09/09/2017: It’s always sad when holidays end. A holiday is as much a break from real life as it is an adventure and when the fun is over, your tan has all but peeled away and you’re back home checking there’s enough cereal in the cupboard for breakfast on Monday, all those boring, real-life issues you’d ignored for the past two weeks are no longer avoidable and you have to deal with the fact that you’ve been underpaid around $600 by the thieving shitbags you used to work for.
But, for now, less about those particular shitbags, and more about my two favourite shitbags -Betty, my good friend of over twenty (yikes) years and Olive, her little (yet larger) family companion of twenty-six years. BO took a flight to Vietnam in order to come see me, which was nice, but they flew to Hanoi, which was inconvenient as I live in Ho Chi Minh City and it meant I had to get off my backside and travel the 1,500km to meet them. They arrived in Hanoi the day before me, went to see Uncle Ho in his mausoleum, and confirmed the existence of the cross-race effect in Southeast Asia when they were asked on numerous occasions if they were sisters. They are sisters, but bear as much resemblance to each other as I do to a loaf of bread, or arguably even less.
By the time I arrived on Sunday evening, BO had just about napped off their collective jet lag and were ready to show me the delights of Hanoi. I remember arriving in Saigon and the delicate illusion of it being a nice place -which Pól and I had constructed from our views from the bus- being shattered the moment we stumbled onto the street. The same did not happen in Hanoi. Yes, it had the benefit of being new and different, and my view may not be entirely objective, but as we wandered the streets of the old quarter there was only one near-death experience involving a motorbike on a pavement and for my experience of Vietnam, that’s good going. We dined ourselves and mojitoed ourselves and then took ourselves home for an early night as we had a 7:30 pick-up coming our way the next day.
It’s a four-hour drive from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay, and most tour companies include transfer in the price of the boat ticket, so by eight o’clock the next morning we were eastbound to boat on a minibus packed with 18-20 year olds (“your age,” the tour guide said in a tone that could as easily have been sarcastic as earnest) from various parts of the UK and Ireland. We sulked and napped the majority of the way: napping because we were tired, sulking because we thought we were going to be stuck on a riverboat with a group of dickheads. We’re not ageist. They were horrible. One of them told us we looked like the Power Puff Girls (joke’s on her; we were going for that look) and another confused the guide by insisting he take note of her inability to eat anything containing milk before buying herself a Magnum at the rest stop. To be fair though, we insisted note was taken of our vegetarianism while Olive bit into a corn dog (she’s not full veggie; still in training). The sigh of relief was audible when it was announced that PartyDicks2017 would be taking a different boat to us. I’m sure they were relieved too as, despite the bottle of rice vodka we’d panic-bought in the service station (if you can’t beat ‘em, get drunk), we probably didn’t seem like much fun to them either.
By midday we were onboard Minh Duc (Mein Duck) which, either due to low season or the fact that this particular boat had been part of some scandal involving midnight rescues and malfunctioning life rings which we hadn’t heard about, was only occupied by four other passengers. It was great as they seemed as boring as us, so we hid the vodka in our cabin and sat down for lunch. Based on the (usually) misguided conviction that carnivores and herbivores don’t get along, BO and I were seated apart from the rest of the group as if, should the squid and mollusks not satisfy their hunger, the meat eaters might turn on us. Still, the food was delicious and as we drank our coffee, the boat entered King Kong territory and we saw the first of many limestone towers sail past the window (in reality, we sailed past it, as we were the ones moving but you know what I mean…)
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| Mein Duck. |
Ha Long Bay (Bay of the Descending Dragon) is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is Machu Picchu-like in its ability to be more beautiful in real life than the millions of photos you’ve seen and videos you’ve watched. There are almost two-thousands islets and probably the same number of tourist boats sailing through. We donned our deck shoes and headed to the top floor to sit in the sunshine and enjoy the kind of company you’d travel halfway round the world to be in (or in my case, an hour and a half, thus proving that they like me more than I like them). Our tour was packed with activities, and before our first pre-dinner beer we’d climbed a small mountain, taken a dip in the sea, and made our own spring rolls. The final activity of the day was a brief kayaking excursion around some floating oyster farms and as the sun set over the jungle-coated monoliths, we ignored the landscape and laughed and pointed at how ridiculous Olive looks in a life jacket, and her inability to climb out of a canoe.
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| Astounding beauty... |
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| ...a pair of idiots in life jackets. |
Two other guests joined our boat that afternoon: they had taken a two-day trip and had spent the day at another pearl farm buying pearls, which they showed to us with the satisfaction of someone comfortable with being a boastful prat. They were great: the kind of people that give information about themselves as if it’s the reveal of a magic trick and they expect everyone to gasp. I’m from… Detroit! My name is.... Sequoia! (or something). Olive was convinced their abrasiveness was due to their being from the US but I assured her that, having travelled around South America and having met a lot of people from different places, she was probably right. Sequoia, much to our chagrin, was a vegetarian that day. Had she only known not eating meat and seafood would mean she’d have to sit with us I’m sure she would have found another way to be interesting that mealtime. “Weirdly, I eat sushi,” she explained when we asked her about her eating habits as if it were a strange symptom of a mystery illness, rather than the choice of someone who, perhaps, just quite likes sushi.
We jibbed the karaoke listed on the itinerary that night in order to sit on the upstairs of the boat and enjoy the silence and the moonlight until bedtime. The next morning we saw the first of the three rains of the entire holiday, but it was the kind of rain that didn’t matter because we were in a cave. After our cave walk and breakfast and a very early lunch, it was time to head back to dry land and on to Hanoi, where we were due to catch the 19:30 train to Da Nang. We arrived at the train station, bags, backpacks and sandwiches for the journey in hand with enough time to realise that a sandwich each was definitely not enough food. Spotting a craft beer place across the road, we headed over and promptly inhaled two plates of chips, a plate of morning glory, and some cheesy breadcrumb things like you get in Burger King. Incidentally, morning glory is delicious. As delicious, even, as chips.
We had booked three beds in a soft-sleeper cabin and, as the journey to Da Nang is 16 hours we were proud of ourselves for choosing the greener, less planey travel option, and saving the money for a night’s accommodation. Of course, soft-sleeper cars have four bunks and as we nervously awaited the arrival of our travel companion, we reassured ourselves with thoughts that if they were members of PartyDicks2017, at least they would be outnumbered 2 to 1 by the PyjamasAndCardGamesTrio2004. Just as the train pulled out of the station a western couple stuck their heads through the door to our cabin and asked if we could help them with something. Always a little over-zealous to help out, I sprang to my feet, ripped open my shirt to reveal a lycra jumpsuit with my own face on it, and demanded to know the problem. The problem, was that there was someone in their bunk and the guard didn’t seem to want to help. By the time the couple had explained this, we were already at their cabin and I could see that, indeed, while bed 3 was free, bed 4 was occupied by and older Vietnamese man. Now, the Vietnamese for “can I see your ticket please?” sounds a lot like the Vietnamese for “I cannot see your crab”. Unfortunately, at that moment, I did not know how to say either sentence and so I simply asked the man in bunk 4, in English, to please show his ticket, as we believed he had mistakenly thought that this was his cabin was his when in reality, it was not.
The Vietnamese for “who the fuck do you think you are? Piss off I want to play snake on my Nokia,” sounds a lot like “can I borrow your tambourine? The lettuce in this salad is a little too crispy,” but, alas, again I was unable to comprehend what the old man said as he dug in his pocket for his ticket. When he finally found it, and reluctantly showed it to us, the couple I’d heroically set out to save whooped with relief as it revealed that, rather than being in bunk four of cabin 15, he was in fact in bunk four of cabin 4. I lapped up the thanks from the couple like the meddlesome idiot I am and, as I headed back to my own cabin I realised what I’d just done…
It only took twenty minutes of the old Vietnamese man staring angrily at us from bed four (cabin 4) before a young and chipper guard turned up offering us our own cabin -just the three of us- for the small price of $30. Despite the fact that it was, essentially, my fault that this move had to be made in the first place, BO generously threw down ten dollars each on the condition that I stop being such a big show off. With a cabin to ourselves (with a lamp, no less!), we cracked open the vodka and the cards and the youtube, before climbing into bunk and letting the train rock us into the best sleep we’d had so far. The views of the coast as we approached Da Nang the next morning were beautiful and as we baby-wipe-bed-washed ourselves, we all agreed it had been a fun experience and we wouldn’t be tapping up the old dude for a contribution towards the bribe we’d paid to effectively give him a cabin to himself.
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| A reflective frog wonders why I spent so long on the tale of the "Old Man and the Cabin". |
The reason we’d bought a ticket to Da Nang was in order to visit Hoi An: the most beautifully magical town in the country and after a typically frustrating Vietnamese Uber ride, in which the driver chooses a road too small for his car and leaves you to walk the last portion of the journey, we were installed in our riverside hotel, googling how to stop feeling dizzy after sleeping on a train. Our hotel was far enough from the centre for BO not to feel the Hoi An magic instantly, but as we dandered in that afternoon, the reasons why I knew they’d love Hoi An became clear… With all the shop signs in matching painted wood -even the ATMs- drainpipes shaped like serpents and music piped into the street from speakers on electricity poles, I realised why Hoi An is so great: it’s got that Epcot feeling.
After a delicious lunch at Streets cafe we headed to Maya, a tailor that had been recommended to us, and asked them nervously if they would be able to make clothes to fit our body shapes and if so, how much. People say having clothes made in Vietnam, and especially Ho An, is dirt cheap. Great! But every now and then you have to come face to face with how much exactly you consider “dirt cheap” to be. Of course you want to pay as little as possible, but then you don’t want to deprive a tailor of a fair wage, and then you start wondering why you still shop at Gap and start to feel a little yucky… Anyways, at $22 per garment (we wanted copies of original items), we felt happy enough to browse the fabrics and choose patterns with the luck to have jobs which mean $22 is dirt cheap.
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| A face that says, "it's just so magical!" |
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| Definitely not at the bottom of the river... |
We left the store in a state of dizziness, ready to spend our money on anything Hoi An had to offer, like a boat ride on the river where we all sent small paper boats with candles off into the water; boats which allowed us to make a wish (and so we wished that someone would come and clear up all the paper and wax from the river the next morning). It was all very beautiful. We dandered around the night market, each buying a paper lantern for which we have no use, but caught up in the Disney-like magic of a place so beautiful you just want to take a part of it home with you.
The next morning, over breakfast, BO senior wondered aloud how much it would cost to fly back to Saigon the next morning, instead of catching the train that night, as originally planned. Two coffees and another chat about Monzos later and we were booked on the midday flight out of Da Nang, thus affording us another 12 hours of Walt Disney’s Vietnam, and costing us our smugness at being green(er) travellers. Our hotel had bikes, which we could borrow for free, and so like the sporty fellows we are, we hopped on a tandem (I was in the basket) and cycled the 5km to An Bang beach, where we dumped the wheels and rented some sun loungers from a woman who was dressed like she was about to go for a walk in the Arctic (the Vietnamese don’t like the effects of the sun on their skin to the point that it’s actually hard to find cosmetics that don’t whiten your complexion; my absentmindedness has led to me having glowing, pearly-white armpits). A few dips in the clean sea, some crosswords and a plate of morning glory later, three sunburned westerners crawled back to their bikes and headed for town. We watched and laughed as they left, congratulating ourselves on our meticulous use of suncream, before heading back to our hotel to sit on the jetty and watch the sunset, where we all got burned and ended up peeling for the rest of the week.
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| A pair of sporty fellows. |
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| Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup take in the scenery. |
We changed hotels that night as the Corner Riverside was fully booked and we were meant to be sleeping on a train and pissing off the locals. As we headed to curry dinner that evening, worried that we were far exceeding our budget and should probably reign in the spending, we spotted some delightful sandals and each ordered a pair to be made overnight and delivered to our breakfast table the next morning. Sorry to leave Hoi An, but not sorry to not be catching the train (one of those experiences which is good, but you don’t necessarily want to repeat, like Blackpool), we headed for Da Nang airport and the traffic of Ho Chi Minh City...
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