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Two weeks into my travels I think it is time to let anyone who is interested know what I have been doing, so here it is.
I arrived in Dubai early on the morning of Thursday 5 March 2009 after an uneventful journey from Nottingham. I was only there for 48 hours, so did my best to cram in as much as the city has to offer in that time. Luckily, Dubai has very little to offer so I wasn't disappointed. It's a strange place with a clear divide between the 'real' Dubai - the old town where all the locals work and live - and the new Dubai, the one famous for its wealth, skyscrapers, palm islands etc. I divided my time between both, although the old town was much more interesting. I reckon if you had about 10 million quid in spending money Dubai would be a decent place to spend some time, otherwise it just seemed a bit pointless.
I wasn't there long and having spent one night in a hotel room situated directly above a night club, which does not bode well for a good night's sleep, I caught my next flight, headed for Hanoi via Singapore. Night travel is one of those things that always seems like a good idea when you are planning it - 'sleep and travel at the same time, what a fantastic use of time' I always think. The problem is you hardly ever actually sleep, so invariably end up feeling like s*** anyway and spend most of the next day in bed trying to catch up on the sleep that you missed whilst you were travelling. After two night time flights, I arrived in Hanoi at around 12.30pm on Saturday 07/03 feeling the effects of both the jet lag and the sleep I had missed.
I would imagine that arriving in Hanoi would be a pretty intimidating experience at any point, let alone in the zombie state I was in at that time. After a traumatic taxi journey in which the driver had tried to charge me three times what the meter said ("that's 2.5 million, not 250,000, I give you good price at 800,00" he said, twat), I spent the rest of the day exploring the capital of Vietnam.
In short, Hanoi is completely mental. Anyone who has been will understand what I'm talking about when I say that you put your life in grave danger by trying to cross the road. Everyone rides a motorcycle. There is little or no traffic system, and experience soon teaches you that the best way to deal with this is just to walk out and rely on people going round you. The main tourist hangout is the Old Quarter, hundreds of little streets lined with stalls and food vendors selling things at ridiculous prices. You are bombarded almost constantly by people trying to sell you stuff; 'motorbike, very cheap' seems to be the first English that kids get taught in school. Moreover, they will not take no for an answer, with the favoured selling technique seeming to be follow the tourist until they get so sick of you that they pay you just to go away. After a while manners go out the window and you resort to ignoring every person that speaks to you.
On the flip side of this negative attention afforded to the tourists, you also get many locals just coming up for a chat, to practice their English or just find out where you are from. On my first afternoon in the city I had made my way to Hoan Kiem lake, the centrepiece of the Old Quarter, and I spent two hours sat on a bench during which time I was never alone. There was an old guy who had been an ecomonics professor at the local university, a couple of school girls practising their English (they needed to, it was rubbish) and a guy in a Man Utd shirt asking me about English football. I spent the weekend exploring the city, sampling the local food and sleeping off the jet lag.
On Monday 09/03 I met up with the tour group with whom I would be spending the next 3 weeks, exploring the whole of Vietnam from north to south. Although the ratio of old to young wasn't quite what I had expected (7:5), they are an interesting lot. We have the most Australian couple ever and a pair of Danish lesbians, one of whom is really nice and the other a cold-hearted b**** with a constant face like a smacked arse who refuses to talk to anyone. The jewel in the crown though is undoubtedly a genuine, bona fide mail order Phillipino bride, complete with balding, aging middle aged upper class English man. I must thank them for the hours of entertainment they have provided me over the last week or so. Luckily I am rooming with a younger English guy called Matthew- lucky in that he is equally as enthusiastic as me about waking up at 2.45am to watch Champions League football (I don't know why, he is a Fulham fan). The tour guide is a southern guy called Phuoc, a great bloke and a brilliant guide who seems to have perfected the art of sarcasm by doing the job for a few years.
Our first stop on the tour was a few days in and around Halong Bay, a world heritage site about 4-5 hours from Hanoi. Most people will have seen photos of the place, hundreds of square kilometres of islands dotted throughout the water. We had an early start on our own private boat, and although the weather was a little misty, the scenery was still stunning. After a fresh seafood lunch, we stopped at one of the islands to look at some caves, before heading to Cat Ba island where we stayed the night.
On Thursday 12/03 we left Cat Ba and Halong Bay to head back for Hanoi, ready for another night of travel, this time on a pretty swanky night train. Our next destination was Sapa, a mountain town near the Chinese border which is famous for its hill tribe people, trekking and scenery. Having again slept very little on the night train, we arrived in Sapa at around 5am, headed to the hotel and spent the rest of the day exploring what is quite a touristy town with little to do.
The next day we headed out for some trekking with a local tour guide, a local fella by the name of Zhung (we think, it sounded like that). The local tribe people, whose sales technique is just a more intense and persistent version of those used in Hanoi, actually followed us the entire way in the hope that we would buy something from them, getting a little irate when we eventually refused.
We spent the day walking up and down mountains, over bridges and streams, through paddy fields with water buffalo just walking around freely, all accompanied by the tribal people trying to flog their stuff. The mountains were lined with paddy fields, laid out so that the landscape looked like one of those s***ty contour maps you have to make at school in geography. It was probably the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and the 14km or so walk flew by as we took in the setting. We were even presented with bacon sandwiches for lunch, which was surreal to say the least.
Our accommodation for the night was a homestay in a small village on the mountain, a simple wooden building with mattresses laid out for guests. We explored some more of the area and spent a few hours down by the stream, jumping over stepping stones and watching a couple of local lads trying to fish. We had an unbelieveable meal supplied by our local hosts, accompanied all the time by a neverending supply of rice wine which we would drink like shots every 2 minutes or so, or when the owner of the homestay said so. We spent the rest of the night enjoying a mixture of rice wine, green tea and tobacco smoked from a bong made from bamboo, all sat round the fire whilst the tour guide played us some of his favourite tunes on his phone. Naturally, being a 27 year old man with a degree in aviation, this included his favourite arists Boyzone, Westlife and Atomic Kitten. The Vietnamese aren't renowned for their taste in music.
The next day we trekked another 4-5km back to town, and spent the rest of the day trying to watch some football and recovering from the exploits of the previous day. We were stuck in Sapa for another day, and so me, Matthew and Jen (an Australian girl in our tour group) decided to take a casual 2km stroll up to a local waterfall. Unfortunately the 2km actually turned out to be a 10km round trip up a mountain with locals laughing at us for attempting it, and the waterfall fairly unexciting. We made it back into Sapa tired and in pain ready for our night train back to Hanoi.
We arrived back in Hanoi at 4.30am on Tuesday 17/03, still in pain from our walk the previous day. With a few hours to kill before we were able to check in to our hotel, we had a walk to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, the complex where the old Communist leader is embalmed in a glass case for thousands of people to come and gawk at every day. We saw the great man himself, had a wander round the rest of the complex which included hiis house on stilts and the presidential palace, and took a very slow walk back to the Old Quarter.
One of the best things about being in Vietnam is undoubtedly the food and beer. The local specialty of Pho, noodle soup with chicken or beef, is a daily must for us now, and we usually pay around a quid for a bowl big enough to fill you for most of the day. Vietnam and Hanoi is also famous for its Bia Hois, the local equivalent of the British pub where you can get cold draft beer for 3000 dong a glass (that's around 12p). Having realised at some point yesterday that it was Paddy's Day, we decided that a night at Bia Hoi corner (a crossroads in Old Quarter lined by 4 or 5 Bia Hois) was in order, and commenced a night of drinking here. We met a couple of Welsh lads (Swansea fans), and naturally spent most of the night discussing not the amazing place we found ourselves in, but the throw in abilities of Andy Legg, the brilliance of Robert Martinez and how Notts County had never actually been in the conference but were merely perenially s***e.
Today is our last day in Hanoi before we begin the long journey south via the Reunification Express. We have a 13 hour train journey ahead of us tonight en route to Hue, a place which I don't know too much about. Will write again in a few weeks to let everyone know what's gwarnin.
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