This fact will shock you to the core when you understand the importance of the traffic situation in Hanoi. In our first taxi ride we began to comprehend the severity of the situation and I for one was extremely thankful we didn’t get on the back of a bike or opt to drive ourselves. The roads are jammed packed with cars, motorbikes and mopeds, and you can’t go more than 3 seconds without someone beeping their horn. Doubting we’d come accustomed to this in the next few minutes, I was grateful we were dropped off on the right side of the road for the hostel.
Checking into the One Hostel was an easy experience and before we knew it we were dropped off in our room and left to our devices. As we entered, there were two girls in the room who looked us up and down as we entered - smiling and ready to socialise - and looked away with a disapproving sneer. Taking it on the chin we hopped into our bunks and began the painful process that was sorting out our esims.
We used an app in Thailand that sorted out our data for us easily, so we purchased another for Vietnam but it came up again and again with “no signal”. Unfortunately, two hours later after talking online with their helpline, we still couldn’t sort it out and Harriet ended up asking the reception desk and getting one locally through a QR code. Frustrated, but with at least one of our phones working, we headed out to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite to eat. Here Harriet had her first deconstructed Banh Mi, and I had a beef noodle salad.
Calling it a night here, we headed back to our room where we got ready for bed and chilled out. This is where the girls - who we thought were just simply recluses - became marginally disrespectful.
Around 11pm they left only to come back with pungent KFC takeaway and then sat in the spare bed of our doom watching TV out loud and giggling together. But, I put my earplugs in and headed to sleep - it wasn’t the end of the world.
The next day, we had a lie in and got up at 9:30, turning on the dorm lights to get changed, then turning them off again before we left, thinking nothing of it - boy were we wrong.
We went about our day as normal; our first stop was Ho Chi Minh Museum that Harriet wanted to go to. Unfortunately, we arrived to find there were rules about having your shoulders and knees covered (the same as temples) so we hopped in a taxi straight back to the hostel and grabbed our shirts. As things hadn’t gone entirely to plan, this ended up being around midday and the museum was closed for lunch. Deciding we were both ready to eat anyway, we grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant and headed to Hoa Lo Prison afterwards instead as it was nearby.
We walked around 1/5 of the prison as the rest had been demolished; the building dates back to 1886 when French colonialists built it to house Vietnamese revolutionaries. The prison had a capacity of 600, but in 1933, records show 2000 people were held there. As these prisoners were political prisoners they were constantly subjected to brutal torture techniques and eventually often execution; I won’t go into detail about this, and in all honestly I didn’t read all of it myself, but the unwavering positive attitude of the vietnamese was beyond impressive. The prison became a symbol to the people of strength and defiance as prisoners educated themselves, organised hunger strikes, escape attempts, and published political newspapers to keep up morale!
After this, we visited the Vietnamese Women’s Museum which told of the history of women in vietnam. Most impressive was a woman called Nguyễn Thị Chiên, a guérilla war chief who at age 21 and unarmed, captured four french soldiers, including one officer.
Museum’ed-out for the day, we headed home for an early night as we were getting up at 6am the following day for a boat trip to Cat Ba Island.
This is where hell in room 404 started. Harriet got up to do her teeth and as there was only the one bathroom for the six-bed dorm, she locked the door. Not even 10 seconds later, the girl on the bottom bunk jumped out of her bed and started banging on the door urgently. Opening it - mildly concerned it was me desperately needing the toilet - she frowned and asked if everything was okay. The girl then simply asked Harriet:
“What are you doing?”
Gesturing to the toothbrush in her hand, she looked to me as if to check she wasn’t speaking gibberish, and the girl mumbled something in dutch and went back to her bunk.
Thrown, we hopped into bed and when the girls left, we turned off the lights and headed to sleep. Then comes 11:30pm where we were woken as they banged the door open, turned on all the lights in the room and shouted:
“GOOODDD MORNINGGGGG!”
With our curtains drawn we watched through the slit as not only our two roommates came in sniggering and shouting, but they brought along two of their friends. They then proceeded to bang all the doors, locker doors and shout between themselves. We both put up with this for a while, hoping they’d leave, but after 10 minutes I stuck my head out of the bunk - much to their delight that we’d finally bit - and asked:
“Are you guys heading out tonight?”
They said - between sniggers - they were leaving soon, and I very politely asked if they would mind just keeping the noise down as we had to get up early the next morning. Their response?
“It’s not that late. You got up early this morning and turned the lights on so we can do the same.”
At this point I simply grit my teeth and said, fine, swearing under my breath. At the end of the day, a bit of noise at 11:30 wasn’t the end of the world, but from their absurd reaction to our reasonable existence in the morning, we dreaded to think what they would be like at 3am when they came back drunk.
After a rant, I decided we were going to go down to reception and see if we could swap rooms for the remainder of our stay and thankfully, we were able to swap right there and then. The dorm we moved into was two doors down, so at midnight we packed up all of our things and waddled down the hallway. Not before accidentally knocking out the keycard in the wall that supplied electricity and air-con.
With minimal sleep - but no drunk dutch girl interference - we headed out at 6am for our boat trip. We drove a few hours and arrived at the dock in Cat Hai Island where we saw loads of Black Kites and got the ferry to Cat Ba Island. Before long, we were on our little cruise boat for the day.
We sailed around the islands and got to see a small island that we were told brings good luck and love (the vietnamese man said lots of people found lovely vietnamese husbands shortly after seeing the island. Thankfully for Harriet I’ve not met any prospects!) We had a large buffet lunch and met some girls who were staying at our hostel; all of whom were travelling separately in different circumstances, and it was lovely to hear all about their travels. Coming to land we got on a golf buggy to Viet Hai town and borrowed a bike to take a short cycle around the town.
There were lots of buffalos in the fields, colourful butterflies, and lush grasslands around and we had a fantastic time exploring the local town. Heading back to the boat we chilled in the sunshine on the top deck and watched the glorious views pass us by.
Dropping anchor for a while, we were able to head out in a kayak and explore the huge cliffs and small fishing village. Harriet and I got in the same kayak and, by some miracle, we didn’t capsize.
Returning to the boat in one piece, we got to jump off into the water; some people even jumped from the top of the boat!! We chose to go down the slide instead!! After a while in the water, we returned to the top deck to grab a cocktail and lounge in the sunshine as we sailed back to the dock.
The return was longer; we took a car ferry over and then the coach back to Hanoi. Though with all the night markets on, they couldn’t return us to our hostel so we meandered home through the lively and vibrant crowds; we even got to listen to some live opera music in the main street. Returning to our dorm from our travels, we found it entirely empty!! Turns out all the people there the night before checked out that day! As Harriet showered and dressed, the room door opened and our first new roommate arrived…
Next up: Second batch of roommates, the three lads from Ireland.
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