~Bliss~ ~Bliss~ ~Bliss~ ~Bliss~: Teambuilding @ Hanoi

I was at Hanoi for 4D3N from last thursday for team-building activities with my colleagues!

initially, i must said i was not at all glad with the prospect of flying all the way to hanoi just for teambuilding activities. @_@

i really really dislike flying for work.

and hanoi, or any part of vietnam, is really not on my travel map for the next.... 10 years perhaps. :P

and and.. to leave my boys for such a long time really gets me worried.

my faith/trust in the husband to take care of just yz alone is simply not enough.

well, things played out well by themselves.

and im glad to say that i did kinda enjoy the trip.

and the boys were fine under hubbi and my mum's care without me. :)

day 1:

reached budget terminal at the unearthly hour of 645am. @_@

first time there and its really pathetic.

the good thing was check-in and the flight over there was very smooth.

im impressed with tiger pilots. :)

arrival @ hanoi around 10+am

shuttle bus catered for us to our hotel - Sheraton! :)

after checking into the hotel and some freshening up, we were good to go for a city tour around hanoi!

our group of 14 pax booked a van & a local tour guide to bring us around.

1st stop: lunch! we were famished!

lunch was at this food court place

pricing is around S$2 for a bowl of noodles? 15,000 dong is approx. = S$1

this is my main dish - BBQ pork pho!! its really good! the pork tasted just like bah kwa! *slurp*

we ordered alot of other misc side dishes and desserts and ate ourselves damn full!

in the end, it costed us ard S$6-7 per pax! cheap n good!

anyway, hanoi is really quite boring to me.

most of the shops there are abit pasar malam pattern and the things being sold are mainly sourvenirs type.

im not v impressed but apparantly the aunties in my group managed to buy tons of things. LOL.

hanoi has LOOK & M

hanoi has N& M

but........ no H&M lor.

and the traffic is kinda bad like some countries.

motorbikes all over the place, coming in all directions.

yet its all managed so well that accidents are quite impossible. its amazing.

the bikes look like they gonna crash into one another, right.

but that never happened! im surprised!

we escaped back to the comforts of our hotel rooms at 7+pm.

hanoi city is really not for me, after all. but i kinda like the food.

so all is not too bad.

Day 2: Team-building activities @ an orphange

we didnt know what we were doing until we reached hanoi.

i was very glad that we will be helping needy children with our activites, no matter how small the gestures may seem.

i was dreading ala-amazing race kinda activities for the longest time...

about 90 of us reached the orphanage early at 730am!

some of the kids looked pretty excited to see us, while some were reserved & shy.

we were split up into teams and each team is supposed to assemble a kid & an adult bikes!

we were given the parts and a tool box and asked to get to work!

tada! our finished products!

im very impressed with ourselves for doing so. the guys were really good at working on the brakes!

we need to decorate our bikes and came up with a 3min "advert" to present to the kids. :)

after that, its lunch for us!

lunch was cooked by the caretakers at the orphanage. though limited in variety, i can taste the home-cook flavor and the food was really yummy!

the spring roll tasted like the 五香 back in sg. yummy!

the clear soup tasted abit sweet and sour and its meant to be eaten with the rice noodles.

gathering @ the open space before the presentation.

we were encouraged to mingle with the kids.

it was almost 3pm by the time we reached hotel.

most of us went to grab a power nap.

then its time for our gala dinner @ 7pm!

food was good though portion seemed abit little. :P

again, there are some games to be played and each team to put up a 3m performance.

it was all fun seeing all the different teams vying to answer questions and earning points. ha.

my team really enjoyed ourselves as we agreed at the start to not be too bothered by the competition but most importantly to have joy in what we were doing.

wise words from our korean team leader. hahaha.

apparantly, it pays to like what you do for we went on to get the 1st place. haha.

each of us got a prize for that - an oil painting.

a good sourvenir to remind me of hanoi, definitely. :)

day 3: we were supposed to fly back to sg today but there were no available flights back on saturdays.

so we have 1day F&E!

i was abit cringed with having too much time in hanoi but my "on" coll actually went to source for a day tour to halong bay!

of cos i signed up! @ US$25 per pax, it was really quite reasonable.

but but but, halong bay tour has 1 major drawback..... it is a good FOUR hours ride from hanoi city!!! *scream*

imagine, we spent almost 8 hours travelling to and fro halong bay. @_@ *sigh*

we set off at 8+am but only finally settling in our own boat at 12+pm.....

our lunch was being prepared on board.

with cutting and washing on the floor. @_@

ignorance is bliss at times..

the ride to halong bay was a good scenic one!

most of us were pretty delighted by the views we saw along the way!

leaving the harbour behind us...

nice huh?

its very common for such small boats to come to bigger boats like us for them to try selling fruits to us.

i was horrified with the woman carrying a boy about yr's age stepping on/off the roof of her small boat onto ours!!
and look at her toddler boy sitting on the rails!! *gulp*

i kept telling her to be careful but i doubt she knows what im trying to say. @_@

i bought mangoes from her in the end and brought it all the way back to sg for hubbi & my parents to try. haha.

they were actually sweet!

and her boy is really really cute. very smiley and sticking his tongue out at me the whole time.

lunch time! not fantastic but will do...

finally, we reached halong bay. the main attraction is to climb up to a cave where you can see limestones in it.

i've seen a few such caves in other countries but halong bay's one is the one with the highest ceiling to me... pretty impressive!