Day 10
Today was really the laziest day ever, I just walked around the old quarters, planned my trip to Da Nang, ate something, and chilled at home. I’m going to Da Nang with a night bus, I booked it in the hotel and it costed me 25$. The cheapest flights I found online were for about 35$ so it’s a little cheaper like that, I’ll write if it’s also comfortable or if it’s maybe worth it to fly.
It started to rain in the afternoon and I was still a little tired from the long night yesterday so I went to the hotel and chilled a bit. In the evening I went again to the two bars and partied with the same girls I met yesterday. It was pretty fun and it was my last night here so why not^^ This time I didn’t stay this long though, just until 2am because I have to check out tomorrow at 11am.
But if you want to go to Hanoi to party you’ll have no problems finding a bar that you like, the night life here is so huge and you can meet so many nice people. Also many other tourists with which you can exchange your stories and give each other recommendations for everything, so it’s pretty helpful to go in a bar for a little chat. But maybe you’ll have some problems with the music, most of the bars and clubs all play this more or less trash techno music, which I have no problem hearing it, but if you hear it for 4-5h it can get a little annoying^^ but anyways you can also find bars who play another kind of music, you just have to look a little harder^^
The food I ate were a tofu noodle soup for breakfast which was pretty good, a iced lemon tea to cool down from this awesome hot weather *-* The tea was cheap, just 10.000 VND, you can find stands selling them all around the lake with the red bridge I wrote about earlier. For lunch I had this South Vietnamese beef noodles at a place called “Bun Bo Nam Bo” which is pretty famous for them and they really tastet great, pretty sweet but still great. And for ‘Dinner’ I had a grilled pork stick from the street.
I also found out why the Vietnamese people like my long hairs so much and why they don’t grow their hair apart from the obvious fact that it’s pretty hot with so much hair on your head in this country^^ Because it’s so hot here they also sweat a lot and this makes their scalp very itchy. It’s also said that Asians have more sweat glands than the westerns so that’s maybe also a point why their heads gets easier itchy than mine.
Day 9
After a week back home I finally flew back to Hanoi. The flight was very good and this time i really had no problems with my visa or anything. The food was pretty good this time and besides that, nothing eventful happened during my travel back to Vietnam.
Because the other hostel I stayed was full I had to look for a free one. My travel guide had also a list with good hostels in Hanoi in it so I started to go to them and ask if they have anything free. I’m now at the May De Ville Hotel in a six-bed dorm with 4 other peoples. The price is very good, 6$ a night and the rooms are really clean, I think they get cleaned daily. The bathroom is as you can see in your room but besides the unfortunate acoustics and the fact that the walls are made of glass it’s alright, it’s also pretty clean and everything works.
At the evening I got the best fried squids I ever had and went after that to two bars I promised I would come around when I’m back in Hanoi, it was a pretty nice first day back here and the night went way longer than expected^^
Day 8
Too lazy to write everything a 4th time down, somehow Tumblr managed it to fail the upload of the post I wrote freaking three times…I also wiped my phone because I already had 10gb of Pictures^^ so sadly I can’t show you any food I ate that day. It was fried tofu and sausage, pineapple, …
Day 7
At about 6:45 I arrived in Lao Cai. From there we went with the bus to the village Sa Pa which is in the hills. Alone the way to the village is awesome you have such a nice view on the rice terraces *-* The nearer you get the foggier it gets, at least at this time of the year. It’s freaking foggier than in silent hill, no kidding look at the pics. When I was there I went to a nice hotel recommend from the travel guide I bought, the Green Village Hotel. I sadly forgot to take pictures of the interior but it’s alright, the room was pretty small, just enough space to fit three beds inside and a little bit of space to walk. The bathroom is inside the room and was okay, not the cleanest but really not gross or anything. The beds even have heating blankets which you can plug in to warm up your bed. This is really good because up there in the mountains it’s really pretty cold. The village itself is very pretty even though I didn’t see so much because of all this fog^^ The Hmong, which is the folk that lives there, specialized themselves on giving tracking tours through the hills. They all walk through the village and ask you if you want to book a tour with them, sometimes they are a little obtrusive but they’re still nice and don’t get mad at you if you say no to them. They also shout at every corner asking if you want to buy weed or opium from them xD. I ate some stir fried noodles with chicken but somehow I had not that much appetite… After that I went to a tourist center and booked a bus back to Hanoi, I went back to my hotel, canceled my booking (I still had to pay the first night but it’s understandable). There works a Polish guy who speaks pretty good English and helps you with everything you need. At 3:30 pm I went to the place I booked the bus, I drank green tea with honey and ginger, the ginger was pretty strong in it but it was perfect for the cold weather there. Then one of the employees drove me with a motorcycle to the place where the bus waited for me. It cost nothing. The bus seats were damn high class, almost better than in the plane! You had so much space for your feet. The bus drive is 100k cheaper than the train ride ( bus 300k and train 400k) and even was faster, I would recommend the bus now over the train, although such a sleep train is a nice experience. I was at 9:30pm back in Hanoi, I checked in to the Hanoi Backpackers hostel again and went out to eat something, I ate again the fried rice with chicken next to the hostel. There I met some American guys with which I then went to a pool bar and we talked about this and that a little, it was a pretty nice evening.
Embassys are bullshit
Why are there embassys when they open at 8 am and close three hours later?! I thought embassys are there that you can contact them when you have an emergency. Luckily mine is not really that big of a problem and I can handle it without the embassy, but nevertheless, dafuq embassys? At least stay …
Day 6
Today was a great and a pretty bad day at the same time. But let me start at the beginning, first I found another place where I could eat the awesome marinated pork soup I ate with the girl of my apartment, this time I took a picture of it! It was again reaally tasty!
Some hours later I met the girl from the second day again, she showed me some really nice and calm places around a big lake called Ho Tay. I can really recommend this place, it’s super calm and I didn’t see one tourist.
We also went into a pagoda and we prayed together. It was really nice to see this, and luckily at this time it was praying time so I could hear how the others prayed all together. I didn’t took pictures because I thought that would be a little bit out of place to take pictures at a holy place especially while others were praying.
We ate this sweet roll with was filled with i don’t know what but it was pretty good. It’s called Bo Bia if I remember correctly.
We then decided to go to her place and cook something. That was the time when shit went a little bit down.. I got a message with some really bad news from home and was pretty shocked about it. I was really sorry for the girl that I was pretty long quite, just staring in my smartphone and talking to some friends about it :/ But at least she understood the urgency of writing with them and was okay with that.
I cooked a chicken curry which was okay but normally I can do it better, I think I was with my mind at another place and didn’t focused right.
Then I went to the train to go to Lao Cai which is a little more in the North and further in the West. The train was really nice and I shared my room with a Vietnamese family who good roommates, they talked a little bit and then went all to sleep^^
As well as me.
Day 5
I did today almost nothing. First I ate this great chicken (or pork?) -Noodle soup at a small street stand near my hostel.
Then I searched for a laundry shop, I had a picture of some addresses the girl of the apartment gave me but they were either closed, laundrys for suits or too far away. I decided to ask in the hostel were they said I can also wash my laundry there which I then did. Now in the evening I found out that there were some laundry shops right around the corner for a little bit less than in the hostel 🙈
After that I took a motorcycle-taxi to the train station and bought a ticket to Sa Pa, or better a place near from that, for tomorrow night. I will ride from 10 pm till 6 am and have a soft sleep place for 400.000 VND, which are about 16$. Then I just walked around, in the direction of the hostel but pretty much how I wanted without any aim. I was nice and I walked also in some streets who were more quiet and without all the tourists. But especially in those streets many people looked at me, which feeled a little bit weird. I don’t know why, I think a part of it was that I walked around with shorts. I you want to spot the tourists you just have to look who wears shorts when it’s warm but not really hot^^ because for all the people living there it’s not that warm so they wont wear shorts that often. Another thing are my long hairs I think, I’ve got some compliments for them here and there are really not that many people with long hair around 😅
And of course my eyes 🙈
Well, after some wandering around I came back to the lake from earlier. I bought some mango at a stand, walked a bit more and bought some presents I had on my list. Today the streets around the lake were very calm and it was really nice walking there. There was also a group of four musicians who made really great music, there was a huge crowd around them and many kids danced to their music 🙂 I sat there more than an hour just listening to their music 😅
After finally getting myself to go on I went back to the hostel, got my laundry back and chilled a little bit.
I went then out to get something to eat, noodles with chicken and soup at the side, way different than the one I ate in the morning but soo delicious. Then I wandered through the nightmarket of Hanoi, wrote with my friends back home who just woke up at the time and looked at all the cool stuff the market people offered.
That was all^^
Day 4
Ha Long Bay tour time! Waking up was a little bit hard but it’s about a 3½ hour drive from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay, so you can sleep a little more. But don’t sleep the whole time or you will miss the chance to see a part of the real live of the Vietnamese, away from the big city Hanoi, straight through the small cities with nothing special, maybe a karaoke bar or a hotel but that was it. You can see that there are many similarities between the live there and the live in Hanoi, people still all sit together at the sidewalk, eating something or smoking those huge pipes while talking and watching the traffic. But it’s far more calm than in the city, even if I just saw this while driving through I think I saw the differences quit good.
When you drive to Ha Long Bay you’ll also drive over some big bridges and you will see many rice fields *-*
After a short stop halfway there at a handcrafts shop from disabled people, who do really beautiful pictures and other stuff, we went on. There I also found a bottle of Snake-Scorpion Wine O.o There stood it is a Vietnamese specialty.
When we finally arrived in Ha Long Bay, the group split up in two parts, those who stay one night or longer and the ones who just do a one-day tour. I was at the one day tour. We went to a boat and drove with it to a small place at the Bay called the Fisher village, but there are no Fishers anymore. Earlier there lived many of them but since the UNESCO claimed the Ha Long Bay one of the 7 new Nature wonders, they had to move, to not pollute the Bay to much. It’s kinda sad that they lost their home, considering there lived so many generations of fisherman, but if it’s better for the environment…
My breakfast were just some cookies I got the other day from those kind girls. The lunch was pretty touristic. There weren’t even chopsticks, just normal fork and knife. They served several seafood, rice and some vegetables. It was okay but I would have liked it more if it had been real authentic Vietnamese seafood. The guys who sat on my table were really strange, they ate very little and found everything strange although it was just normal seafood, also they didn’t ate up, they took something on their plate, ate half of it and tried something else. Even our tour guide came at the end of the lunch, saw that there were so many leftovers and asked if the food wasn’t good or what the matter was. That made me a little bit upset. But well, they are just tourists and can do whatever they want and maybe food is not that big of a deal for them.
When we arrived at the Fisher village I took the option of a bamboo-boat tour, you could also kayak, but the tour guide told us that you’re probably going to get wet and if you don’t have anything to change with you that could be a little uncomfortable. The bamboo-boat tour was really good you could just relax and enjoy the view to those biiig mountains surrounding you and the small caves you were going through. Except that it’s pretty loud because of the many tourists who were there. If it would be a little bit more quiet I think it would have been more beautiful and mystical, but everyone wants to go there, which is very understandable, but if they could be just a little bit quieter.
After the tour we went in with the boat to a cave in the Bay. There are many caves in the Bay you can visit, some bigger some smaller, we were at a smaller one but our guide said it’s nicer than the big ones. The caves are well lit in many different colors. It sadly makes it look a little unnatural but it’s still pretty nice. The tour guide told us some infos to the bay and the caves and then we headed back to the mainland and to the bus. The ride back home feeled way longer than the ride to the bay, but I think it was about the same time^^
In the evening I visited a night market. I looove those! We should have them in our western countries too! They are so awesome!
Later I went to the pub I was yesterday and celebrated the last day of the honeymoon of the German couple I met there. They gave me some tips for Cambodia and we talked a lot about everything. It was really nice meeting them 🙂
After the long day and a pretty long night I went back to the hostel and slept immediately^^
