Arrival at Hanoi

When we have reached Hanoi, our Vietnamese tour guide, Kanh, brought us to a Vietnamese restaurant to have Vietnamese cuisine dinner with local cultural show.

On our way to the restaurant for dinner, Kahn taught us some simple conversational Vietnamese. For example, “cam on” means thank you, “bao nhieu” means how much, etc.

When I entered into the restaurant, I was quite surprised by the environment. The furnishing of the restaurant and the decorations (i.e. every table is beautifully decorated with flowers and red cloth) has created a very nice ambience.


The reason why I was surprised is because before I went to Vietnam, I have a perception that Vietnam is not a very developed country, therefore the places there will not appear very ‘nice’ to me; dirty, dark, not well furnished. However, my perception turned out to be negative.

I have also noticed that there was a small group of Vietnamese ladies dressed up in traditional Vietnamese costumes sitting near the exit of the restaurant playing some musical instruments. These instruments appeared to me like some of the Chinese musical instruments. Later, I realized that the pieces they played sound very familiar; the songs they played were actually the Chinese oldies. The combination of the ambience and the songs has made me feel like I am at home; it is very comfortable.


When we started having our dinner, a few of the Vietnamese ladies except those who were playing the instruments, came to each of our table wanting to sell us souvenirs.



Initially, I was quite puzzled as I did not know why the Vietnamese ladies could play Chinese musical instruments. Later, then I realized that the reason maybe because of the long period of Chinese Occupation in the early days where the Vietnamese were influenced by the Chinese culture to a certain extent.