Hoi An - Hanoi

Wow it has been a very long time since my last blog due to my laziness. At the moment I'm in Phnom Phen but I'm going to back track and talk about the rest of Vietnam and Laos first. It was a mistake to do this after showering because I forgot to put on bug spray and in the one minute I've started this blog I've been bitten by 8 mosquitos. Mosquitos love me more in SE Asia than at home. Not good. I look like a walking bug lamp I guess due to my pasty white skin. Oh well. Anyway, back to Vietnam. A few days after we got to Hoi An the 3 guys we met in Nha Trang came and met up with us and would continue traveling with us for the rest of our time in Vietnam which was really a lot of fun. My absolute favorite part of Hoi An was the food. For a very small place it had some of the best food I've eaten on my whole trip. There was one restaurant, Streets, that was owned and run by an expat from New York. The whole concept was upscale Vietnamese cuisine for a reasonable price that took local kids off the street, gave them jobs as chefs, waiters, etc and gave them a culinary degree from the ICE in NYC. A prix fix meal, 3 courses of excellent Vietnamese food, all for 5 dollars. We ended up going back twice and the owner gave us some tips about things to do in Hoi An which included a bike ride past an herb farm to a local beach which was a beautiful ride. (bug update: one of the bites on my leg just reached the size of a silver dollar and I'm scared) One night in Hoi An we went to a bar which was essentially just a small room with a dance floor. We danced for hours. At one point in the night, "Party in the USA" came on and we got so excited and sang so loudly to it that the bar ended up turning it off mid-song. No wonder foreigners hate americans, haha. A fwe days later all of our clothes we were having made were finished and it was time to go to Hanoi. On the day we left we decided to do something cultural so we went to My Son which had a bunch of ruins. It was very hot that day and after walking around for about an hour and taking some pictures we decided to head back. It was very beautiful, but disorganized and random. We decided to not waste an entire day traveling and take a plane from Danang to Hanoi. The plane was huge and about 1/4 of the way full.

When we got off the plane in Hanoi it was cold and we were not prepared. It had been very hot everywhere else in Vietnam and we didnt realize how far north we had traveled. We had figured out which hotel we wanted to stay in on the plane and asked our cab driver to take us there. He said he knew where it was but before we knew it we were in a dark alley at a random hotel and he was telling us to get out. Luckily it was 6 against one and he finally took us to the original hotel we asked him to. The hotel was, as Vietnam is, very disorganized and unecessarily complicated and for the first 3 nights we were there we all had to switch rooms each night. The first full day we spent there was Lachlan's birthday and we decided to go see Avitar, which, despite rumors that it was not all it was cracked up to be, we all enjoyed. The boys got very emotional and cried about 3 times each during the movie which only made the experience better. That night we went to a restaurant called 69 restaurant, but despite its name was just a normal, and good, restaurant. Hanoi has a curfew of 12 am so after dinner we went to a bar that looked closed. We asked our cab driver to just take us back to the restaurant so we could walk around and before we knew it we were at a club. This club turned out to be a late night underground bar filled with Vietnamese mafia. We were the only white people there and danced for a few hours. We were not allowed to take any pictures in the club and aside from bottle service the only thing we were allowed to order was beer. There were also very few women in the club which seemed strange and everyone pretty much kept to themselves. The next day we took a 2 day boat trip to HaLong Bay which is filled with these huge rock masses that stick out from the water. It was misty and very beautiful but even colder than Hanoi. The boat we took was very small, but the bedrooms were very comfortable and nicely put together. I was very nervous because I had been on a cruise before and the bedrooms on the cruise ship had looked and felt like little prisons where you had to sit down on the toilet in order to take a shower. These rooms very surprisingly spacious though and it felt like a little bit of luxury. However, unlike a cruise where meals are prepaid and unlimited, I remember my uncle ordering one of everything, just for the hell of it, food on this boat was hard to come by. They served us 3 meals a day, but there just wasn't enough food. Dinner was served at 6 pm, and it was over by 6:30. When we asked if there was any more food they sternly said, "No." and that was the end of the conversation. At night we flagged down a little paddle boat and bought some over priced pringles from the 2 women manning it. One of the boys bought some "pot" that turned out to be tea. Some people on board smoked it anyway, just incase it just smelled like tea, but having grown up in a house where even if we had nothing in the fridge we had about 20 types of tea, I knew I was not mistaken. Further than that I identified the tea as Earl Grey. During the boat ride we stopped at a cave and were given a tour. The cave was very large and was lit up with neon lights to look more like a dance club than an old preserved cave. Our tour consisted of a man with a red laser who would point to a stalagtite formation and say "This looks like Dragon." or. "See, this one looks like dog drinking water from stream," or my favorite, "this looks like one woman breast." The dragon formation even had little red lights where its "eyes" were. It seems very ridiculous to me, but obviously, a main attraction of the trip. The next day we stopped at a floating village which consisted of about 40 tiny houses literally floating on the water. None of the people who inhabit these houses can swim. Does this make sense to you? It does not make sense to me. Why would you live ON THE WATER, SURROUNDED BY WATER, NO LAND IN SIGHT, and not at least attempt to learn how to swim? What happens during the rainy season? They all drown and new people come and inhabit the houses? Obviously no one could answer my questions. Some things just baffle me. We returned back to land and took a bus back to Hanoi. The next day Lachlan left and that same day Mimi and Ashley decided to go to Sapa, a small village at the Northern tip of Vietnam. At this point I was feeling pretty sick, or as the australians say "shit ass" so I decided to stay behind and do some cultural things in Hanoi with Jamie and Ian who still had a few days left before they continued on in their own directions. We took a cyclo around Hanoi whichw as a good way to see the city. A cyclo is a man on a bicycle and you sit in front in a little seat and he just peddles you around. I thought walking across the street was intense, I thought being in a cab in traffic was intense, I thought being on a motorbike was intense, the cyclo though just seemed like the perfect way to die a tragic, painful motorbike-car-bus-gridlock related death. You're moving about as slow as possible, comletely exposed to all the elements, in front of your driver heading into oncoming traffic that does not slow down. It took me 30 minutes to start breathing and accepting the fact that before I died I would like to look around. It turned out to be a good way to see everything. Once I openned my eyes. The next day me and the boys went to the prison and the temple of literature which were both part of "the top 5 things to do in Hanoi." The prison, what was left of it, was really intense and furthered my interest in world wars and torture. 1/3 of the prison remains where as the other 2/3rds have been torn down to make room for a HUGE UGLY hotel. Yes, I'd like to stay in this hotel and please give me a window with the view of the prison. Again, I dont get it. The prison area that remains has been kept as it was though, and it was very hard walking around inside. The cells are so small and you can go into them and close the door. Luckily they've removed the locks, so your friends can't lock you in (even though they both tried). There is one room with a guillotine, still sporting a very sharp blade, and pictures of women's heads all over the room. At that point Jamie almost threw up and I definitely got chills. We then went to the temple of literature which, unless you do a ton of reading about before you go (as I did not) it is hard to really truely understand what it is all about. There was also a lot of constrution going on inside the grounds which made it hard to appreciate its beauty. The next day the girls came back and we said goodbye to the boys and went our seperate ways, which was definitely bittersweet. I'm going to end this blog here and start fresh with a new blog about Laos. Total mosquito bite count: 17. NOT JOKING.