Dalat

Dalat is one of the places in Vietnam I was looking forward to most! Since making up some time by leaving Hoi An early we could afford 2 nights here. After yet another night bus we checked into Cozy Nook homestay which was recommended to me by a guy in Hanoi, it had reviews of 9.8 so looked like a winner! 

I got chatting to an older lady who was staying for 4 nights and seemed to love it. She was so nice and told me she is travelling solo for a year. These older travellers are such an inspiration and give me so much hope and happiness that I can continue to live and travel even after I have to inevitably have stupid kids that will ruin my life soon 😫😒

We were in a 12 bed mixed dorm and everyone was so friendly and seemed to have the same 2 day plan. 

Our homestay offered family meal for $3 so we all opted for that and agreed to al head to 100 Roofs after. Dinner was a big buffet free for all much like in Sapa. There was rice, meat, tofu, veggies and soup and it was all delicious! We filled up way too much and had a few beers. 

Everything in the fridge from water to beer was 10,000 dong and you just tallied up what you took on the blackboard throughout your stay. Very trusting, but also easy to get carried away just helping yourself!

After this we all walked the 10 odd minutes to 100 Roofs which is according to folklore (and the Internet)is a bar which is a maze… A maze over 6 floors… We’ve heard tales from other travellers of getting lost and not being able to find your way out and to buy a drink whenever you find a bar in case you can’t find one again for a while. How hard can it be right?! Turns out pretty bloody hard, it was awesome! You had to climb and crawl through small holes and tunnels and up over things and as much as I like to think I have a fairly decent sense of direction, it messes with your head! 

We spent hours ending up in the same places over and over and just before we left, somehow managed to find a whole other area with seating and cubby holes and trees and more weirdness. It’s the best bar I’ve ever been to without a doubt, hours of fun! The guy who owns it has spent decades designing and building and it’s apparently still a work in progress. 

Naturally we all lost each other and returned home separately!

Everyone was up early the next day for canyoning! Vicky and I had managed to book elsewhere and saved $6 so we had to walk to get our bus whilst everyone else went as a group from Cozy Nook.

After picking up a whole bunch of people and taking forever, like anything that involves any kind of transport in Asia, we finally arrived at Datanla Falls and got geared up. 

We were given a demonstration on how to use the ropes and safety gear and then headed to our first dry abseil! It was along side a waterfall and I knew I’d over think and freak out if I didn’t get on with it so I made sure I was one of the first! I just did it and was so relieved! You had to swim across the water at the bottom, hello soggy shoes!

The second stop was another “dry” abseil and I smashed that too despite a few people slipping and a few cuts a bruises… I’m braver than I think. As we moved from one activity to the other we had to cross the river all holding hands, working as a team, trek through the jungle and at some points just float down the river, it was so fun!

The 3rd activity was a “water slide” which was basically lay on this waterfall and go flying! Vicky went first and came up all coughing and spluttering which panicked me, but there was no time to think, I closed my eyes and held my nose and it was actually really fun 🙂

More trekking and river crossings to the cliff jump! Now I’ve cliff jumped many a time (as a fearless kid/teenager) so thought this would be the easiest as I’ve at least done it before… Wrong! I stood at the lowest of the 3 jumps, 7m and as I went to jump my brain was like NOPE. Come on brain we’ve done this before, it’s not even high and we have a life jacket on… ABSOLUTELY NOT. 
Everyone jumped and some moved up to 9m and one guy even up to 11m but the these required a leap and a run and jump to clear a few meters of rock 😳

It was just me and one Israeli girl who were being big fat wimps, each time I had a little break I was like “yeah let’s do this!” I’d stand up and my brain would be all erm what do you think you’re doing? I think it was the fact I had to jump forward and clear like a meter of the cliff to not die. I think it stems back to my trampolining and learning to not travel so I had a fear that I couldn’t and if I did I would rotate.

She finally went and then I had to, by this point I’d held the whole group up and had everyone cheering me on, which didn’t help but I wanted it to stop, so I finally convinced my brain to shut up.

God that was more difficult than it needed to be, I was exhausted.
The final stop was the “washing machine” just the name was enough for me! Being disorientated under water is a bit of a fear of mine and as you couldn’t look over the cliff I couldn’t understand what they actually meant. The girl before me screamed and I was like nah! I didn’t want to wimp out but I wasn’t comfortable. Once I’d gone down and watched others I probably could have done it but I’d held everyone up enough. 

This is Vicky being brave! Basically you abseil a bit til you have nowhere to put your feet then free abseil til the waterfall starts pounding you then go as fast as you can til the rope runs out the and the waterfall pushes you under and you pop up downstream. If you go to slow the waterfall can make you spin, hence the name washing machine!

I could have done it but there’s only so far I can push myself on this trip considering all the stuff I’ve overcome already, I’ll take 4/5!

Such a fun day I would recommend to anyone if you ever visit Dalat! Highland Holiday Tours were very professional and made us feel very safe in light o recent tragic events.

We arrived back later than everyone else which was kinda good cause there was one shower between 12 of us and we missed the rush. They all had family meal and went out again but we were pooped! We opted for food, bakery and an early night!

 
 

Hoi An

Hoi An was just a flying visit as the Vietnam visa clock was ticking. We opted to stay at An Bang beach rather than in town as we’ve had enough of towns and cities for a while!

We spent a few hours on the beach as soon as we arrived off our 18 hour night bus. It was a nice change of scenery! We did laundry and ended up having early dinner and a very early night cause we were pooped, how boring.

The next day we took a taxi into town had a nice little lunch and a wander.

Then stumbled across where all the tailors shops are. You can have pretty much anything tailor made here from bikinis to suits to shoes, which is pretty cool however wasted on me as I don’t do shopping and even if I did want something made I am a totally out of shape since travelling so it would be a complete waste.

Vicky was kidnapped by one of these tailor people and lured to their shop where she had to go through designs and materials but they refused to indicate any sort of price. I just wandered around the usual souvenir type shops and FINALLY bought a sarong! I didn’t buy a magical multi purpose sarong before coming out here cause I assumed I could pick one up cheap, I was mistaken, this is the first time I’ve found one that isn’t just a tiny scarf! 

We intended to stay in Hoi An for 2 nights however we realised how panicked the visa timing situation was getting so decided to check out early to head to Dalat.

This was looking like a great idea regardless as there was a storm coming.
I would like to visit Hoi An again if I come back to Vietnam as I feel we didn’t really have time to make the most of it, and maybe next time I won’t have gotten too out of shape to get some stuff made that fits me!

Sapa

After bussing it back from Halong Bay we had a few hours to kill before getting a night bus to Sapa. Some of this time was spent eating way too much icecream at Baskin Robbins. Oops.

We ended up with bottom single beds on the bus at the back, this was great until some stupid French girls decided to sit in the aisle and eat their stinky dinner next to my face. It’s 10pm you’ve had all day. Then one of them decided to sleep in the aisle between us rather than in her bed. Cool. See ya later then Vicky!

This was another arrive hours too early, turn aircon off and die of sweat for hours situation. Y’know just to make sure we’re fresh for our 14k.

We were woken up at 6 to many tribes women in beautiful coloured head scarves asking if we needed a guide and somewhere to stay. We’d already booked so we stood around being told nothing, feeling lost and confused for about 1/2 hour.

Eventually we were adopted by a nice lady who spoke very good English who took us for breakfast along with 3 English guys Andy, Aaron and Josh who were apparently in our group too. After we’d eaten we were told we would be starting at 9 and to look round the market…. It was a food market and we’d just eaten, so we went and sat in a coffee shop for 2 hours. Why wake us up 3 hours early?!

We finally set off up a steep hill and out of town and into the mountains! It was getting hot already and we were already a sweaty mess and running on little sleep, was this really a great idea?! We were soon high up above the town and up in the beautiful countryside. I was really happy to be out in the fresh air and looking forward to some much needed exercise!

There were other groups and guides along the way and we encountered an angry man dressed in some sort of military get up. He wanted to put some bamboo across a gap and charge us to cross and was not happy when we just wanted to climb down and back up for free… He shouted a lot and stormed off. Awkward.

We had plenty of little breaks which was nice, the guides were collecting fern branches as we went along and then on one stop they sat and made us cute little hearts 🙂 the boys got horses, it was very clever!

We stopped for lunch in a small village and I had chicken noodles. I will never get used to seeing kids have free rein, running around dangerous areas like roads and cliff edges and with knives. This 2 year old was just freely hacking away at some sugar cane. I couldn’t watch.

It was getting hotter and I was desperately trying not to burn and to ignore the reappearance of a old knee injury that had come to say a painful hello. We eventually got to our homestay around 2.30 though which was a lot earlier than expected but we were about done by then. The house belonged to our guide lady’s sister in law Mao but she was out buying dinner.
We were shown to our loft room and we’re happy to see we all got a double mattress each! What is this non sharing luxury! We then immediately all fell asleep.

Many villagers shower in the waterfall but we were lucky enough to have a shower at our house. I wanted the authentic experience but when they want you to keep covered up and only had a small bag I couldn’t see how I could get clean almost fully clothed and then have to have a bunch of wet things to carry around… I just wanted to be clean!

The family had pigs, ducks and chickens and there were also children running around, one little boy had a machete which he was hacking at a tree with and then holding it by the blade, we later discovered it was wooden… These kids terrify me.

The family came back with bags of shopping and we met our house mother Mao! She introduced herself and her husband and they were lovely.
We then just sat around outside for hours not know what was going on or if we were supposed to be doing anything. Dinner was served by the family around 7 and we all went inside to eat together. We were all starving so hoped there would be lots of food…. Be careful what you wish for. There was rice, veggies, meat, tofu, soup and the best homemade spring rolls I’ve ever tasted. Every time we finished our rice we were topped up with a whole full bowl more… This happened about 4 times and there was no polite declining you had to have it. It hurt and I started to genuinely fear it would all come back out.

Turns out this was the least of our worries cause when dinner was finally all gone, out came the “happy water” which we believe was homemade rice wine. We all did a shot together, it burnt. And then another and another and another. We chatted with Mao and her sister in law as her mother and husband didn’t speak much English, they just sat and observed and smiled, they are so cute! We asked Mao how she learnt English and she said just a by listening which is amazing! She is extremely observant though and would repeat us like a parrot, pronouncing “bottle” and “water” in an exact Milton Keynes/London lazy accent! She didn’t miss a trick either there was no quick word amongst us like “please no more food!” She would hear and repeat it! She was hilarious and absolutely brilliant except the million questions on my scars, that was kind of annoying but she was just fascinated! The drunker she got the funnier she became. Every time we thought we’d finished a bottle and were safe, out would come another and there was no refusing. Vicky tried pouring it all over herself and we sometimes didn’t actually drink it but she’d catch us out and if you managed to miss the top up she’d pour hers in yours when you cheersed! It was such a fun night, one I’ll never forget it was an honour to be welcomed so warmly into this family’s home and to be treated so warmly. We were all asleep by 10pm!

The next morning I woke a few times to the sound of gunfire, squealing pigs and persistent cockerels. Also we had no idea what time we were starting out as every time we had asked Mao the night before she said up at 4am so we slept in fear haha when in actual fact we were in no rush and we didn’t get up til about 8, best nights sleep I’d had in a long time, I needed that!

We were served breakfast of eggs pancakes and coffee by the beautiful teenage girl of the family, I couldn’t tell if she was Mao’s daughter or sister. Then we were allowed to try on their traditional clothes! 🙂

We finally set off about 11 this time with Mao as our guide (we decided to swap headgear and she asked me a million more questions!)

We trekked directly through the rice paddies balancing on the mud between, over bouncy wobbly bridges, up through jungle and across waterfalls it was amazing!

We stopped for lunch by the river where some people were swimming and after we’d finished Mao went inside for her lunch. I was beginning to grow increasingly concerned that our bus back to Hanoi was at 4, it was now around 2:30 and we were definitely still in the middle of nowhere….

Mao however convinced me that it was OK as we were going to get motorbikes back to town 😳 I’m sorry what?! I’ve never been on a bike before, nor do I have have any intention of ever doing so. I am under strict instruction from my dad to never get on one. Shit.

I kept telling her I was scared and I was put on her husband’s bike whilst Vicky was put with some other random dude. Mao then got on behind me so I was now sandwiched between husband and wife. Where do I hold on now?! She placed my hands on her husbands hips and she held my wrists, yep cool. Totally secure now.

We started off up bumpy, windy, bendy hills with sheer drops into the valley on one side… I have never clenched my bum so tight.

With each bump I was slipping forwards and I’m sure he had nowhere to sit anymore but I was scared to readjust! I asked her how long thinking maybe 5 mins… “Oh about half an hour” Ok, yep, so this is how I die.

Half way Mao got on the back of another bike and I was free to hold on the back. I’ll just close my eyes then in will be less scary, nope! All I could think was if I fall off now I’m going to lose all my skin. If I fall off now I’m falling off this cliff. If I fall of now I’ll die instantly. I pick this one, if you’re going to crash mr man do it now!

We finally made it back to the bus stop in one piece and the others all had the same terrified expression I imagine I had myself! The boys had been on bikes plenty of times before but even they said that was terrifying. I laughed like a crazed person and felt so lucky to be alive!

Mao was still looking after us and taking our tickets and helping us on the bus, I gave her a hug and thanked her for everything and she gave us bangles ❤ it was so sweet I feel so glad to have met her and had this experience 🙂

Bus time again, I need a large drink!

Halong Bay

Halong (which translates as descending dragon) is another place I’ve always wanted to visit! Unfortunately with our limited time of 15 days in Vietnam we had to opt for the 2 day/1 night Halong Bay trip which included a night on a boat 🙂

We were collected and transferred to our boat early and were pleasantly surprised to be fed information as to the itinerary! You get told bugger all about anything in Asia. How long a bus will take, if it will stop, when, for how long, when’s lunch, is it included. Literally nothing. So when our nice guide explained all this to us AND some local history/information it was amazing!

We boarded our boat around 1pm and were served with a huge lunch of various seafood, meat, veggies and rice. I tried oyster for the first time, yummy tastes like muscles! I can’t handle this way of serving food as I cannot see food and not eat it, I’m just like my mother (hi mum) so there being endless food in front of me and just having a tiny bowl to refill means I eat wayyy more than I should and have no idea how much I have actually eaten. Hence why I’ve gotten really really fat on this trip. 


We sailed past many beautiful islands and I looked on in awe! After visiting some pretty epic caves we dropped anchor for the night and went kayaking.

 I’ve not done this since I was little and didn’t realise how tiring it is (see lazy and unfit now :() we went and explored some of the shores of the rocks and into some little mini caves.

Our cabin was so cute! It was so nice to have our own room and bathroom to ourselves, that never happens! I’ve never slept on a boat before despite being destined to be a pirate. We even found this amazing sign!

Which could only be interpreted as in case of emergency: extinguish fire, lure victim in with warm hug, hit them over the head with mallet found in bedside draw.

After “cooking class” which was a 2 minute demo of how to make a spring roll, we had more buffet food for dinner….my inner fatty is loving life right now, my overbearing inner fit girl is not! Followed by a few cocktails (THE best passion fruit mojito of my life) we then tried our hand at squid fishing! Though I only managed to catch a dead jellyfish… Repeatedly!

Unfortunately out of our small group of 16 no one seemed very up for much and after some French Canadian girls killed many of my favourite songs on karaoke, everyone went to bed by 10pm… I guess that’s the alternative to the party cruise, there is no middle ground!

During the night and my usual panic of suffocation and overheating, I woke up and attempted to whack the aircon on as icy as possible… I went back to sleep. An hour later I woke up thinking I was being baked in an oven as I had actually turned the heating on… I fought with the stupid machine for about an hour and became very close to throwing myself overboard to cool off. So when our guide came banging on the door at 7am for breakfast I was having none of it, we thought we’d sleep til 9 when we were due to dock. Then at 8am he came banging again, “oyster farm!” I didn’t want to miss out on anything so a threw some shorts and some sunny g’s on and boarded the little boat. I’m pretty sure I still had pillow marks all over my face and resembled a 30+ ex raver coming to the harsh realisation, they can’t party like they used to.

The oyster farm was a strange place, I was unaware of semi natural pearls. We learnt how oysters are farmed and then implanted with tiny bits of shell in the hope they will create a pearl. 

Only 10% are successful as some fall out and some die. Once they are at the correct maturity for the specific pearl they want to create, they are cracked open to see if there are any treasures within, which causes the oyster to then die… Is this cruel? Do shellfish have feelings?!

We headed back to pack and check out and one the way back to the harbour we were severed lunch, around 10.45… Good job we didn’t have breakfast then!

I definitely hope to return to Halong in the future for a longer period of time and maybe stay on some islands and explore some more. But if like us you’re on a limited schedule I would definitely recommend this package 🙂 

Travelling with the scars of self harm

*Taboo awkward subject alert!! Cringe! Panic!*
Ok so I’m just throwing it out there, maybe cause I don’t give a shit and it doesn’t upset me and maybe cause I’ve been travelling long enough that I’m disconnected with the real world enough now that I’ve forgotten what is and is not socially acceptable to talk about!!
Anyway, as is apparently extremely obvious, I am covered in scars from my own stupid doing. I didn’t realise it was quite so obvious and have spent the past 12 odd years believing I have got away with such life choices without repercussion. It would appear I am very much mistaken!
In Asia I am confronted about said scars almost daily. Just straight up. This is either because

a) I have a slight tan (shock horror) and their whiteness screams through

b) Asian people are far more observant as they don’t run around like blue arse flies without a second to spare like westerners

c) Everyone notices them normally but understand how they got there and know it would be awkward/pointless/borderline rude to enquire as to their origins.
I think most enquiries are genuine ignorance and they believe I may have been mauled by some sort of wild creature, like of course why the hell would I have done this myself?! But I seem to have stuck to my original answer when I was first taken aback when asked in Bangkok, which has now defaulted to “I was sad” …. This obviously does not cut it (pardon the pun) as it is not a viable response in the modern normal people world.
Sometimes when they see it’s a strange thing to drill someone about they panic and back off, other times, like when we stayed at a nice Vietnamese lady’s house whilst trekking in Sapa, they don’t get this social cue whatsoever and continue to ask many, many questions. Over dinner. With fellow English people feeling and looking extremely awkward.
They laugh when they learn it was my doing, which is great 🙄 I’ve also been asked if I did it for beauty (turns out northern Vietnamese women cannot fathom eyebrow plucking either so maybe I get where that comment may come from) but when they ask why… how do you answer that? “School was tough” or “I was very sad” to a person who is poor and has nothing, maybe didn’t even have the privilege of going to school, survives off mainly rice and relies on stupid rich westerners to come stay in her house…how do you as someone who has been given all the riches in the world since you were born, possibly explain why you could feel so sad and desperate enough to do such a thing. You can’t. And it makes you feel like a right twat to be honest.
Which raises so many questions in my own head. Mental health is indeed very real, but does it even have a place in such societies? If it is very uncommon then are we creating it ourselves? Are we a weaker society? Or do we just have far more external and internal pressures?
The mind boggles, but when I’m not on an island with no wifi (as I’m writing this now) I want to look into this much more.
#sorrynotsorry for the scary slightly off topic post, but the blog name does have 2 parts to it 😉 more travel stuff to come!

Hanoi

Yay I’m in Vietnam! Dream come true 🙂 Hanoi was big and vibrant! Full of popular chain restaurants and more mopeds than I have ever seen. Such a contrast to Laos where everything is independent.

We were staying in Vietnam Backpackers Original which offered a free walking tour of the old town each morning at 10, so I was up and ready to go learn some shit! I’d missed this in Laos.

Our guide was very sweet and took us to see the local cathedral, the market (where we saw terrified caged bunnies :() around the lake and over the bridge to a Chinese temple and past a water puppet show theatre… Whatever this is we need to see it as it sounds weird! So we bought tickets for later in the day. Our last stop was to try egg coffee at a local rooftop cafe over looking the lake. It tasted surprising yummy despite sounding a tad gross! There’s no such thing as milk in Asia they just put creamer and condensed milk in coffee making it horrifically bad for you so at least replacing this with egg white means extra protein 🙂

We walked around some more before heading to the puppet show with an Italian girl and 2 Americans from our hostel. We sat on the back row looking down on a pool of water with a stage set around it and eagerly anticipated what on earth this could entail! 

There were singers and musicians to the side of the stage who played and sang as puppets of people, animals and fire breathing Dragons splashed and jumped in and out of the water. We had no idea what was going on but it was oddly fascinating!

We had been recommended a Lily’s travel agency just a few doors down from our hostel and we wanted to book a Halong Bay tour and a Sapa trek, we were on the way to do this when we realised it was 5pm when our hostel does free beer at the rooftop bar. Assuming that meant one free beer each we thought we’d just pop in for one en route… 

It turns out it’s a whole keg so we were being topped up every 5 mins. We were going to go shower and grab some dinner but more beer turned into giant dares Jenga and then the bar crawl with the sister hostel Downtown Backpackers which is way more party, I preferred our rooftop bar over their ground floor club any day! We went to a few bars and ended up at a place called lighthouse that we had to cross the motorway (on foot) to get to. Before we knew it it was 3am and we definitely had done nothing about booking our trips!

The next day was pretty much a write off as Vicky didn’t feel well at all bless her, we managed to book our trips and our bus to the next destination though and I felt excited and relieved that we had a solid few days all booked up and planned! Phew! I spent the rest of the day hanging around our hostel with a guy called Tom from our room and just sitting up on the rooftop bar (taking advantage of the free beer again) and chatting to people from all over the world… Who am I?!
Another great thing about Hanoi is there is a Harry Potter themed cafe called Always! 😝 I got far more excited than a grown ass 20 something should about this, but I am a massive potter head. The butterbeer was much nicer than the official stuff at WB and the potion I chose, Felix Felicis was amazing!

We were up early to head to Halong Bay the next morning so I called it quits and went for an earlyishhh night. I really like Hanoi 🙂

The 24 hour sleeper bus from Vientianne to Hanoi

The difference between about £20 and about £100 for a flight resulted in our first ever night bus. I’ve read a lot of horror stories of overcrowded buses, people sleeping in aisles and westerners being sardined into the back, smaller seats with little to no aircon. So I went into this with very low expectations, which I find works out best cause I’m rarely disappointed! 

We were told we would be picked up from our hostel at 5pm so we ate some early dinner and got some bus snacks as we had no idea of stops etc. The only information we were given is we will get to the Laos/Vietnam border around 4am and it opens at 7am (perfect sense) 

To our surprise we were collected 15 mins early… Wtf nothing is ever early here. The miserable people already in the songtaew had other opinions though as they had clearly been told other information. 

It took ages to drive just a few miles to the bus station and when I learnt it was a free for all I sprinted for the bus to make sure we had decent seats together, abandoning Vicky with the bags! 
We were pleasantly surprised! The bus was far nicer than expected (see pessimism can be a good thing) we got a double top bunk together and I was feeling confident I might actually get some sleep! 

We set off around 18.45 and some people busted out a game of shit head on the lower bunks. There was a fairly big group of western travellers, a few more Brits, a Belgian, an American, an Argentinian, a Portugeeza and an Icelandic dude. Although at promptly 19.15 they turned all the lights off… No reading lights, just pure darkness. Awesome no more cards or reading then. 

 
I listened to music for a bit and watched some crazy lightning that had all of a sudden popped out of nowhere. By 10ish, as you are never told anything about what is going on, I was thinking were clearly not stopping so tried to sleep. 

At 22.30 BAM! Lights on blinding everyone who had now given in and fallen asleep, probably through boredom. Great. We stopped at a cafe kitchen place that sold rice and meat on big metal trays with individual sections like you used to get for school dinners. I was glad we’d eaten as it was very over priced (for non locals) and didn’t look too appealing. As again we had had no information as to how long we were stopping we went to the toilet and headed back to the bus but the door was closed and the driver was busy hosing the bus down despite us having just driven through a rain storm…

We got back on around 11 and the lights were out again…now if I was the bus driver I would have thought it would make perfect sense to have the lights on until this point. 11pm seems a reasonable time to have lights out, but whatever.

I tried desperately to sleep despite all the bumpy, windyness and slipping around (the seats are leather so after hard breaking, which happens all the time, you slide right down and have to readjust) at about 01.15 we stopped which woke me up, no one got off though but the engine shut off, ah shit this is when the aircon cuts out and we all die of sauna sweat inhalation of other people 😦

Many hours of claustrophobic, sweaty, suffocation later we were woken up and I desperately clambered for the door and much anticipated oxygen… What time is it? Where the fuck are we? Oooohhh ok, it’s 7am and were at the border… Wtf so we drove 6 hours and “slept” 6 hours in unbearable conditions, now I’m no genius but SURELY leaving at 1am when everyone is tired and sleeping on a moving air conditioned bus that arrives as the border opens makes so much more sense?? No? See that’s the thing about this part of the world, they seem to have to do things in the most ridiculously cock arsed way possible! We’re at A and need to reach B down this straight road… Let’s go via MNVCXZSDFGHJKLPOIUYTREWQ on the way. Backwards!

Anyway, we all wandered towards what looked like the exit office, dazed and misinformed as usual. We had no idea where to go or what to do so we queued around a booth to hand our passports through to get our exit stamps. Meanwhile local people were pushing shoving and just frisbeeing their passports through the window and getting them back straight away… It took a good hour for our small group from our bus to finally get all our passports back, and paying $2 for the privilege, as once you’ve handed it over it could be 15 minutes before it reappears at another window. Phew half way through the border process! 

Our bus was on its way over but we weren’t allowed on, the locals were though. We had to walk a good 1-2K up a hill across no mans land. In the rain. Once we reached the Vietnam entry office we noticed our bags all piled up on the side of the road amongst all the other busses and hundreds of people, wtf?! We queued and fucked around for another half hour, paid another $1 for nothing and collected our bags. One of the bus people annoyedly pointed in the direction of the bus… And all the other busses. It occurred to me I have no idea what our’s looks like…. We found some others from our bus and they pointed it out I double checked with one of the bus staff and put my bag on whilst whacking my arm, am I not paying for a service here?? As we tried to get back on we were told not yet, we had to walk some more… Our stamps and visas were checked on foot and our bus pulled up next to us but still we were not allowed on. We started to feel like refugees, standing by the side of the road in the rain and mud, whilst trucks rolled past splashing us.

Once we were finally on our way, we rejoiced there were only about 8 hours left and they couldn’t turn the sun off so we were free to play cards/read 🙂

We stopped at around 10.30 for breakfast/lunch which was an improvement on last nights place but they had no snacks to buy we had to eat the food, none of this was, in my opinion, morning food. I reluctantly had rice and spring rolls (which looked horrific but were actually bearable) I didn’t each much but my new friend Diego finished it off, he seemed extremely good at spending no money.
As we had no toilet on our bus we stopped another bunch of times in places that still didn’t sell anything I wanted to eat and we FINALLY arrived in Hanoi! Where a nice man managed to sell us all a mini bus into town and explained how metered taxis will fix it and mug us off. We were all pooped and just wanted to get there…. He could have also been taking the piss but it seemed cheap so whatever.

After having to go back as a girl left her phone on the bus, a few failed cash point attempts and me withdrawing from my bank not my travel card we finally arrived in the old town. Much, much slower than if we had just paid a taxi. We were still not at our hostel. What seemed like hours of walking and asking for directions (whilst eyeing up KFC) we made it…. HELLOOOO 4 bed ensuite showerrrrrrrrrr