A travelling small human

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.

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^^

Today was a pretty chilly day. I checked out of my apartment and searched for a hostel where I can stay, luckily the second hostel I went to had a room in the dorm free. It costs 8$ a night and the rooms, beds and toilets are all really clean. The name is “Vietnam Backpackers hostel – Downtown”, they also have hostels all over Vietnam and I think when I’m in a town where there is one of their hostels I’m going again to them. After checking in and booking a trip to the Ha Long Bay, I went out to finally eat something, I got me a watermelon juice and fried tofu. It was the first time for me eating fried tofu and it’s pretty good, it was very soaked in oil and had not very much taste, but with the soysauce it was pretty good, it’s still tofu so you can’t expect that much^^
I met there two guys who live here since a few years now, one American and one British. We talked about living here and stuff and some friends of them came too. After a while some of us decided to go to a café. Later we went then to a bar which one of those guys ownes. It was early afternoon so besides us there were nobody yet there. We heared some music and I showed them some good hip-hop of my country. My mobile was then plugged on the whole time I was there^^ later I met a German couple who are on their honeymoon, they really liked my music and we talked a lot about Vietnam and traveling here, they made the same route I want to do, just the opposite way, they went from South to north and I’m going to travel from North to South. They also told me that Sa Pa is not that beautiful everyone wants to tell me, at least at the moment. The rice season is over so all the fields they praise at the pictures are not green but just brown and that’s what’s the special thing about this place. Intensely I wanted to go there tomorrow with the train, but now I’m thinking of maybe staying another day in Hanoi and then heading south to hue, but let’s see.
I tried with them one of those balloons the strange guys told me the other day. It’s kinda makes you feel a little bit dizzy and tingles in your face. The feeling only lasts about 15 seconds then everything is normal again. I think it’s somehow strange, it was a good experience but it’s nothing I could do the whole time, even while you’re inhaling you taste that it’s probably not good for you, it has a light sweet chemical taste in your mouth. It’s really better if you stay away from that, trying it out is no problem but you shouldn’t do it every time, especially with the risks, frequently consumption causes serious brain damage, so it’s really not that much fun.
After talking a little longer with the German guys I went out to eat something, I’ve got a Vietnamese Doner which really was pretty good and some fried rice with chicken which was also very tasty. Considering I had to get up at about 7:30 am I decided then to go to sleep so I won’t be that tired the next day.

You know what they say about never double dipping while eating Chinese Hot-Pot? Yeah, fuck that in Vietnam^^ I was now two times eating Hot-Pot with some locals and everyone was double dipping all the time 😅🙈
So today in the morning I was on a streetfood-tour with the girl whom I rent the apartment from and she told me a lot of the Vietnamese history while we were eating. It was very interesting, for instance that the capital of Vietnam changed several times over the centuries, sometimes because of a war-based strategy and sometimes just for the feng-shui of the Land.
I ate with her a noodlesoup with marinated porkstripes in it, the soup was a little bit cold because the shop just opened but it was still so freaking tasty! The whole soup was a bit sweet but not that strong and with the chilis I added it had a great balance between sweet and hot. I couldn’t finish it though because it was soo much noodles. You got the mountain of noodles on the side to the soup so you could always add some without overfilling the bowl. Thao, the girl who guided me did not just finished the bowl but she also ate it in such a speed! 😅 But that’s one thing I noticed already while I’m here, everybody is eating very fast and very much. I think they just eat two times a day but I’m not sure on that, I have to research this a bit more.
After the soup (which I forgot to take a picture from 🙈) we went to get a dessert. While we were walking Thao explained to me that those small stands like the one we were are just to specific times there, like the soups which the people eat for breakfast are just until ½ there and then they “close” or better said they put all the small chairs an tables on the side and put out their fireplaces^^ and for the lunch an dinner time it’s the same story.
The dessert I had was a cup full of sweet juice(I think) with lotusseeds, litchi, and jelly in it. It was pretty sweet but the lotusseeds compensated for it. Thao had a hot dessert, sticky rice with pomelo. After the dessert we saw the interior of an old Vietnamese building, which was kept like this for the tourists (0,50$ ticket price). We then drank a egg-coffee, which is simply black coffee with a ton of whipped egg white on top of it^^ and had a great view over a lake.
After making a short stop at the apartment, I went to the literature Temple which is really really beautiful. There are 86 stone panels on which the names of those people stand, who absolved a medicine study to encourage younger people to study as well.
I also was in the Ho Chi Minh Museum which has a loot of text in it. And I visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which can only be seen from the outside, there are always guards in front of it, who watch that nobody crosses the line on the ground.
There I met also some very nice people who talked a little bit with me and then asked if we can meet at the lake of yesterday. When we met there we went to their place, we drove with the motorcycle, which are pretty pricey, one ride from my apartment to their home was just 3800 VND which are about 1,30$.
We went out to eat Hot-Pot (which I also forgot to photograph 🙈) and it was soo delicious! The only problem I had was, that when I said I was full and wanted to make a small break for ½ minutes the were very sad and asked what’s wrong and that I just ate so little. So I had to eat more 😅 After the meal I was so unbelievably full and I just ate the half of what the girls ate, I really don’t know how Vietnamese people just can eat so freaking much without exploding 🙈
Well, in the end it was another really great day in Vietnam, I met some nice people, I ate some nice food and I learned more about the land and it’s culture 🙂
Oh yeah and I drank some sugarcane juice, which tastes awesome! 😍