8hr Walk, Tattoo, $90 Motorbike

It’s been an interesting few days.

On Friday I fought the hangover and the hangover won ♬.

Sometime during the week I was messaged by a Vietnamese woman named ‘Van’ on Facebook. Van has lived all over the world, 16 countries to be precise including Cork, Ireland where some of my family hail from! Van is currently in Hanoi and has created an 8 hour walking tour, designed to show tourists the local side of the city. I was conscious that the meet time on Saturday morning was 8:05am as I lay in bed at 4:30am, struggling to get any shut-eye. I considered scrapping the whole thing and just lying about. That’s not why I’m here though; so I dragged myself out of bed at 6:50am, had a shower and proceeded to jump on the back of a moped for a 25 minute rollercoaster into central Hanoi to meet Van and team.

I pulled up outside Hoàn Kiếm Lake and met Van and two fellow Aussie travellers (a father & daughter) who would also be taking part in the days activities!

After exchanging pleasantries and correcting the Aussies as to my origin (no I’m not English thank you very much) we proceeded through the French Quarter & out of the tourist melting pot that surrounds the lake.

I had my first experience of Vietnamese buses during the tour, we hopped on and off as we travelled around the city visiting temples, wet markets, local street food stalls and the occasional coffee shop (bean, not bud variety). This was not a tourist attraction tour. We didn’t visit any ‘attractions’ as such. We spoke with locals through a series of gestures & translations provided by Van. In one particular area we stopped to talk about a small lake surrounded on all sides by tall high rise ramshackle flats , remnants of the French rule in the 1800’s. An old man popped his head out and asked what we were doing there, white people never come here he exclaimed! Van explained the concept of her tour to the gentleman. He smiled, ran upstairs and returned two minutes later with a camera in tow:

This is why I love being here. The guy didn’t want anything more than a picture & a smile. We couldn’t speak to each other but we could still communicate. With nothing to gain from either party it was as genuine an interaction as can be – just four folk enjoying being!

We left the man after a five minute photoshoot and proceed on, further away from the tourist spots of Hanoi into one of the city’s many ‘wet-markets’. Now I know what you’re probably thinking… ‘Wet-market’ that sounds familiar? The culture here is different though; freshness is valued. Sometimes things may be ‘too fresh’ for a westerner.

My home-ec teacher would be rolling if he could see some of the food preparation techniques over here. I’m still scared to use the same chopping board for meat & vegatables, meanwhile:

The thing is though; it works. These people travel daily from the countryside to sell their wares to Hanoi’s city dwellers & this is how things are done.

After seeing the market sights we stopped off for some local cuisine. A famous dish known as Bún chả – which is a beef broth based noodle soup with grilled sweet pork chucked in (they grill the pork on open fires in the street):

You take the scissors and chop up your cold thin noodles, you then add the noodles to the beef broth. You’re then given a small dish of chopped garlic and chillis; season to taste. The photograph doesn’t do it justice. This is the nicest dish I have eaten in Vietnam so far & T-3 days out I am yet to receive any ‘feedback’ from said dish – result.

After the meal we continued walking for another three hours. We travelled by bus and foot, just soaking up the sights. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words, so here’s some from the walk:

We came to the end of the tour and said our goodbyes. If you’re ever in Hanoi please give Van a shout & do the tour! For eight hours of walking, bus fares, food and drinks the total cost is under £40pp, bargain. She is also very intelligent, funny & has many many stories to share!

After the tour, and surviving on 2.5hrs sleep, you can imagine I was ready for bed. The thing is jetlag is a total arsehole. Your body can be aching and your brain sore but you CANT SLEEP. Luckily the pharmacies here have something for that. I fell asleep around midnight and wouldn’t arise until noon the next day (Sunday).

Sunday

I woke up after a much needed sleep and headed North from my apartment up to the tip of the ‘West Lake’ the largest lake in Hanoi. I was on the way to see my South African friend from the previous post. Our mission, secure me a Vietnamese sim card. Asia is funny; certain things are allowed i.e. driving on the wrong side of the road, overtaking on blind bends, drinking pretty much anywhere, smoking inside etc. HOWEVER if you want a sim card you need to provide a passport and sit for about 2 hrs whilst the assistant fills in around 375 forms (all in Vietnamese, naturally). After a period of time which seemed to all but eclipse Brexit and with a queue of 4 locals behind me, I was eventually good to go. 1GB of data a day for 1 month – £8. Sorted.

As I started my course the following day to teach English I tried as hard as possible to remain sober during the Sunday. This lasted until 3pm when we headed to an expat bar ‘Hideout’ on the East side of the West Lake:

The smell of grass in this bar was strong; yes Bob Marley was playing on repeat. I didn’t think there would be much prevalence of cannabis out here but you smell it almost as often as you would walking down Easter Rd. I’m avoiding it.

As we sat in the bar I asked Michelle more about her family, her adoption & what it was like to meet her real parents. It’s not my story to tell, but boy it’s a story. I’m not actually ashamed to admit at points my eyes swelled up & I almost cried. That type of crying feeling you get when you watch this:

Alas, it was time to leave the Hideout bar; we had drunk more than anticipated again and Michelle decided to pay homage to her boyfriend stuck in Hong Kong due to border closures by getting a very spiritual tattoo. Yanno how stupid white girls like to get ‘love’ or ‘victory’ tattoo’d in Chinese characters?

Hilarious. Whilst Michelle was getting tattooed I got chatting to an Aussie dude named Harry in the rooftop bar (don’t ask, the tat place has a bar). I’d mentioned that I was interested in sorting a motorbike at some point. In one of those weird coincidence-y things it turns out Harry’s got a bike, and he’s got a day left on his visa. He needs somebody to take the bike off his hands. $90 later and I am one step closer to following in Che’s feet (lol jk):

Don’t worry mum… I’ll be fine!

Monday (today)

I started my CELTA course today. It’s an intensive course that takes you from ‘notta teacha’ to a teacher in 4 weeks. The days are going to be long, the nights are going to be long, it’s going to be hard BUT it’ll be worth it. On that note my blogging is likely to die down for the next few weeks. I’ll be working 8-6 Mon-Friday and then writing essays at the weekends. I’ll do a post about the experience once I’ve gotten through it though!

Till then x