with lots of restricted areas. We had a hard time figuring out where to go. The grounds were beautiful and the building was impressive.
According to the pictures on the map, we should have been close to the Pagoda, but we couldn't see it anywhere. We walked around for a while and followed the crowd. We finally found it tucked back in an area to the left of the Mausoleum. We were running out of time to catch the next bus, so we quickly grabbed our camera and snapped a picture.
Our next stop was at the Quan Thanh Temple. Here, we found a beautiful white gate, a gorgeous temple and even prettier grounds!
It cost a few dollars to enter the temple grounds. We paid our fee and were free to look around, enter the temple and enjoy the smells of burning incenses.
Normally when I visit temples, I always feel like I am trespassing and I usually won't enter the actual temple. However, at this temple there were many people walking in and respectfully looking around. The people didn't look twice at the tourist and never said anything to them, so I went ahead and went in and looked around. The detail inside the temple was amazing! It was so beautiful.
My favorite part was the landscaping and the grounds! It was jaw dropping beautiful. There were small fairy gardens and each bush was cut with precision.
Our next stop was Corianne's number one! We were all excited to go to the Tran Quoc Pagoda!
We arrived only to find the gates locked and a few signs in Vietnamese (which we couldn't read, and google translate was useless). We could only assume that since it was Sunday, the Pagoda was closed for worship. It was so pretty from the outside. I'm really disappointed we couldn't go in.
We were quickly running out of time, so we were only able to squeeze in one more stop. Our final tourist destination was the amazing Temple of Literature.
This place is so very big and so very gorgeous! Every new courtyard we entered was just as beautiful as the last! The architecture and colors were vibrant and beautifully contrasted against the greenery.
At the rear of the Temple of Literature was a deep red temple with brilliant gold lettering and designs. The entire area was just beautiful.
We walked more around the grounds and were pleasantly pleased to find more and more beautiful buildings and landscapes. It was such a peaceful place to be. Definitely my favorite stop!
The reason we had to hurry and get back to the Old Quarters is because we had bought tickets for the Water Puppet Theatre Show. The Water Puppets are a traditional Vietnamese show. The puppeteers stand in water behind a curtain to control the puppets in the water. The show was interesting, cultural and original. I never could figure out how they controlled the puppets! Sometimes a puppet would weave in front of or behind another puppet, it was the strangest thing. I still have no idea how they did it! Right when the puppet show ended, we had to get back to the hotel and catch a ride to the airport. It was a jam packed day, but it was a good one. I definitely wished I had more time to see Hanoi and at least one more day on the bay.
No comments:
Post a Comment