Fluorescent heaven
We’ve been in Vietnam a little over a week now and have done so much already. I have now mastered the art of crossing the road (ridiculous but if you’ve ever seen any sort of footage of the mopeds and cars in Vietnam you will know what an achievement that is). The peope at the are wonderful when you move out of the big tourist traps- the constant screech of “you buy from meeeeeeeee” does grate somewhat, and it’s a pretty beautiful country too. In the one week we’ve spent time in Hanoi, Ha Long bay, Sa Pa, Hue and now settled in Hoi An.
The Vietnamese coffee is great, super strong and sweet, they have it with condensed milk so it’s dee-lish. The only street food we’ve had is the donuts, not brave enough for anything else yet after seeing a large pile of dried bbq dog. Whole dog, still with teeth and a gnarly expression on their face. Think I might become vegetarian for street food. Hanoi was wonderful, crazy busy with large tree lined boulevards juxtaposed with narrow winding labrynthine alleys, and the architecture you’ll walk past a shop and it looks tiny and crammed with shoes or whatever they’re selling, doesn’t look anything special, then you’ll glance upwards and see a lovely ornate builing with balconies and and old European fee. However, my last night there was marred somewhat by a big fat rat running across my feet, his warm hairy belly scraping right over my unsuspecting foot. I’m quite proud of myself, I didn’t scream I did however spasm quite violently. D was walking ahead and unaware of what was happening. He turned round and saw women sat on their mopeds and on the kiddie chairs pissing themselves laughing at me. Fair enough, but I wouldn’t be laughing if I were them seeing as the rat had just run out from where they were eating. I still get those shiver spasms thinking about it.
HaLong bay was great too- the skies were cloudy but it was still very warm (gutted I won’t be making people jealous with my photos). The water so green. We stayed on a junk boat and sailed to explore caves and did a little kayaking. I managed to overcome 2 fears- claustrophobia (climbing through a particularly small crevice in the caves) and jumping into the water off the top of the boat. It wasn’t particularly high but as I’m so short it seemed like a big distance. I hit the water with enough force to give me a wedgie but at least I’d done it. I’m a little embarrassed at how scared I was but I have no shame telling a story. D loved the water practising his pike dives and such, a true water baby. We ate fresh fish for lunch and dinner and the food was amazing.
HaLong
Sa Pa was stunning, rolling green mountains with rice paddies cut into the sides, beautiful ethnic villagers going for the hard sell and amazing food. There was only one thing that bummed me out, the litter and garbage everywhere. Plastic bags and bottles trodden into the mud paths. We did a homestay too, the family were lovely although we didn’t quite interact as much as I had thought/hoped (they seemed quite content watching Matthew McConaghey rom-coms in another room). the actual homestay was a large room with mattresses on the floor and useless mozzie nets (giant holes in them). The building was quite rickety, big gaps between the wooden slatted walls and we were worried that we’d be too cold, but the blankets provided were badass- I have no idea what they were made from but as soon as we got under them we were sweating! There was about 6 of us and pretty much everyone had fallen alseep, I was just dozing when I heard the most horrific scream, it was like something out of Saw. I tentatively asked: “what was that? Was it a ghost?” but one of the others didn’t do much to calm my fears, the rest responding with “I’m not worried what it is, I worried what made it scream”. I did not sleep the rest of the night.
We’re now in Hoi An, going to go and explore, it’s shoppers heaven! Clothes shops and tailors crammed next to each other in an old heritage town. The weather is amazing, bright blue skies yummy food, cheap beer. What more could a girl want?
