Vietnam 2009 Photo Gallery by oksana

Vietnam 2009

So we are back to same places in Vietnam - spent them retracing our steps from few years back - Hoi An, Sapa, Halong. Man, does this country changes quick! Old Quarters in Hanoi are chocked with scooters, Halong Bay has more tourist junks than islands....

I'm very happy for increased prosperity of Vietnamese people who can afford three scooters per capita in Hanoi nowadays, but it makes the life in those congested streets and sidewalks very near unbearable, from my point of view. But hey, who am I to say? I don't even own a motorized vehicle at the moment! :)

Same with Halong Bay - last time we were there when those dumbwits in Florida tried to count unpunched holes in voting ballots for Bush for the first time. :) We had small fishing boat for 10 people, slept under stars and hardly saw any other soul while cruising hours and hours through empty seas and fishing villages. Lots of things have changed in 9 years since - now you can hardly see the Unesco Heritage Islands behind gazillions of newly (and badly) built "junks" with fake sails ferrying tourists from pier in Halong to the party cove couple hours away and back, altogether 4-5 hours of sailing (I mean put-putting in very slow speed in procession of other "junks"). Good thing we've signed up for few hours of kayaking away from party cove (while our junk went back to Halong to pick up more victims :) ) - that was nice. Empty, quiet and somewhat peaceful. Kayaks were terrible floating bathtubs, though. :)

In Sapa we went for a hike and turned out that we were not the only ones lusting for nature and culture - another 100 or so tourists were trekking the same trail at the same time and each tourist had about 5 Black Hmong women attached to them, trying to sell stuff. You can imagine the size of that traveling tribe, right? Like a whole village was moving to the new pastures. Just awful! :) But views were great, so it did make up for overcrowding.

Hoi An stayed pretty much the same, so it was pleasant.

Do not copy or distribute any images without permission. All rights reserved. If you are interested in any of these images, please, contact me by e-mail - oksanaphoto@gmail.com

Hoian 1	Hoian 2	Hoian 3	Hoian 4	Hoian 5
Hoian 6	Hoian 7	Hoian 8	Hoian 9	Hoian 10
Hoian 12	Hoian 13	Hoian 14	Hoian 15	Hoian 16
Hoian 11	Duck-egg-1.jpg	Hoi-Ann-Beach.jpg

comment |

Guest		29-Jul-2009 11:14
A superb gallery, Oksana ! V !

click on thumbnails for full image

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