So this one time Back in 'Nam......
Yes, I'm pretty excited to have the ability to begin my stories with that great line! Continuing on from the last blog; after the crazy border goodbye to Laura, we continued on our way to Saigon and upon entering the city, found the traffic to be absolutely crazy!! I had spoken to people before who had mentioned how crazy the traffic is in Vietnam, but you really have to be there to experience it firsthand to realize how nuts it really is!
We were dropped off, and immediately hounded by several people looking to offer guesthouses, and we decided to follow one guy to a place. It was a fairly nice place, but he wanted $17 a night for it, and we were used to paying around $10 a night for a place, so we had him take us to his sister's place that was a bit cheaper, and ended up settling on that. We got all settled in there, and actually didn't get up to a whole lot. Andrei had become ill from lack of sleep and too much partying in Sihanoukville, and I was also quite worn down from our time there, so we didn't really want to get up to anything too active. We wandered around for a little bit, grabbed some dinner and a beer, and then went back and called it an early night to catch up on some sleep.
The next day we decided to go for a wander around the city, to check out the sights and sounds. We grabbed a late breakfast/lunch, and then wandered down towards the Ban Thanh Market but first stopped into a tourist information spot to ask a few questions about the city. I noticed they had golf in the area, and was immediately intrigued, as I haven't swung the clubs in ages and ages, unfortunately, the price wasn't so endearing, as they wanted $120 US per round...so yeah, golf was a no go! We decided instead to just wander around the city, as that's a lot cheaper. Saigon has been called the Paris of the Orient, and it is actually a very lovely city, similar to Phnom Penh. The city has a very French style with lush green boulevards, French Colonial style buildings, flower gardens, trees, and other various treats for the eyes. We wandered around for probably 3 or 4 hours in total, including stopping by some fancy shopping centre so that Andrei could look at buying some Chanel perfume (flashpacker alert!), but it was a bit too steep so she didn't bother. We also stopped for some sushi to satisfy our craving for an afternoon snack, which happened to coincide with the appearance of the rain, so we managed to avoid that. The sushi restaurant happened to be on a busy street corner, where it was entertaining enough to watch hundreds of Vietnamese driving their scooters in the rain, and admiring the sheer chaos associated with the merging, turning, stopping, and starting of the traffic at these busy intersections.
After our sushi break, we continued on wandering back towards our hotel when we happened upon a shopping centre that Andrei was looking for. We wandered into there and it was mostly clothing, with some watches, electronics and various other knick knacks. I took a look around but wasn't really in the mood to buy anything, but Andrei was in shopping mode, and that ended up taking forever! I waited and waited and waited, which I don't usually do very well, and that's a major reason I don't really go shopping with women too often. She probably took about 2 hours to pick out some clothing, and after about an hour and a half I threw in the towel and went to find a restaurant to sit down in and have a beer while waiting. The server there kept giving me kind eyes, but when I tried to speak with her, she didn't speak any English which was too bad, as she was quite a lovely woman. I sat there, and was treated to continuous personal service, although that constituted the woman continuing to refill my cup with ice, which I didn't really want so much, as adding ice to beer doesn't really make a lot of sense, but oh well. Eventually Andrei finished up, and joined for a beer, and then we wandered back towards the hotel to find a place to grab a bite for the night. And of all the places to select from, I wanted to get my Western Food craving over with, so we decided to stop by the KFC and get some greasy chicken! After dinner we wandered back towards the hotel, and stopped in at a few pubs near our hotel, but after a few beers, we weren't really feeling the night so much, plus Andrei was still sick, so we just called it another early night.
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| Saigon |
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| Crazy Saigon traffic |
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| The traffic circle of death |
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| Apparently Clinton ate here once |
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| Look at all that Dong in my hands! |
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| Saigon City Hall |
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| Just rolling a barrel of oil down the streets |
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| Notre Damme Cathedral |
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| City Hall at night |
The next day we were going to figure out somethings to do, including a cooking class, but that never really panned out. We instead decided to book a bus ticket towards Mui Ne for the next afternoon, even though I could have probably spent another day or two in Saigon, as it really has a great vibe. We booked our tickets, and then decided to wander around the city a bit more, when we ran into a Canadian girl we had briefly chatted with on the bus ride over from Phnom Penh. Her two friends were going on a food eating tour that was like $60, and she wasn't so keen on it, so we invited her to come join us for a walk along the river. Kass was her name, and she was a potter from Nelson, BC and a pretty cool chick. We walked along the river, thinking there would be some nice sights, but found out that it's not really a good walking path compared to the river in Phnom Penh. We did check out a large boat that did river dining cruises, but it looked a bit pricy so we didn't bother checking out the prices. After wandering around for another few hours, we started to make our way back towards the hotel, but I had to go check out some electronic stores to see if I could buy a new battery for my laptop, and split off from the girls, but agreed to try and meet them somewhere near the hotel for dinner.
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| Wild power lines |
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| Scary shark boat |
Traversing the streets in Saigon is absolutely terrifying and so treacherous, it's basically a real life version of Frogger, but is also a super fun experience. After almost being struck by 3 motorbikes and one bus, I managed to get across a particularly crazy interchange and stop into a few electronic shops, none of which could help me get a new battery. So I just continued to wander back towards the hotel area, and did several laps of the main streets trying to spot the girls to no avail, so I just settled into a tasty Indian restaurant called Ali Baba, and had a dinner with a friendly British ex-pat who was married to a Canadian woman. I asked him if there was anything really worth seeing in the city that I couldn't see elsewhere in the country, and he said there wasn't a whole lot, so that settled my commitment to heading off to Mui Ne the next day. Also, while eating dinner I spotted a Swiss girl named Rose who had been traveling with Andrei for some time, and chatted with her for a bit. She was leaving the next day and really wanted to see Andrei, so she told us to come meet her for a beer at a pub down the street. After dinner I just wandered back to the hotel, found Andrei there, pretty much asleep, and I was unable to convince her to head out for a beer to meet Rose, and I just decided to stay in as well for the night.
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| Trying to cross these streets at night is so treacherous |
The next day we got up and I decided to finally say goodbye to my Onesie, as I had been carrying it around, thinking I might be able to get it fixed, but had to just throw in the towel and leave it behind to make room in my bag. We checked out, and had thought about heading out to check out a museum or something, but then laziness and delicious coffee and lunch kind of got to the both of us, and we just ended up hanging out people watching at a cafe for a few hours before our bus was ready to go. The great part about some of these cafes is that they give you these wet towels that have been left in the refrigerator to cool off your face and hands before eating, they are an absolute treat! We were picked up and on our way to Mui Ne, arriving fairly late in the evening and with no real plan. We were dropped off in an area that we weren't too familiar with, as Kass's friend Dave had told us that the bus drops people off outside of Mui Ne, and nowhere near the cheap guesthouses, so we would have to take a taxi to get to the guesthouses. We soon found out by looking at a map though that we had actually been dropped off in the vicinity of the guesthouses, and that old Dave was wrong. After grabbing a delicious lemongrass/chili chicken dish for dinner, we started wandering around looking for a cheap place, when a man about 500 m down the road flagged us down and told us he had a place for $11 a night, so we went to check that out. Of course, as luck would have it, it was right across from where we had initially been dropped off by the bus, so we had made an unnecessary walk. We checked out the place, and found it to be a really nice and clean place, so we agreed to take it, although the guy who walked us there then told us it was $15 a night, and we told him “no, the other guy told us it was $11 a night”, so he just nodded and decided to not put up a fight. We settled in there for the night, and had another pretty quiet evening.
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| Bye Bye Onesie *tear* |
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| Enjoying the refreshing cold towel |
The next day we decided to have a beach day, and headed down across the street over to check out the beach. We had also thought into looking into kite surfing, as Mui Ne is quite a hot spot destination for kite surfing, but found out it was $50 an hour, and I wasn't so keen on it. We also found that the beach near our place was actually very small, so we had to walk down a ways to find a spot with some decent sand to lay down in. After tanning for awhile, I got in a mood for a beach run and went for a nice little 30 minute run, followed by a refreshing swim in the ocean, although the waves were actually quite large and hammered me pretty good. While being out in the ocean, I started chatting with a dude who soon after recognized me as being the “flashing Roughrider shirt guy from Siem Riep and Sihanoukville” ha ha. He was a guy from Edmonton that I had first met in Siem Riep at Angkor What and then again in Sihanoukville at JJ's, so we exchanged names again, as we were both pretty drunk both times we met each other and couldn't recall each other's names. He was also there with a pretty cute friend from Edmonton named Kyla, who actually looked Scandinavian to me when they first showed up at the beach, but of course I then found out she was a Canadian, albeit with Ukrainian roots. We ended up hanging out with them for quite awhile on the beach, and were picking her brain since she had been in Mui Ne a few months earlier on her trip, and had some ideas for where to go in the evenings. We agreed to meet up with them for some dinner and drinks later in the evening at Joe's, which was where they were staying.
We were on our way back to the hotel when we happened to run into Kass, and her friends Dave and Emerson, so we chatted with them a bit and invited them to join us that evening as well. Unfortunately for Emerson, he was actually fairly under the weather with a stomach bug, and wouldn't be able to head out later on (I've been pretty lucky to avoid any stomach ailments so far, as it seems everyone has gotten sick around me at least once). We headed back to the hotel, cleaned up a bit, and then wandered out to meet our new friends. Joe's is a super cool place that offers live music, a great beer selection, and some pretty tasty food as well. They had rooms there, but based on what we were getting compared to Lee and Kyla, their rooms are way overpriced. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a few delicious beers, some tasty food, and had some good laughs for the next few hours at the cafe. Kyla mentioned that DJ Station was the place to check out in the evenings for dancing and a more active nightlife, so we decided we would head there eventually. We emerged from Joe's, and started walking back towards our hotel, and even though Kyla had been there for quite some time, she didn't actually know where she was going, so we went in the wrong direction from DJ Station. As we were walking along, we stopped to watch some little crab attempting to cross the road through heavy traffic, and it became the object of our viewership for a good 7 minutes, as it would keep running forward, then almost get hit, and step back...yeah exciting times in Vietnam! We actually started to bet on whether it would make it across or not, and were screaming with horror and joy each time it nearly got run over and managed to survive. While witnessing this event, 2 guys named Ben and a girl named Jenna came across our group and joined in on the event watching. Eventually when we were finished we started chatting with them and found out that Jenna happened to be from Regina...yeah what are the chances, a group of 3 people all from different places in Saskatchewan, walking along a boulevard in a small town in Vietnam! They were looking to go out and party, and we said we were going to go to DJ Station, but then Kyla realized we were going the wrong way but were close to another bar called Wax, so we decided to stop in there for a game or two of pool and a drink, but we found it to be completely empty. After our games of pool and over priced drinks, we came back outside to try and sort out a taxi to the bar, since we didn't know for sure how far away it was.
While walking along to find a taxi, we suddenly lost the two Bens, and had no idea where they went. Jenna had apparently been with the one for awhile now, but didn't seem too phased out about it, and was quite flirty with me at the same time, although she was also quite drunk! We hopped in a cab and arrived at DJ Station, and basically found a huge Russian party. You can tell that Mui Ne is a Russian destination when you drive along the main road and see quite a few of the business signs in Cyrillic, and then start to look around at the people walking around, and you can pretty easily pick out a Russian. They just have this awkward style to them, especially the men, that gives them away pretty fast. Anyways, we walked into this place, and having a group of 7 of us Canadians, and a huge crowd of Russians, it felt like the 1972 Summit Series all over again! We ended up hanging out at the bar for quite a few hours, enjoying the relatively cheap drinks. I was hoping to have a crack at Kyla, but found out that last time she was in Mui Ne, she had a met a Hungarian guy who was working as a bartender at this bar, so that was a big reason for her wanting us to go there....oh well! I ended up just hanging out with the rest of the girls, including Jenna who wanted to share a bucket, but ended up being so ridiculously drunk that she had gone into the toilet and vomited all over the place, so Kyla was good enough to walk her home. I tried my luck with a few Russians and one very hot Ukrainian woman, but no luck there either. I did end up getting a little makeout with Kass briefly, but nowhere else. Eventually Andrei, Lee, Kass and Dave all went home, and Kyla was hanging with the bartender so I was left solo and the place was shutting down. I decided to cut my losses short and head on home, but then happened to stumble past a place that was still going on at 4 am, so I wandered in there and found it to be an exclusive Russian bar. I ordered a drink, and one guy beside me asked in a Russian accent “What are you doing here” ha ha...so I made nice with him a bit, chatted for awhile, then finished off my beer and decided to head home for the night.
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| Mui Ne party scene |
The next day, we all decided to rent motorbikes and head out to Mui Ne's big attraction, the sand dunes. The motorbikes were pretty cheap to rent, and after a quick breakfast, we were ready to go. Mui Ne is fairly well known for its incredible sand dunes, one of which are some red ones, and then the golden sand ones. The actual drive along the coast to the dunes are so incredible, especially on the motorbike, that I really had considered renting a bike to explore a bit more of the country while I was there. Dave and Emerson were planning on renting bikes and driving up the countryside in a few days, so I expressed interest in joining them eventually. We were stopped by some Vietnamese people near the first sand tunes, and were immediately hounded into renting these plastic sheets by the children, but we didn't bite and decided to head to the further dunes first. Our bikes were pretty small engines, but of course that didn't stop us from trying to race each other a bit, and the fastest I could my crappy little scooter up to was 90 km/hr, which just burned through the petrol way too quickly (as I would find out the next day). When we were getting close to the dunes, Kass and Emerson fell behind us a bit, and when we made a turn towards what we thought were the dunes, we lost them. We soon found out we had gone the wrong way and when we returned to the main highway, we couldn't find them and started driving back towards town to see if we could track them down but no luck. When we did eventually turn around, Lee actually fell off his bike and got a bit nicked up, but nothing too severe...yeah this is pretty normal for tourists, everywhere around SE Asia you'll see people all scratched up from motorbike rides.
We decided we weren't going to find Emerson and Kass, and figured that Emerson may have gotten ill and headed back to town, so we just continued on to the dunes without them. Upon arrival, we paid the stupid bike parking fee, and then began wandering towards them. While walking along, we spotted an Ostrich pen, where you could ride them for a few dollars, which I was pretty keen on, especially considering how stupid and hilarious Ostriches look! We had heard from Hannah and Jamie that they were going to be in Mui Ne that evening and the next day they wanted to Ostrich ride, so I decided to hold off on it and wait for them, but at the same time I also felt a bit bad for the animals, as they didn't look too healthy. So after looking and chuckling at the birds, we decided to rent some plastic sheets and go sliding! Unfortunately, this was one of my worst decisions, as I decided to not put my camera in a plastic bag like Lee, or in a sealed back like Dave, and went down the first dune, and didn't get very far before my nose end dug in and I was buried face first in sand. Of course, the sand went into my pockets, and got into my camera, and that was the end of the Olympus' life...damn I'm rough on cameras! The plastic sheets weren't effective at all for sliding on the dunes to be honest, so they were kind of a waste of money, but oh well. We wandered around the dunes for another hour or so, admiring the beauty of the area. If you were to think about some of those desert movies, you could totally imagine them being filmed in these dunes, as they were incredible, especially considering that they were so isolated and unique compared to the rest of their surroundings, and not really all that big. One of the other highlights of the dunes was watching this Asian couple who had rented a quad, and the woman had gotten it stuck and kept gunning the gas, burying it further. We had to laugh for about 5 minutes while her b/f tried to push her out, and she just kept getting more and more stuck, and then they were arguing over the situation. We were going to give them another 5 minutes of struggling before heading down to help them out, but they managed to free themselves, and head back.
Eventually, we noticed that the rain clouds were starting to creep in, so we were ready to make a move, but then everyone got distracted by food and a beer, so we hung out longer than we should have, as it started to rain a fair bit when we were ready to head on back. I don't have a lot of experience driving a bike, and driving in pouring rain, with little clothing and sunglasses isn't exactly ideal conditions! Even when only driving 60 km an hour, the rain felt like stinging needles, and the visibility was poor since I had sunglasses, but it hurt my eyes too much to actually drive without them. We all managed to make the drive back safely fortunately, although it took a lot longer than the way there it seemed, plus it was too late and rainy to check out the red dunes, but oh well.
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| Sexy biker look, especially the socks! |
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| Dave our leader...lost |
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| Just cruisin' |
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| Just before camera goes bye bye |
We arrived back into town and waited for Hannah, Jamie and McKenzie to show up at our hotel, and then wandered over to Joe's for dinner and a few beers with them. They were all pretty tired from their day of travel, and just wanted to have a relatively quiet night in, catching up with Andrei. I was tempted to stay in as well, but Dave and Lee were keen to head out for a drink or two, so we wandered back over to Joe's to check out some music and have another beer or two. It was funny to listen to the Vietnamese guy singing music that night, as there were a few songs that he didn't know the lyrics to completely, so he would make up a few parts.
Eventually we ended up meeting a group of 3 Irish women who had just arrived in Mui Ne via motorcycle from Nha Trang. They had done a trip called the Easyrider and highly recommended it to us, but unfortunately I was going North, so I wouldn't be able to do the same trail as them, but I again considered the idea further. They were pretty fun gals, and we ended up playing some wicked drinking game with them called Animal, where you have to pick an animal noise, and flip up a card in front of you, and then the person to the left of you then does the same until someone at the table flips up a card that is the same as another person's card, and those two people have to make the animal noise associated with the other player before their opponent does. Whoever makes the noise first, then the other player has to pick up the cards in front of them, as well as their opponent's cards....it actually was a pretty wicked game, although these girls talked a big game about how well they could drink and such, and by the end of the game, the one lass was puking outside, and one of the other ones could barely stand...big talkers! Because it was just Lee, Dave, and I, plus these 3 girls, who happened to be the only attractive ones in the place, the vultures soon showed up, including a group of 3 Estonian guys who were trying pretty hard to get into our group to meet the girls, with little luck. They did try and introduce some “Estonian drinking game” that basically had the entire deck of cards in front of us, and we would each pick up a card until the 9 of clubs was picked, and whoever picked that card, was the loser...... ha ha ha yeah it was so brutal but funny at the same time, especially listening to the guys describe it in their funny Estonian accent. Before we knew it, it was already 1 am, and the place was closing, and the girls were too drunk to continue on for the night, so we just wandered back to our hotel. Dave and Lee decided to grab a beer and have a nightcap out front of our place, since Dave was leaving the next day, but I was too tired to bother, so I just called it a night, but told them I would meet them for breakfast the next day.
Unfortunately, I slept in a bit too much, and missed breakfast and my chance to say goodbye to Dave, Kass, and Emerson, although they were heading up to Nha Trang, and I was going to be up there soon enough to see them again. Andrei and the girls decided to head down to the beach for the day, so I said I would come down and meet them in a bit, and got ready to head down there. Before getting to the beach, I happened to run into Ben and Jess, who told me they had a huge penthouse at a hotel across from Joe's and that they were having house parties there every night, so they invited me and whoever else to come over that night and join in the festivities, so I agreed to that and went on my way. When I arrived at the beach, I couldn't find the girls anywhere, but did end up running into Lee and Kyla, so I just hung out with them for a few hours. I had actually planned to do a hilarious speedo photo shoot with Andrei as my photographer that day, since there were several Russian couples along the beach the previous days doing the same. Unfortunately, the photo shoot was a no go since I couldn't find Andrei, but I did strip down to the speedos while in the water with Lee, which looked quite hilarious, as we were standing in the water and all of a sudden he looks over and I'm holding my shorts in the air with a hilarious grin, and he immediately thought I was skinny dipping in the daylight, but then realized I had my terrible swimwear on underneath my shorts. After frolicking in the water for a bit, I went over and teased Kyla a bit, and disgusted the rest of the beach with my pasty white thighs, before putting my shorts back on and hiding the awful swimwear.
Since it was Lee's last night, Kyla wanted to go to this place called Sankara for dinner that night, as they had amazing food, and it happened to be right across from our guesthouse, so it seemed like a convenient place. After a few hours in the sun, we wandered back through Sankara towards our hotel, and happened to run into McKenzie and Andrei, who had been there all afternoon and were looking fairly burnt. I guess the girls never did make it out to the sand dunes, just became sun bums for the day. They all wanted to meet up for dinner that night, as they were all leaving the next day as well, but they wanted to meet at a place called Sinbad's, which was near their hotel, so we convinced Kyla and Lee to go there instead that night, which turned out great.
But first, since I still had my motorbike, and was going to have to pay for it for that day by that point, I decided I would like to take another ride along the coast since it was so enjoyable the previous day, and convinced Lee to come for a ride as well. We grabbed our bikes and grabbed some petrol and were on our way. The previous day, it seemed like my gas gauge wasn't working properly, as I had used 3 times as much petrol as Dave's bike did, so I figured the tank wasn't reading right. I pulled up to the station to fill it up again, and looked inside, and it appeared that it was still mostly full, so I figured the gauge was definitely off, and didn't bother grabbing any more fuel (big mistake). We drove along the coast, and our first interesting encounter of the drive was with a huge herd of cattle that had taken up the entire highway....this is definitely something I have yet to see anywhere, so we drove within the cattle for a bit, and Lee took some funny photos. After we passed the group we then stopped by this cool graveyard that Lee had noticed the previous day. All the tombstones had swastika's on them, so we were kind of curious about them, and stopped to check them out. While checking them out, Lee happened to drop his motorbike key somewhere in the field near the graveyard, which lead to a bit of a disaster. We spent the next 15 minutes looking for his key, when a group of Swedish guys pulled up and helped us look as well...fortunately for Lee, the one guy found his key and all was good (for the time being at least!). We thanked the boys, and they went off back towards town since it was getting late, but we still wanted to ride a bit more, so we did. After making it to some nearby village, it was getting close to sunset, and Lee wanted to stop by this lookout point to watch the sunset over a fishing village, so we started making our way back. I drove past a petrol station, and looked at my gauge, which still said empty, and should have double checked but of course I didn't, and continued on.
About 10 minutes later, in a long stretch of highway nowhere near any shops or hotels, of course I ran out of gas. I have a proven track record of running out of gas, I would estimate that this was the 8th time I've run out of gas so far in my lifetime (just don't learn my lesson I guess!). I tried to signal Lee that I ran out, but he wasn't able to hear my horn and kept riding, but eventually doubled back and then we started a fun adventure trying to get back. I initially used the bike as a scooter, using my foot to propel it, but then Lee figured we could use his bike to push me, so he would drive beside me, with his leg hanging off the side and his foot resting against the back of my seat, and use his bike and foot to push me....for anyone driving past us, I'm sure this looked absolutely hilarious. After 6 or 7 kms of this, we finally found a small shop that sold some petrol, so I spent what little money I had left to get some petrol, which barely made a blip on the fuel gauge. And then it was off to the races to try and get to the fishing village for sunset....we were probably only going about 70 km/hr, but it was such a huge rush to be driving in the twilight at those speeds, I can see why people love motorbiking so much. Fortunately, I had just enough petrol to make it all the way back to our place and arrived safe and sound.
Andrei, Lee, Kyla and I hopped in a cab, and made our way down to Sinbad's. The cab driver was actually fairly clueless as to where we going, but got us there with our direction. The restaurant was a very tiny and cozy place, but the food there was so amazing. Highly recommended if you ever get a chance to visit Mui Ne! After a nice dinner with the girls, we were on our way back to join the houseparty. Before we actually went there, Lee and I stopped by Joe's again for a beer, plus I wanted to see if the Irish girls were there that night, as I had kind of taken a liking to the one of them the previous night, but no luck. We also had to wait for Kyla to get ready for the night (as she was a bit of a princess and would take a really long time to get ready all the time), so we just lingered there. Eventually she showed up, and soon after Jess happened to spot us from the street and pop in to grab us and make sure we were coming to their house party, so we cleared our tab, and grabbed some beers and vodka and were on our way. We arrived at their place, and found it to be a super sweet layout, as they had this absolutely massive room with several beds, plus a huge outdoor kitchen area with a large table. There happened to be several other random people there, including a guy that they had met in the street the previous night and randomly invited to come join them, so it was a good mix of people there. We ended up playing some Sociables for a few hours, and then everyone moved on to the DJ Station for another raucous night. After 2 hours there, the place was shutting down, and I moved on to the Russian bar again with an American dude, a Canadian chick, and a girl from Kahzahkstan who were all pretty chill, but then in a bit of a drunken state, I spilled my drink on the Canadian girl, which pissed her off a fair bit and they just got up and left ha ha ha..oops. So I just wandered back home and that was a night.
I woke up the next morning, said my goodbyes to Andrei who was heading to Nha Trang, and then just caught up on some sleep for a bit, before wandering over to Sankara to meet up with Kyla. I ended up having lunch there, and even though it was $15 which is wayyy too much to pay for a meal in Vietnam, it was pretty awesome and delicious! We ended up hanging out there for a few hours, and met another group of 3 Canadian girls, plus 2 Aussies and 2 Brits and made pretty quick friends with all them. They were also all heading to Nha Trang the next day, same as myself, so it was great to quickly meet a new travel buddy group. After chatting with them for a little bit, I also quickly realized that they were on the same booze cruise as I was on in Sihanoukville, and even had a few photos of them from that day; yes it's a pretty small world. After hanging out in the pool for most of the day, we all decided to head out for dinner that night to an Italian place that the girls had heard great reviews about called Good Morning Vietnam. We got ready for the night, and hired a cab and were on our way. There's 3 Good Morning Vietnam restaurants in the country, one in Mui Ne, one in Nha Trang, and a third in Hoi An, but apparently the one in Nha Trang is the best, but no matter. We ended up having a great feast at the restaurant, and got to know a few of the group members a bit better, although it was tough at times since they had all been traveling together for the last month and a half (although the girls had been together for 4 months and were all best friends from back home). They were a nice enough group and we all had a pretty good time and then decided to head back to their hotel for a few drinks before heading out to DJ Station for one last night. We ended up playing Sociables again there, and the one Aussie girl Ebony turned out to be one of the strangest people I've met so far on this trip. She would keep starting these strange stories and then tail off and never complete any of them, and would all of a sudden get into these strange staring moods where she would literally stare at you for 2 or 3 minutes without saying a word or making any facial expressions..I honestly thought she was high as a kite or something. Anyways, after a few hours hanging out playing games with the group, Ebony just wandered outside and never told anyone where she was going, so when we got outside to catch a cab she was nowhere to be found and we just assumed that she had gotten ill and had gone home (although we would see her the next day and she would tell us she went to the bank machine, but she definitely didn't go to the bank machine right across the street from the place we were staying....yes, a very strange girl)
So after waiting for about 10 minutes for her with no sight, we just hired a cab and were on our way to DJ Station. We arrived, and I found out that Matt, the one Brit gets wayyyy too drunk at times and his alter ego Merry the Ferry comes out, where he goes into blackout mode and does the strangest things. This particular night he decided to play a game called “No Burn” that he apparently plays with his mates back in England. The game consists of him walking around with a burning cigarette and getting closer and closer to your arm and then burning you unless you say “No Burn!” and then he would move on to the next person. Unfortunately, he never told anyone else about this game or that he was playing the game, so after burning several random people, security was forced to quickly kick him out ha ha ha...what a character! I also ended up meeting an Irish dude who I had recognized from Sankara earlier in the day, and assumed he was a manager or a bartender there, but he told me that he was actually the owner, and that he had a few pubs all over the world, including New York City and London...he was actually a really nice character and not full of himself or anything. After hanging out with the group for a few hours, I noticed a Russian girl who happened to keep staring at me, so when she was sitting down in a quieter area I went down and started chatting to her, and found her to be a really nice woman. We ended up chatting for a good hour and a half, and ended up having a nice makeout session on the beach. While we were embracing each other, this drunk French dude came wandering up and told her how beautiful she was and kept asking us if we were going to be sleeping with each other that night, and if we weren't going to, that he wanted to take her home with him....ahhhhh the strange encounters I have ha ha ha.....so eventually he went away, and we just continued to embrace each other until the place was closing.
We got outside and to my surprise, the French guy was out there, drunk as hell, and on his motorbike, and kept trying to get this girl to go with him on the bike, even though I was standing there, holding her hand and about to walk off with her...ahh persistant guy....but eventually he drove off, and I walked Anastasia back to her hotel, but we didn't get any further than that, as she was sharing a room with her friend, so it was a no go. We exchanged email addresses though, in case I make it up to St. Petersburg in the summer sometime, and said our goodbyes, then it was a long walk back home, arriving back at 5 am or so. The next morning was pretty early, as I had to check out at 11 am, and then hang around until my bus showed up at 1 pm. I said goodbye to Kyla, and then waited for my bus, while watching several buses pass on by me. It was already 1:40 pm, and I was starting to think that my bus wasn't showing up, when some guy finally came over and asked if I was staying in Strawberry Guesthouse, and that the bus would be there in another 15 minutes. Yes, bus schedules in SE Asia aren't very accurate at all, but oh well c'est la vie. The bus finally showed up, and I went to take a seat and noticed sitting in the very back my old friend Stephane from Quebec! Ha ha ha, I walked up and sat beside him, without him realizing it was me, and then started chatting and he just had this huge grin and told me that it was like a crazy story how we keep running into each other everywhere. About 10 minutes later, the bus stopped and picked up all the Canadian girls and the two guys with them, so I had a bus full of people I had known. This bus was meant to be the very first time I would be riding a transportation alone, without someone from my travel groups since I took a ferry over to Koh Tao on January 3rd to meet my Dutch lady friend....which is a fairly impressive feat for me, since my travel groups typically last about a week or two at most. But alas, I wasn't riding solo on this trip either, so all was good.
We arrived in Nha Trang a bit later on in the evening, and I hadn't really sorted out accomodations as per usual. Stephane was staying at a Backpacker's place that was $7 a night, while the Canadian girls had booked into a hotel called Ruby Hotel that was only $12 a night for 4 people, so I decided to head there with them and Lenny and Matt, to see if we could get a 3 bed room for us guys. I agreed to try and meet up with Stephane later that night for a beer, and also happened to get a message from Andrei who wanted to meet up that night as well. We arrived at the hotel, and the room they had available for 3 people was 2 double beds, and the guys weren't so keen on sharing a bed with anyone (typical males ha ha), so I asked if they had any single rooms, and they did, for only $10 a night, so I took that up. We got all settled in, and went out to find some dinner, and wandered around the city a tiny little bit to get our bearings. Everyone was pretty tired, and decided to have a quiet night in, and I figured I would go meet up with Andrei and Stephane, but then realized I was pretty tired and needed a quiet night off as well, so I just packed it in for the evening, and left a message with Andrei to tell her to meet up the next day.
The next morning Marielle, one of the Canadian girls woke me up around 11 am, and let me know they were all heading down to the beach, but I had received a message from Andrei to meet me around 12 at a place called Booze Cruise (although she had spellt it “Bruise Cruise”), so I hung out for a bit and went down to the Booze Cruise place 15 minutes early, just in case there was actually another place called Bruise Cruise. I sat down and had a pretty awesome Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich (yeah real Vietnamese I know), and chilled out until about 12:20 when I became a bit worried that I was in fact at the wrong place. I asked the owner if there was a Bruise Cruise but he told me that they were the only place with a name like that, but I set out on a bit of a venture to see if maybe he might have been mistaken. I ended up wandering around for a good 20 minutes in all the restaurant/bar areas, without luck. Finally, I walked past the Booze Cruise again, didn't see her, and went back to my hotel where I found she had messaged me asking what room I was in at the hotel, but nothing about our meeting. I messaged her back, told her I would hang out at Booze Cruise for another hour and if she didn't show I would just head off and do other things, and of course she didn't show up, so I just wandered down to the beach to try and find the others. I happened to luck out and find them not too long after getting down to the beach, which was lucky because Nha Trang has a massive beach that stretches a really long long way...it's actually the best beach in Vietnam I would say. We didn't hang out for too long before they had mentioned something about a sushi restaurant down the beach. We all wandered down there and it ended up being the Louisiana Brewhouse (which a friend had recommended I check out while in Nha Trang). The place was super awesome, as you could use their pool for free, and being a brewpub, they had some pretty tasty craft beers, and of course great sushi. The prices were a bit steep but no worries.
While getting all settled in there, of course I happened to look across the pool and spot Andrei, that little bugger! She was sitting there with Dave and two unknown people, so I went over there and caught up with them. After looking at the one girl there, I had this feeling that I had seen her somewhere, and she felt the same. We had apparently met in the 4000 Islands, but I just didn't feel like that was where I actually knew her from, and she felt the same way. We then started talking about where we had been, and apparently her and her b/f had been on the identical track as me, at the exact same dates, starting with Bali in Nov and going through all the same stops....I think we felt so familiar with each other, because we had probably seen each other at least 10 times over the past few months...crazy times. After hanging with them a bit, I wandered over to catch up with Kass and Emerson, and found out they were all leaving that night on a night bus for Hoi An, so I wasn't going to be able to hang out with them that night...too bad!
Eventually they had to make their way and leave, so I said my goodbyes again, and hoped to meet up in Hanoi before they were all going their separate ways. I just hung out with the Canadians and Lenny and Matt for the rest of the afternoon, and then wandered back to the hotel, where we made dinner plans to head to some Indian restaurant that was offering a main dish, appetizer, beer, and naan bread for only $5..win! We got all cleaned up and ready to go for that, and then went over and found the place. Another friend of their group, a guy named Adam from Australia, and his two Swedish friends Joe and Frederick came and joined us briefly, but the restaurant was too small to accomodate us all, so they ended up heading somewhere else. The dinner was super delicious, and well worth the price. After dinner, we all just grabbed some vodka and headed back to the hotel, to hang out and play some cards and socialize a bit. After hanging out at the hotel for a few hours, we decided to head down to a place called the Sailing Club, which had also been recommended by my friend Dan, who had recommended the Louisiana Brewhouse, so we ventured down there and found the cover to be a bit expensive, but it came with a free drink, and they were having a beach party that night, so we checked it out. When we entered the place, I lost the group because some really hot girl waved at me and I went to talk to her, thinking I knew her, but then realized I didn't...and actually got a bit of stage fright! Yeah I know, what a wimp I am sometimes! So I left her and found the rest of the group and just hung out with them, partying until closing time.
The place was finished around 2:30 am, so we only really had been there for an hour and a bit, and it was mostly a huge sausage fest, although that was good for the girls anyways. We were told that the Why Not Bar was the next place to go check out, since they were open pretty late, so we wandered there, and found a pretty decent party until about 4 am, when they closed down. I had met a few more Russian girls, and thought I might have a chance with either of them, but then they just kind of got weird and wandered off, oh well! It was eventually closing time, and the group had no idea how to get back to the hotel, but fortunately I seem to be the best drunk navigator and got everyone back for the night. Unfortunately for Lenny, Matt had picked up a French girl and wanted the room to himself, so the girls suggested Lenny sleep in my bed since I had a double, but since none of the guys wanted to share a bed with me earlier when getting a room, I said screw that ha ha ha, and made him go sleep in the girls' room, where there was not enough space for a 5th!
The next day I really wanted to go check out Vinpearl, which is this crazy amusement park/waterpark/aquarium/everything, and initially all the Canadians and the guys were interested as well, but then they found out it was $20 to get in, and suddenly became cheap, which was too bad really! I didn't really want to go alone, so I just ended up hanging at the beach with them for awhile and then over to the Louisiana Brewhouse again. I tried to talk the guys into going, but they weren't so keen since the girls weren't, so I just left it at that. After hanging out at the Brewhouse, and being the centre of attention for a huge group of small children from California and Melbourne Australia (asking numerous questions non stop, stealing my sunglasses, asking me to throw them into the pool, etc.), we were back to the hotel to get ready for dinner and get our bus tickets all sorted out. Everyone wanted to go to Hoi An the next day, and I didn't feel like sticking around solo, so I decided to go with them. We decided to check out the Good Morning Vietnam restaurant again for dinner (yeah, I've been slacking on eating Vietnamese food!!), so we got ready and wandered over there, and had an even more delicious dinner than the first restaurant in Mui Ne....the bruschetta and pizza was soooo soooo good, can't go wrong there! After hanging out there for 1.5 hours, we grabbed a few more drinks, and went back to the hotel to hang out for a few hours before wandering out into the town again. We didn't make it too far, actually just around the corner, when we spotted some Swiss girls from the bus ride from Mui Ne, and they were with 2 other women, so Lenny and I grabbed a spot with them and started chatting them up.
The Canadian girls weren't so keen on joining this table, as the place itself was actually pretty dead, so they decided to wander down to the Sailing Club on their own and see what they could find. The Swis girls were all pretty cool, and major babes, but within an hour I found out that they all had long term b/fs with the exception of the one who Lenny was chatting with, so too bad! After hanging out until nearly closing time at the place they were at, we wandered down to the Why Not Bar again. We checked inside but it was super dead, so we just grabbed a spot outside. It looked pretty good for me, as I had a group of 5 girls and only myself and Lenny and some quiet American dude, so there were a few other tables with a bunch of guys that wanted us to join them, but we found our own spot. Soon after, a Scottish girl I had met in Mui Ne also stopped by our table, and we had a pretty good mix of people. Eventually the Swiss all started to get tired and head home, but the one Norwegian girl and her Swedish friend stuck around, and I had a pretty good time getting to know them both. I initially thought that the Norwegian girl, Ingrid, was flirting with me and interested, so we had a pretty good chat for quite awhile, but then she dropped the b/f comment...ahhhh....so that was a no go, but the Swedish girl made no mention of a b/f at least! We were all hanging at the table for most of the night, although we did venture inside to the dance floor for awhile, and I tried to make a move on Annie, the Swede, but then she said no ha ha....so I felt slightly rejected, but she told me to try that somewhere less cliche than the dance floor and see how it goes...interesting....Swedes are quite direct as I've maybe mentioned before... So we end up outside for awhile, and happened to start talking to an Irish lad named Darragh, who was a pretty cool chap, and he started flirting with Ingrid a fair bit. While inside the dance floor, I did notice one British guy holding his nose, bleeding, and chasing after one of the Vietnamese workers, but I didn't make much of it until about 30 minutes later when it was closing time and we were leaving.
We were walking outside the place, and the British guy, who apparently worked at the bar, grabbed the Norwegian girl and was trying to get her to stay with him, but she wanted no part of him, and tried to walk off, and then the asshole gets all worked up and flicks his still burning cigarette at her and hits her in the arm....well this obviously set her off and she was up in her face, yelling at him to not hit her...well Darragh hears this and has his glasses off and is ready to fight the guy....and at this point, I realized that since the guy was working there, and that he was surrounded by a bunch of his Vietnamese coworkers, that this fight wouldn't be a great idea. But of course the English guy was all worked up and wanted to scrap, and it took 2 of his friends to keep him back, and myself to hold Darragh back. I've heard bad stories about white tourists getting into fights at Vietnamese bars, and then all of a sudden there's 6 or 7 Vietnamese just pounding a guy who's on his own...so yeah I didn't want that to open to Darragh, or myself included, since I was basically at his side at this point. So after a lot of screaming and yelling and bad name calling, I managed to convince him to walk with the two girls towards the beach, even though by this point I was already quite pissed off at the English guy as well....so we start walking down, and Darragh is just slightly ahead of myself and the Swede, when I see a motorbike come flying up, and the English guy jumps off and punches Darragh in the face, when he was unsuspecting...yeah real class act by such a complete douchebag....so of course Darragh is not really worked up and is ready to fight, but then I notice that the English guy came with a Vietnamese guy, who is quickly speaking to two other Vietnamese guys, and I could just see trouble brewing fast....it took all I could to keep Darragh from going up and popping this guy, telling him he had to be the bigger man in all of this, even though it was such a shitty situation.....somehow with the help of the girls, we managed to get him out and walk him further towards the beach, and the English pussy got back on the bike and went on his way....so we get closer to the beach, and there's a motorbike that stops by and we just put Darragh on it and sent him back to his hotel.
Meanwhile, myself and the girls began walking towards their hotel, when some drunk English guys pulled up and started chatting us all up. They were a pretty funny group, and we had some good laughs with them, and then took some hilarious photos in some old US Army jeep we found in the street. While Ingrid was chatting with the British guy, I made another move on Annie, and this time she was all for it..success! We eventually made our way back to their hotel, and she invited me to come sleep over, although they were sharing a room so no funny business, but all good...it was nice to have company for the first time in awhile.
The next day I was meant to leave on the bus in the afternoon, but Annie told me to stick around an extra day and that it would be worth my while ha ha...so I did my quick walk of shame back to the hotel, and saw all of the rest of the group, who were checking out and heading to the beach to kill a few hours until the bus. I didn't actually tell them that I was going to probably stay an extra day, as I wasn't sure yet, but once the staff said I could postpone my ticket until the next day, I figured why not. I went and met up with the girls for breakfast, and then we decided to head out to Vinpearl, which I'm so glad i stuck around for! The waterpark is fairly poorly constructed, so everytime you go down a slide, it's actually a fairly painful experience, but still fun none the less. We grabbed some waterproof cases for our money, and of course the girls made me carry theirs as well. The first slide we went down was one where you go on these carpet like things, so our bodies were saved from the welts of the bad construction, however, once we reached the bottom, I was going fairly fast and the water actually knocked the waterproof containers around my neck into my throat quite violently, so that was injury number one ha ha! We then went onto the next slide, which was a fairly steep and forward slide, and to be honest, it hurt like hell as I was going down...basically it was “ow, ow, ow, ow, ow” all the way down as my skin would get dragged by the bad seams ha ha....I then waited at the bottom for Annie, who came down too fast for her bikini top, so that flew off..much to my delight ha ha.
After that painful slide, we went onto a slide that was like a halfpipe, but we went three of us at once on some floaty things, and we had a bit too much weight and momentum, and actually would have gone all the way over the top, had they not had a stopguard, but I slammed into that with my feet to stop our momentum, and that hurt a fair bit, so that was injury number 3! After that we could only manage one more slide, before giving up on the pain train. After that, we decided to go float down the moat thing that they had there, with a beer each, but the moat was pretty stagnant smelly water, and didn't really have a lot of energy to move our tubes, so we spent a lot of time just sitting around, hoping to catch a tiny bit of current to continue on. After that, we decided to quit the waterpark, and head on over to check out the aquarium, which was definitely the highlight of the place. I still can't believe other people were too cheap to pay the $20 fee, as the cable car ride over, plus the aquarium were well worth the price alone, not to mention the amusement park rides and waterpark too. The aquarium had a whole bunch of awesome creatures including several sharks and rays, and they had a little treadmill like system that would move you along, with a glass shell overhead, where you could watch the majestic creatures swim about, overhead...awesome!
After the aquarium we were on our way to the game centre, where they had bumper cars and unlimited arcade games...yeah...exactly, so worth it! After another 3 hours there, gaming out hardcore, we caught one amusement park ride which was kind of bunk, and then were on our way back to town. The girls had been to a different Italian restaurant recently, and claimed it was the best one of the bunch, so they wanted to go there for dinner, and since I was on an Italian streak (probably the most Italian food I've eaten in a week span since I was in Italy in 20007) I joined them. We ended up sitting next to a big group of Russians, who in true Russian fashion, had a big bottle of vodka, and just sat there drinking shots of it, barely touching their food...ahh crazy Russkies. The dinner itself was quite amazing I must admit, although I ordered too much, but that was perfect for a late night snack or breakfast since I had a fridge in my room. After dinner, we just wandered back to the girls' place to watch a movie and have a low key night. Once the movie was done, I figured it was now or never with Annie, so I asked if she wanted to come spend the night in my room, and she said sure, so we were back to my hotel, and had a very lovely night...Swedish flag captured oh yes!
The next day we just grabbed some breakfast, I checked out, and helped the girls move to a different room since their air con wasn't working, and their room was a sweatbox without it. After that, we just wandered down to the beach for awhile. While laying on the beach, one of the crazier things that I've seen happened. It was a fairly windy day and there were quite a few kite surfers out, and I noticed one guy having troubles controlling his kite. He happened to be walking in front of us, a fair distance away, but I just had a bad feeling about his experience and lack of control. Sure enough, about 15 minutes later, there was an older woman in front of us trying to sell us things, and all of a sudden, wham! This huge kite comes out of nowhere, and smacks her in the head and lays her out....she took the brunt force of the thing, and it barely touched myself or the girls, but the poor old lady was in a bit of shock and we had to help her get up on her feet. The guy came over apologizing, but the lady wasn't impressed obviously...crazy stuff. After that we decided to wander over to the Louisiana place for some sushi and a beer, and just hung out relaxing for a few hours. I had to wander off and catch my bus by 6 pm, so by 5 pm, I just walked the girls home, said my goodbyes, and popped into a camera shop to try and get a camera but couldn't find one for the price I was looking to spend. I grabbed a quick dinner for the road and was back at my hotel by 6:05 pm, which wasn't too worrisome, since the buses in Vietnam, and SE Asia in general never run on time.....well I sat there waiting and waiting and waiting, and it was already 6:50 pm when I asked the hotel staff if it was coming or not....sure enough around 7:15 it finally showed up, and I was on my way to Hoi An. I arrived at the sleeper bus, and found it to be already packed, and I had to squeeze into a tiny little spot next to a couple, and there wasn't really any room for my day bag, so I had to lie with that on my chest for 2 hours trying to sleep...yeah not so easy.
Eventually, I looked around and found a spot to put the bag behind me, but was pretty leery about it for the night, as night buses are often a place where people get things stolen. Plus, the driver took turns so fast, and the handrail on my sleeper seat was so low that I would nearly fly off the chair into the aisle every time we took a turn....so yeah my sleep was absolute rubbish for the night. The air con also happened to break down on the bus, and we had to stop for about an hour to try and get that fixed, to no avail....it ended up being a pretty long night with little sleep. We arrived in Hoi An around 6 am, and I had a hotel mentioned to me that Andrei had stayed at a few days earlier, so I hired a bike and arrived at the hotel, checked in and tried to sleep a bit, but to no avail. After lounging around for awhile, I just grabbed some breakfast when a Canadian couple I had first met in Laos showed up. It was probably the 6th time in the last 2 months I've run into them in random locations...traveling around SE Asia is just like that I guess! We chattted for awhile, and then I decided to head out and start looking at getting some clothing made.
Hoi An is known as the place in Vietnam to get any clothing made, as there's so many tailor shops and fabric shops, you can get pretty much anything made. Since I had a suit made in Thailand a few years ago, I decided to have another one made in Hoi An, but before I knew it, I was talked into buying a second suit and two dress shirts....which still was a pretty good deal. I got fitted for them, and ended up paying $185 for two suits, plus $17 each for two nice dress shirts. I also decided to get a new onesie made up to replace my destroyed purple one, and ended up with this beauty!
After getting the clothing all sorted out, I decided to grab some delicious lunch at a nearby restaurant called Mr. King. The food there was absolutely incredible, but it was such a quiet place, with no customers which was too bad. I ended up trying a local dish called White Rose, along with some amazing Pho soup. After enjoying this great meal, I just went for a wander into the town to start looking for a camera, and of course I happened to be walking along and some guy started chatting me up, and I'm too nice to stop talking and walk away. Before Iknew it, I was on a bike with him, being driven to a camera shop to take a look at some cameras. They didn't have much selection, but I ended up grabbing a new Panasonic Lumix camera for $190 including case and memory card, which wasn't too bad. The guy on the motorbike told me the ride would be free, but of course he wanted to sell me on a motorbike ride to Marble Mountain that night or the next day, which I had no interest in, so when he dropped me off at my hotel, he suddenly expected money....yeah typical Asian touts....so I offered to give him a dollar since I had spent a total of 7 minutes riding on his bike, and he tried to plead and say it wasn't enough, but there was no way I was giving him anymore, so I told him I might take up his offer for a trip the next day, and grabbed his phone number with no intention of calling him.
After playing around with the camera a bit, and relaxing in the room, I wandered across the street for some dinner, which ended up being kind of crappy, and then was feeling exhausted so I was just going to head back and grab some shut eye. As I was walking to my room, I happened to spot Adam the Australian, who I had met in Nha Trang, and he was with his two Swedish friends. I chatted with them a bit, and they told me to come join them for a beer, and since I have really bad FOMO (Fear of missing out) I decided to join them for one beer. So we were off into the town to look for a place, and were talked into checking out a place called Sun Bar, by some random dude on a motorbike. We wandered over there, and found 2 for 1 cocktails, and a completely empty bar, albeit, with a free pool table. So we just ended up hanging out there having some drinks and playing some pool. Eventually two cute girls wandered in with one guy, and we got to talking with them, and found out they were Dutch (I love the Dutch girls). The guy happened to also be named Riley, and was from the US, but he was a bit quiet and not very talkative, but nice enough. We ended up hanging out with them for quite awhile, but the place never really got any busier. So we decided to wander off to the Aussie Bar, as Adam had heard it was an alright place.
We wandered over there and found it to be fairly dead, although a big group of Norwegian students did eventually show up and help pack the place. We just hung out there for the next 2 or 3 hours, until I noticed that Frederick, one of the Swedes had some guy apologizing to him loudly, and then all of a sudden it looked like they might come to blows. Then Adam was in there as well, and it looked like there might be a brawl breaking out, as the guy apologizing suddenly had 3 other friends there surrounding the boys. After the Nha Trang thing with Darragh, I didn't want anything to do with another scrap so I didn't even bother getting involved to try and talk sense into anyone, but fortunately they all came to their senses and Adam and Fred just ended up leaving the place. I probably stuck around another 30 minutes or so until the place closed, and ended up walking back to our hotel. So much for a quiet night in, as it was 3:30 am by the time I arrived home!
The next day I wandered across the street to the place I had eaten dinner the night before, as I saw that they had Eggs Benedict on their menu, and I was really craving them. I should have known better from dinner the night before, as the Eggs Benny ended up being pretty bad as well, so lesson learned there. I wandered back to the hotel and spotted the boys who were renting bikes and going to the beach, and they offered me the chance to go join them, but I had to go for some more suit fitting, so I said I might join them afterwards. I went to the suit shop, and found the Canadian couple there, and they were in a terrible mood, as their fittings hadn't gone so well, plus they told me that the hotel we were all staying at was super dodgy. They said that they had been napping the previous day, when some staff member just came into their room, waking them. Then, they looked online to see some reviews of the place, and found that there was numerous complaints over the past 2 years that guests had things stolen from their room by the staff members! This kind of worried me a bit, as I had been leaving all my stuff strewn about the room, not thinking twice, so I decided to be a bit more vigilant in hiding my expensive items from that point forward. My suit actually fit quite well, no need for alterations, which was a pleasant surprise. After getting that all sorted out, I hired a bike and went for a little ride around the town to take some photos and enjoy the lovely city. Hoi an is such a quant and quiet city, but is very beautiful and pleasant to bike around in. After crossing over the bridges a few times, and biking along the river, I happened to spot the two Dutch girls from the previous night, and joined them for some coffee and beer.
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| Japanese Bridge |
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| Even have a Canada lantern |
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| Charming little town |
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| View from our beer spot |
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| Day Market |
Eventually they were on their way, and I went for a bike ride to check out the beach and see if I could find the guys. I ended up doing the 5 km ride to the beach, which afforded some very nice views of the countryside. I eventually reached the beach, and found that they wanted to charge me 25 cents to park my bike there, and I didn't even want to actually stop for long, I just wanted to pop my head in and take a photo or two, and then head back to town since it was already getting late. Being the cheapskate that I am, I just turned around and headed back to town without actually stepping onto the beach ha ha. I arrived back, found Adam and the Swedes, who were getting ready to go get their fittings done, and were curious about where I got my onesie done, so I tagged along with them to their fittings and showed them my onesie at my shop. I hung out for a bit with them, and then just waited at the hotel for them to get back, as they were heading off to meet up with the Canadian girls, Lenny, and Matt from Nha Trang. We walked the 2.5 kms to meet the others at their hotel called the Greenfield, which was really really nice. If you're ever in Hoi An, I'd recommend that place for sure. They were all surprised to see me wander in, as we hadn't spoken since Nha Trang, and they had no idea where I was when I missed the bus we were all meant to take together. After sitting with them for awhile, we made our way out to a placed called Hugo's for dinner.
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| Another way to use a motorbike for transportation |
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| Lush rice fields |
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| Old man fishing |
Getting to Hugo's was a bit of a battle, as our cab driver was meant to follow the cab driver of the other group, but he lost them quickly and ended up taking us to the wrong market, so we told him to take us to the other market that was near the restaurant. Well he ended up taking us all the way across the river, and dropping us off by the Japanese bridge which was nowhere near the restaurant, and not even really near a market. We grudgingly paid the man for the fare, and ended up taking another 15 minutes of walking to find the damn restaurant. We arrived, and everyone ordered the local specialty called Cau Lau, which is a wonton and noodle salad. It's absolutely amazing! After dinner and a few very expensive drinks, we wandered off to find a place to have a few cocktails. Being the classy girls that Lisa and Lea are, they stopped for some cheap bottle of wine and filled up their plastic bottles as seen here.
Meanwhile, Adam had run out of time to get up to Hanoi, and wasn't able to use the rest of his bus pass, so in exhange for one beer, he offered to give me his pass, as he was flying up the next day instead. Prety sweet deal for me, as the remaining bus trips were probably worth about $15 or so :) We grabbed a beer each for the walk, and then found some guy telling us about a bar across the river that we should go check out, so we did that. The guy and another friend of his ended up taking the girls on their bikes, while us guys were forced to walk all the way. We arrived at the bar, and much like the Sun Bar the previous night, found it to be completely empty, although they did let us be our own DJ and choose all the music they played. They had buy one, get one free buckets, plus a pool table, so we ended up hanging out there for an hour and a half, playing pool and cards, until the place was shutting down due to lack of customers.
We hired a cab and were on our way to the Why Not Bar, but pulled up in front and found it to be completely dead, so we had our driver take us to another place, which ended up being super big and super filled. We ended up staying there for a good 3 hours, and met a pretty nice group of Norwegian girls that were staying at the same hotel as the Canadian girls. After hanging out with them for quite awhile, and running into Darragh from Nha Trang, as well, the place was shutting down so we all decided to head back to the Sun Bar for the rest of the night. The place was a lot more full than the previous day, as everyone seemed to spill into there once the other places were closed. I had hit it off pretty good with the one Norwegian girl, but of course after about 2 hours of chatting, I found out from her friend that she had a serious b/f, and that it wasn't going to go anywhere ha ha damn...just my luck but oh well! I think I ended up staying there until about 4 am, when I finally gave up on the night, and walked back with this cool British guy named Nick and some American girl named Pam that I met the previous night. I found my way back for the night, and had hoped to get up early enough to have breakfast with Adam before he left, but that never did materialize.
After sleeping in, I wandered over to Mr. King's for another delicious bowl of Pho plus some friend wontons and a coffee, and then hired a bike again and went riding around town some more. I first had to head back to my tailor shop for a final check on my second dress shirt I had made, and to arrange for the shipping of the things. I decided to throw in a few things from my bag that I was hauling around and didn't really need until I got home, so I had that all weighed up and packed away. It was only $40 for shipping of 5 kgs of stuff, so not too terrible. After that I then had to go find the travel agency where I needed to book my bus ticket to Hue the next day, and after struggling with the poor organization of addresses, found the agency. While there, they of course talked me into a tour in Hue, which was a fairly famous military city, and even managed to talk me into booking a hotel ahead of time. For the first time since I arrived in Thailand in Dec. I made a booking ahead of time...crazy I know! After finishing up there I just biked around town some more and I ended up finding Darragh and his friend Ade in a coffee shop, having some coffee so I joined them for a cup, which ended up turning into 2 beers as well. It ended up being a pretty funny chat with them, as we somehow got on the topic of sewing machines and then Brokeback Mountain, which made for a hilariously gay set of topics amongst 3 guys. I was joking around with them that it was a date and that I was just being a third wheel for them and making things super awkward, but all was good. They were planning on having dinner that night, and since I was solo again, I decided to come meet up with them later in the evening for that.
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| Easy to get lost when one house has two different house numbers... |
I continued on biking around, and managed to grab a hammer and sickle tshirt that I had wanted to get for awhile. The girl initially asked for $10 for the shirt, which I quickly scoffed at, and told her I would only pay $3 for the same shirt in Cambodia. She tried to tell me that the quality was much better in Vietnam, but it was the exact same as Cambodia. I tried to walk away, and she kept dropping her price until I finally agreed to pay $4 for it....pretty decent price for a tshirt I think :) Since I was having luck biking around restaurants and cafes and spotting people I knew, I decided to cross over the river, and just happened to spot the two Swedes, so I joined them for a bit, and then went with them to check out the custom bow ties they had made at another shop, they were pretty awesome I must admit. After that we just headed back to the hotel, and I invited them to come join for dinner that night if they wanted to, and they said they would probably be interested, so I just hung out at the hotel for awhile longer until I was meant to go meet up with Darragh. I knocked on the Swedes' door to see if they were coming, but they weren't around, so I just headed to the restaurant solo. Upon arrival, I didn't see Darragh or his friends, so I sat down at a table for 4. At this point, the crazy owner lady was giving me a hard time saying I was by myself and should move to a table for one and I kept telling her I had friends coming to join me, but she wouldn't believe me! I also tried to order some spring rolls for an appetizer while waiting but she told me they didn't have any, so I just waited a bit longer until the guys showed up.
After they finally showed up, one of them ordered spring rolls and the lady took his order, even though she had told me they weren't any! But then she came back and told him there weren't in fact any....then I ordered some Wonton soup as an appetizer and some Cau Lau for my main, and only received the soup. I ordered the Cau Lau again, twice in fact, and it never showed up after an hour and a half ha ha ha....I asked her and she eventually said it would come tomorrow, and cackled away laughing....I have no clue what her deal was, but she was just crazy!! When I finally realized that there would be no Cau Lau, we settled up our tabs, and were on our way. The boys had wanted to check out a place called the Blue Gecko, but we decided to head to the really busy place we had been at the previous night, which was only a 5 minute walk away. We arrived there, and found it to be a bit quieter than the previous night, so we just found the pool table and played a few games there. Eventually the placed picked up a fair bit more, and a few people from the previous night including some of the Norwegians and Lenny and Matt all showed up and we had a pretty good time. We stuck around there for a few hours, until it again started to die down, and we made our way to the Aussie bar for our night caps, but that of course ended up being closed, so we just went back to the Sun Bar and hung out there for the remainder of the night. The highlight of this night was meeting the love of my life, some girl who had bought about 7 of the party watches and created a belt with them!! Unfortunately, she was on her way out when I arrived, and we could only chat for 5 minutes, so I was sad to realize that I would never see her again and get to speak to her and find out how awesome she probably was ha ha. I did notice that the date on all her watches was out, since it had been a leap year, so after giving her a hard time about that, she was on her way out and I just hung out with the boys. I finally called it quits around 3:30 am, and wandered back to the hotel and had a crappy sleep, as I was starting to come down with a cold.
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| Love of my life, party watch belt girl! |
The next day I was up, had one last dish of amazing Cau Lau, checked out, and was ready to go, waiting for the bus even though I felt terrible. The bus of course was about 35 minutes late, but no surprise there. It was nice to see the bus was fairly empty though, so there was lots of room to stretch out and relax. It was a nice and scenic ride to Hue, including some very lovely coastline. We arrived there, and there happened to be two German guys who were staying at the same hotel as me, and the hotel had arranged for a taxi to come pick us up. Pam, the American girl, also had decided to come to Hue on the same bus, and decided to come check out the same hotel as us. We arrived and got checked in, and then Pam and I just went out for some dinner. I was meant to be doing the City Tour the next day, but then realized that if I did the DMZ tour the next day, and then the City Tour the following day, I could still catch a night bus to Hanoi and not have to spend 3 full nights in Hue, so I booked into that. I had to be up at 6 am for the DMZ tour, and was feeling absolutely terrible from the cold I had acquired. After a short dinner and a beer with Pam, I had to call it a very early night for a change, but unfortunately couldn't sleep at all due to congestion. I probably slept about an hour and a half a most, and was up early for the DMZ tour.
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| mmmm Cau Lau |
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| On the way to Hue |
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| The flags are meant to simulate birds to keep the rats away |
I didn't realize that the tour would have such a damn long bus ride to the tour stops, as it took nearly 2 hours to get from Hue to where we were going to visit spots. I had to laugh a bit at our tour guide, who was an older Vietnamese man, who was having a lot of difficulty working the microphone properly, as it was this old piece of crap mic that had loose wires on the bottom, and he would often have to keep adjusting them to get the mic to work, plus Asians, for some reason, don't realize that you don't have to put your mouth right onto the mic to speak, so they often have very loud and muffled voices that make it very difficult to understand what they're saying! He was a very informative man though, who came from a village where the US Forces basically set up their camp, and had a fair bit of insight into the times during the war. I asked him if the American soldiers treated the villagers well, and he said they were great people, and treated them extremely well, but that the French treated them terrible during the French/Vietnam war a few years prior. Interesting to me, since I look back at some Hollywood movies (which are often quite inaccurate I'll admit) and recall American soldiers shooting helpless Vietnamese peasants in the fields, from their helicopters, so that's why I was curious. He also spoke a fair bit about the use of Agent Orange and it's effects on the locals, and the Americans. He mentioned how the locals didn't receive any compensation from their government, like American soldiers who were affected by the chemicals, did, so that was a bit of a sore point for him, although he did mention that it wasn't really anyones fault at the time, since they didn't know what the poisons could do to people.
We did the 8 hour DMZ tour, and visited several spots such as the Eagle Nest (an American look out point), the famous Highway 1 and 9, a bridge that now connects to the famous Ho Chi Minh trail that the North Vietnamese secretly used to transport supplies and communication from the North to South, an old American military base location that was completely wiped out by the North Vietnamese, a small and very poor Vietnamese village, and finally a huge network of underground caves that were used by a village of Vietnamese to live in for 2 years during heavy bombing in their town. The caves were probably the most impressive part of the tour, as they were a very large network of caves that had 3 different depths, and served as living quarters, birthing quarters, teaching quarters, etc for the town for 2 years. The work required to dig out all these caves would have been incredible. Unfortunately for us tall Westerners, they aren't the easiest to walk around in, as they were designed for short people, so I ended up having a bit of a sore back from touring around them. Here's some pics from the day.
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| Eagle Nest |
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| Bridge connecting Highway 1 to the Ho Chi Minh Trail |
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| Forrest Gump?? |
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| Just before this man tries to sell me American army junk |
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| Small poor village |
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| Curious Village children |
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| War Memorial |
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| Entering the caves |
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| One of the spots the caves came out to...nice view |
We took the long ass 2 hour ride back to town, and upon arrival I was feeling so worn down that I contemplated just going straight to bed, but decided to go out and grab some dinner. I found a nearby spot, and ended up making friends with a nice English girl who was also by herself. We had a few drinks together, but I had to call it another early night since I felt so sick. I managed to sleep a bit better that night, but not a whole lot more than the previous night. I was up and ready for the city tour the next morning, and was picked up only 20 minutes later than I was instructed to be ready for (which was too bad because I really would have liked to have known so I could grab some breakfast before the tour started)! Our first stop on the tour was a conical hat and incense making village, where we watched them for a little bit. I was so hungry that I went next door to grab some Pho for the road, although the guy didn't really speak any English, so it was tough to tell him that I wanted to take it away with me, and that I had to buy some chopsticks off him to eat it with, but eventually we came to an agreement.
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| Incense making |
We then stopped at one of the tombs for one of the Vietnamese kings, where I found a quiet spot on the grass to sit by myself and eat my Pho. Unfortunately, the meat that the shop used for the soup was actually pretty terrible, and was basically all fat, so I just ended up eating the vegetables and noodes from the soup, and tossing all the meat away. After eating my breakfast, I wandered around a bit by myself and then came back to where the bus was waiting.
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| Not too sure what they were doing in that nasty water |
Our next stop was a 2nd tomb for another Vietnamese king, and this tomb was much more impressive than the previous one. It had some impressive stone works, with several different architectural influences. The room where the king's possesions remained, was absolutely amazing, as there were several tile mosaics created, and amazing use of gold flakes. The outside architecture was also quite pleasant to look at.
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| Guards of the King |
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| Eye see you! |
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| My only friend |
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| Amazing tile work |
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| Bust of the King |
We then made our way to a third and final temple, one which is a Unesco World Heritage sight, and is meant to look like a body from above, with two lakes on each side symbolizing the arms, and then a torso and head area made up of small temples. It wasn't as impressive as the 2nd tomb, but still quite nice anyways.
After that stop, we were on our way for lunch at a buffet stop. I was hoping they might have some cool Vietnamese things like rats or snakes, but they only had some very basic rice and vegetable food to offer, so not really all that crazy damn. After eating there, we were on our way to see the Imperial City that used to serve as the capital of Vietnam back in the day. It was an impressive sprawl of land, and in some parts only motorbikes and pedestrians were allowed in, no vehicles, so that made for some nice quiet areas. We toured around the entire old city, including into the Forbidden City part, where only royals and select guests were allowed to enter during the times of rule. It probably took us about an hour and a half to fully tour around the grounds, as they were absolutely massive.
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| Entrance to the Imperial Palace |
Our next stop was some old garden house that was owned by one of the King's Mandarins (not the orange, but the royal employee that I assume the orange is named after). It was a small and quaint home, that had a nice garden area, but there wasn't really too much to see and we were done visiting it within 15 minutes. After that it was on to the Pagoda and Temple, which is where my camera decided it had enough, and died, so no more photos were able to be taken. It was a very lovely temple, and it was interesting to see the monks wearing brown garb, instead of the orange garb I've become accustomed to seeing monks wear...not too sure if it has something to do with where they actually live, the type of Buddhism they follow, or if it's just up to their temple to choose their robe colours. After touring around there, we hopped onboard a river boat that took us on a little cruise down the river back to the city core area. We were dropped off there and told to find our way back to our respective hotels, which was a bit of a pissoff, since I had to catch a bus in 30 minutes, and had absolutely no idea where I was. The guide wasn't terribly helpful either, as he just motioned towards a particularly tall building, and said to several of us that “your hotel is back behind that building somewhere” and went off on his way. I walked with a few people from the tour, and didn't really recognize where we were, but had to just take a gamble that I wasn't staying near their hotels, since it took a fair bit of driving earlier in the day from my place to their hotels. I split off and wandered around aimlessly, without any real idea where I was, but somehow managed to get onto a main street that I did recognize and find my way back to the hotel with some time to spare!
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| The Namesake of the Guesthouse's owner, the Mandarin |
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| Monk's Pagoda |
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| The last photo of the day, nice turtle! |
I was so sick and tired by this point and had a massive headache develop, so I just laid in the lobby hoping for the bus to show up soon (as it was already about 30 minutes late). It finally showed up, and I was happy to see that I was one of the first people to be picked up, so I was able to go in the very back and grab one of the beds that had way more leg room and a good place to leave my bag. I was probably 10 minutes into the ride to the main station to pick up others, and I had already fallen asleep because I was feeling so sick. We picked up several others, including one Italian guy who decided to come sleep in the back bunks near me, but then to my surprise, one of the bus staff members actually made him get out of the area where I was, and move to one of the other single bunks...so I ended up having three beds for myself to sprawl out in, which did wonders for my sleeping ability. I ended up sleeping the first 4 hours until we stopped at a place for a bite to eat. None of the people there spoke any English really, and I just wanted to get some plain rice, as I didn't feel like eating anything else, and pointed at the one dish with rice and covered everything up except for the rice part with my fingers, and thought they understood what I wanted, but of course that didn't work out and I received the entire dish, with some dodgy looking meat that I had no need for. It ended up sitting down with two really cute German girls, named Daniela and Aldona, as well as the Italian guy. We chatted awhile and had our quick dinner, then were back on the bus and on our way to Hanoi.
We arrived several hours later, and that was my first shocking moment, as I stepped off the bus and immediately noticed several stands with barbecue dogs hanging up. Yeah, welcome to Hanoi tourists! It's not really a big deal for people to eat dog in Hanoi, but so many tourists obviously frown upon it, since we're accustomed to seeing them as pets only. We spoke with one guy had the bus stop who had a decent priced hotel in the old quarters, and offered to pay for the taxi ride to check out his place, so myself and the two Germans hopped in a cab and were on our way to the Old Quarter. One of the only reasons I came to Hanoi earlier than I would have liked to was that I wanted to try and get my China visa sorted out since it was one of the places I later want to visit on my trip, and figured I would have a few days in Hanoi to sort out a visa. We arrived at the hotel, and I found the room to be fine for $10 a night, but the girls wanted one with a window so they went to a nearby hotel owned by the same guy. After checking in, I asked if he was able to do China visas and he said he could do that, but since it was Tuesday, I needed to have it back by Friday since my flight out was on Sunday, and the Chinese embassy would be closed on Saturday. Since it was such short notice, I also had to do a rush job on it to have it back by Friday, but this is where the confusion was created. I gave him the only two details he asked for, which was my name and place of residence, but didn't ask for any dates, which I found a bit odd......so he sent off the visa and I had to pay the $87 for it to be done.
I had my free breakfast, and waited for the girls to come back and meet me at 11 am, to go on a little walk around the city. They showed up, and we were on our way, but they hadn't eaten, which was surprising to me, as I had figured they would have, otherwise I wouldn't have eaten myself and joined them for lunch. This lack of eating turned into a 2 hour wander around the area, trying to find a suitable restaurant for both of them to eat at, since Daniela was a vegetarian, and they were on a budget and didn't want to really go to a place that was too expensive. We kept wandering around and around, and couldn't really find a place that they agreed on, so it was getting a bit frustrating, but I do have a lot of patience so it was fine. Hanoi also isn't exactly a city with a big food/restaurant culture, at least not in the places we were wandering around. While wandering around we passed several places that were selling what appeared to be other people's gravestones, talk about not respecting the dead! We finally found an Aussie restaurant that appealed to them both and hung out there, chatting and getting to know one another a bit more. After hanging out there for awhile, we were trying to figure out what to do, and I had recalled that Ho Chi Minh was entombed somewhere in the city, and I figured it would be neat to go see his creepy old body, and the girls agreed.
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| Now you can own Do Thi Trao's gravestone for the cheap price of $9.99! |
We wandered outside and the little rickshaw drivers asked us where we wanted to go, and they wanted 100,000 dong each, which was way too much, so we found a cab and told him to take us to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum....well, this was a huge mistake, as the cabbie took us for a joy ride around town, that made no sense considering a guy had told us it was about 7 km away from where we were grabbing the cab, and we were already 15 kms into the ride.....we kept asking him where he was taking us and telling him Ho Chi Minh, and he kept nodding and saying okay, but then suddenly dropped us off at this huge museum that was apparently the Hanoi museum, and way out in the boonies!! Yeah thanks for nothing dude! But I guess we did get to see a fair bit of the city that way. We decided to check out the museum for a bit, but there wasn't really a whole lot there, so we had the English speaking staff help us out and write down the Ho Chi Minh location in Vietnamese and call us another cab. We finally arrived there at 4:10 pm, and found the museum to be closed at 4 pm..damn! We also found the mausoleum, but I later found out that you can only enter it from 8 am to 10 am, so I never did get to see Ho Chi Minh's body...ah well. We toured around and then decided to try and walk back towards the hostel, even though we didn't really know the way. We didn't make it far when we found a nice restaurant on one of the lakes near the old quarter, and settled in there for a bite to eat. After a nice little meal, we were on our way again, and Daniela stopped at a travel agency and asked for directions to our place. The people in there were so nice that they went on the internet and mapped out our route and wrote everything down for us....it was quite nice, because if you talk to most travelers, they say that Vietnamese people are quite rude and not helpful at all, but other than our cab driver, we had found the exact opposite to be true.
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| Intense traffic |
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| Just another day in Hanoi |
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| Hey man, what's happening |
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| Bansai trees |
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| Ho Chi Minh Museum |
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| Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, and Aldona asking the guard if it is in fact the Mausoleum |
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| Presidential Palace...was quickly shooed away from takin |
We arrived back in our hotel area, and decided to head out that night for a beer or two at a big backpacker's place called Hanoi Backpacker's that I had heard about from Darragh, who happened to be staying there. We popped by there and had a tasty dinner, and a few beers, but the girls were fairly tired, and we had booked into a Ha Long Bay trip the next day, that was departing at 8 am, so it was meant to be a quiet night. I figured I would have one or two beers with the girls, and hang out with Darragh and his group for a bit, and then call it an early night...well of course my fear of missing out got the better of me, and soon it was 11 pm and the hostel bar was closing (yeah I know, it's a bit strange to have this massive backpacker's place with all these people, and then close the bar at 11 pm...but that's the way they roll I guess. A few of the staff members then take everyone on a pub crawl around the area if people want to continue on with the night....so I started walking with Darrah, Jon, Ade, and the girls they were with to the next place...and was about to leave when one of the girls talked me into coming inside for one beer....so I obliged and came into the nightclub place. It ended up being a pretty tightly packed place, but pretty good music and some cute women around. I happened to notice the ballcap that one guy was wearing, that was a red one with a white KC on it....and I had only seen that ballhat once ever, and it was my brother Luc's ball team in Kelowna that had them, so I asked the dude if he was from Kelowna, and he was shocked that I asked him that, but once I explained the ball hat, it all made sense to him. I ended up meeting a few other cool people there, but was pretty tired and not entirely into it, so was ready to go home, but somehow kept sticking around for unknown reasons... I happened to run into Joe, one of the Swedish guys, who was passing around his iPhone to get our email addresses, but one hour later he came back and asked if any of us had seen it...apparently it was stolen....which is a fairly common occurrance in SE Asia. This is a major reason why I didn't buy an iPhone for this trip, as I knew it would just be another thing to worry about.
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| Another night out, spontaneous limbo fests! |
Eventually the place was being shut down, and the pub crawl group continued on to another spot...which I again joined...and again have no real good reason why...we ended up in some pretty quiet place that was pretty empty, as most of the pub crawlers had scattered away, and it was basically just myself and Darragh's group of friends. We hung out at this last place for probably another hour or so, and then they were continuing on elsewhere, but I was too tired to go any further, and it was already about 3:30 am...arghh. So I get outside and ask a motorbike for how much the ride home would be, and he wants to charge me $1 US which is way too much, as it was only a 10 minute walk back or so...so I just start walking....and continue on my way when another motorbike approaches me and asks me if I want a ride, and I ask him how much, and he wants 75 cents...although I'm already only about 5 or 6 minutes away from my hotel, so I offer him 50 cents but he won't take it so I continue walking. I'm probably about 5 blocks away, when this fully tinted black car starts following slowly beside me and starts talking to the motor bike guy in Vietnamese....at this point the motorbike guy offers me one last ride, but I'm only 3 blocks away so I say no thanks...and he tells me to “be safe, have a goodnight” and peels off. At this point, this black car is still tailing me slowly, and I'm walking by myself with no one in sight, and am getting a leery feeling. The car just keeps following me, and I get to about a block away and start running towards the hotel, and the car speeds up and keeps pace with me...I get across the street and find the hotel to have it's garage door thing shut and the car blasts beside me honking the horn, but continues on...I think this was probably the 2
nd time I've ever had a really bad feeling about walking around in a foreign country at night. I banged several times to get the staff to open up and let me in, and then crashed for the night.
They had told me they would pick us up between 8 and 830 am for the trip to Ha Long, and since Vietnamese are never really on time, I didn't set my alarm until 8 am, thinking I would have lots of time, but woke up to the staff banging on my door at 7:55 saying the ride had arrived...geez! So I gather myself and come downstairs and find the girls ready to go and the driver outside. I had probably only had about 4 hours of sleep in total, but at least I wasn't hungover or anything. We hopped in the bus, and picked up a whole bunch of people and were on our way. I had initally wanted to do an overnight stay in Ha Long Bay, but realized that I would be by myself anyways, and that there wasn't a whole lot added to the normal day trip itenerary other than sleeping on an expensive boat, so I just went with the day trip. The actual bus ride to the place was soooooo long, it took probably about 3.5 hours or so, maybe 4 to get to Ha Long, so it was a good thing I brought my iPod with me to watch some tv shows, otherwise it would have been a very boring ride, as I ended up having to sit by a bunch of Vietnamese people in the front of the bus, who didn't speak any English. We finally arrived in Ha Long, and received our boat tickets and were escorted to our boat.
The boat itself was fairly nice inside, and we were able to sit on the top of the boat, once we had left the port area, as there had been a boat accident fairly recently, and I think there had been people on top of the boat that were injured or killed, so they made a rule that the boats had to clear away from the other boats and get into open water before passengers could sit up top. There's sooooo many boats taking people to Ha Long, so I can see how accidents would happen. We drove along and took in the beautiful scenery, first stopping at a floating market place, where we picked up some pineapple, that ended up being fairly sour and not so good, but that's what you have to expect when you're buying from some dodgy boat ladies who probably keep their fruit way past expiration and sell it to foreigners ha ha. After lingering around the area, we then had our onboard lunch, which was a fairly small portion of fish, rice, vegetables served to each table, and was meant to fill 6 people...yeah good luck with that. The food was alright, but nothing really that special, especially considering I looked over at another boat's meal when we stopped later on for people to go kayaking, and noticed they had all kinds of lobster, crab, fish, etc.....must have been the deluxe tour! We stopped and waited for the people who had signed up for the kayaking to go do their thing, and just hung out, enjoying the lovely scenery.
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| Enjoying the sun chair! |
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| me and my sexy German lady friends |
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| Stuffing my face mmm! |
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| Ha Long at it's finest...other than the lack of sun |
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| Fruit lady we bought some pineapple from, it wasn't very good! |
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| Cuddlefish |
After the kayakers were finished up, we went on to check out this amazing cave. I think that had to be the highlight of the Ha Long trip, as it was absolutely enormous and so stunning! Here's some pics from the cave.
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| If you look closely, the shadow on the left resembles a little man in a hat |
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| After the cave tour, a nice sight |
After we were wrapped up with the cave, it was already time to head back to shore and catch our bus back to Hanoi. While we were waiting for the boat to leave, probably one of the most random things happened. There was a Korean or Japanese guy sitting on a sun chair next to myself and the girls, in fact it was the sun chair that I had just been sitting on, and even had my jacket on it to save the spot, but he took it anyways, and all of a sudden a tiny little fish lands on his leg and falls on the ground.....Daniela at first thinks that the fish jumped out from the water, but the fish is so small and the top of the boat is a good 20 feet up or more, so there's no way that would have happened. We looked up and saw a large sea bird flying about, and realized that the bird must have had the fish in his beak and dropped it ha ha ha...and for it to land on this guy's leg of all places, too funny! Earlier in my trip, I had bought some birds in Laos and set them free to try and obtain some good bird karma, and if I had been sitting in that chair like I should have been, then it would have been I who had the fish dropped on, so I think my bird karma theory is working! After the fish folly, the Koreans/Japanese guys decided to make some funny poses and photos and get Aldona to take their photographs, but then she decided that she wanted to be in the poses with them. Pretty soon, all the guys in the group wanted their photo taken with their respective cameras since they had the hot German girls in their photo, and since I was the only other person up top, I had about 7 different cameras to take the same photo!
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| The fish that came from the sky |
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| After the fish falls on him, he contemplates eating it |
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| Hilarious Koreans |
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| The camera man of the day apparently |
We returned back to shore shortly after this photo session, hopped aboard our bus, and were on our way. I was pretty exhausted and kept falling asleep, but kept plopping my head on this poor Asian guy's shoulder sitting next to me ha ha, so I kept waking up and having to apologize. We arrived back in town around 9 pm, and decided to head out for dinner. We were going to eat at the Backpacker's hostel again, as the food was really good, but happened to walk past a Mexican restaurant a few blocks away, and suddenly my interest was piqued. After looking at the menu, we decided to settle in there for a margharita and some massive and tasty burritos. Before we knew it, once dinner and drinks were finished, it was already 11 pm, so we hurried over to the Backpacker's place to find it had emptied out already and they were gone on their pub crawl...so we wandered around a bit more and found a lively place called Hair of the Dog and wandered inside. The place was actually a pretty cozy but rocking venue and we had a nice time there. I happened to run into Lenny, who had just returned from doing 2 nights in Ha Long, and he said it wasn't worth it, as you didn't even get to spend the 2nd night on a boat, you had to go to some crappy hostel/hotel thing on an island, so I was glad that I didn't do that trip. We didn't spend too much time at the place, maybe another hour and a bit, before we were all tired and decided to wander home. The girls had actually gotten lost the previous night on their walk home, and this night was much of the same, except it was mostly my fault they got lost. I happened to have a business card from my hotel, but that didn't help much, as the map isn't very detailed on the back, and we ended up taking a turn too soon I think, and ended up doing a full circle and ending up right back near where we had originally left from, oops! Finally, after starting the same path back and not making the wrong turn, I recognized the area we were in and managed to get us all back to our places eventually.
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| yes, kind of odd to spot a Rolls Royce in such a poor neighbourhood |
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| Just another night in Hanoi with Lenny |
The next day the girls had planned to leave for Laos on an evening bus, so they just wanted to have a quiet day and wander around a bit before heading off. We just wandered around a bit to find some lunch and coffee and then came back to the hotel, when the girls happened to recognize two Dutch fellows that were staying at the same hotel as me. They were up for heading out for some lunch themselves, so we tagged along to have a coffee and a beer and catch up with them for awhile. Eventually it was time to head back to the hotel, as the girls had to get their bags ready and hang out a bit longer until their taxi came to pick them up and head off to their bus. I hung out at the hotel with them for awhile, but then their taxi never showed up! Pretty soon it was 10 minutes before their bus was meant to leave, and they decided they would just have to take the morning bus instead, so they were around for one last night. We decided to head over to the Backpacker's place again for a night out, and arrived and found a fair bit of people about. Darragh was back from their Ha Long trip, which was actually a booze cruise, and he was pretty haggard looking and had lost his voice mostly, so he couldn't say a whole lot, while the rest of his crew were all pretty tired and taking it easy that night. The Dutch guys ended up joining us as well, and we hung out at the place basically until last call, which was at 10:50 pm this night...geeez so damn early! As we were being showed out the door, I noticed a group of people surrounding two girls in brightly coloured suits, and immediately remembered that Annie and Ingrid from Nha Trang were planning on getting Dumb and Dumber suits made up in Hoi An. Of course it was them, and they happened to convince their friend Therese to also get a funny suit made up.
I wandered over and surprised the girls, and quickly caught up with them. The hostel staff were leading people off to the pub crawl bars, but Darragh had mentioned they were going to go back to the Hair of the Dog, and I was trying to convince the German girls and the Dutch guys to go as well. They were keen, but then the huge crowd of people kind of swayed them into going with them and I lost them, as I was walking with Annie and her group of Scandinavians who pulled me into some small bar that ended up being completely filled with only Vietnamese people. It was quite a sight to see, as it was basically a narrow little corridor with tables on either side filled with Vietnamese having bottle service, and a tiny little area packed with people dancing. The Norwegian guys I was with were massive, and towered over everyone in the place, so we were quite the attraction to others. We probably only lasted about 30 minutes in that sweatbox, providing entertainment to many Vietnamese, and pissing off others, as the guys would keep running into the tables and people that were nearby. After getting outside, everyone wanted to know where to go and I suggested the Hair of the Dog again, but the damn Norwegians weren't listening to me ha ha. They decided they were hungry and saw the Mexican restaurant that I had been at previously, so we wandered in there, but the owner informed them that the kitchen was closing in 10 minutes so they would have to order in a hurry, and this kind of made them all feel unwelcome, so they quickly decided to leave that place. At this point they again wanted to know a good place to go, and I suggested Hair of the Dog, but they still wouldn't listen and wanted to go to this place called the Lighthouse, so we hopped in two cabs and made our way there.
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| Partying Norsk style in a Vietnamese bar |
The Lighthouse is actually more of an after hours place, so it was completely empty, and we couldn't even find the others who were ahead of us, so we were about to leave when one of the guys came running into the place to grab us and tell us to follow them to the next place, which was an old ship that was converted into a bar. The place was fairly small but it was a pretty cool spot, with a wicked theme. We hung out there for quite a few hours, in fact, we were there until about 4 am I think. We ended up losing pretty much everyone, and it was just Annie and I left over. Some of the locals were still there and pulled us over to the dance floor since we were the only foreigners left, and the one girl grabbed me and one of the guys grabbed her and were trying to get us to dance with them. I was fine with this, but Annie looked uncomfortable, so I ended up just grabbing her back, but by this point it was late enough that it was time to get going. We ended up grabbing the first taxi we saw, which was a huge mistake.
If you're ever out late in Vietnam, there's only really one or two taxi companies that you can trust to be honest, as the meters are often rigged, and this was the case with this taxi. We hopped in and went back to my hotel, and the meter suddenly jumped from 30,000 Dong to 300,000 Dong ($25 US) before we knew it! We pulled up to our place, after the guy got really lost, and he wanted me to pay the full amount, which was a complete rip off, as it should have cost about 40,000 dong at most. I didn't even have enough money to pay the guy, and he was getting fairly aggressive and confrontational with me. I had to get Annie to go knock on my hotel door to get them up and to talk to this guy since he didn't really speak any English, but the hotel staff wasn't answering, and the guy was screaming in my face, give me my money!! It was quite the sight, and I was actually getting a bit worried that he might try and do some harm to me, so we ended up giving him about 100,000 Dong, most of which was provided by Annie just so the guy would leave...crazy stuff, so he took that and drove off. Then we knocked on the door a bit more, and the staff opened up and wouldn't let Annie come stay in my room without a passport! We had to pretend that she was my g/f and had just come from Sweden to visit me and had arrived that day, but that her bag was with her friends. It was a huge argument to have her stay at the place, as they didn't want any unregistered guests staying there, so I told him I would go upstairs and check out at that exact moment since I couldn't have her over in my room. Once I told him that I was checking out then he suddenly said she could stay the night, but only one night and she had to write down her passport number, visa number, home address, etc on a piece of paper.....ridiculous! She ended up just writing down some fake stuff and that was that, but it was still pretty frustrating ordeal. While we were arguing with the guy, I also happened to notice that the taxi cheat had come back and was sitting out front of the place, lingering around and had suddenly two friends with him, which was making me even more leery, but fortunately we got into the hotel and were good for the night.
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| Viagra, now on sale at the bar |
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| Ship nightclub |
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| Nice jacket I borrowed, just my colour :) |
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| Disco Annie |
The next day we woke up around lunch time, and it was time for one of the more funny walk of shames ever, as she was still wearing that silly suit from the previous night, and wandering around in the daylight hours with it was going to be hilarious. To be a good sport I offered to wear my orange onesie to accompany her on her walk. We came downstairs, and was surprised to see that Aldona and Daniela were still at the hotel with the Dutch guys. Apparently the guys had convinced them to go to Sapa with them instead of going straight to Laos, so they stuck around instead of taking their morning bus. They were all heading off to breakfast, and rather than going back to her hostel, Annie decided to come along for breakfast too, so we had our hilarious walk through the streets, much to the enjoyment of the locals. A main reason I wanted to go back to the Hanoi Backpacker's for breakfast was that they served Eggs Benedict, and they certainly didn't disappoint, as it was absolutely phenomenal! Darragh and Ade happened to be there as well, and I was trying to talk them into going for either snake or else to the water puppet theatre that evening, and it sounded like they were keen on the water puppets. After finishing breakfast, I had to head back to the hostel to check on my passport, and rest a little bit. I was quite disappointed to find that my passport had my Chinese visa done, but they put the wrong date on the entry point, basically rendering it useless to me! The owner tried to tell me that it was fine, I could go there at any point within the 3 months, but the visa clearly states I have to enter before April 7th, which really doesn't work with my plans...so it was basically $75 wasted, and there was no way to really argue over it. After that fiasco, I hung out for a bit with Aldona and Daniela and the Dutch guys, as they were leaving in the evening, and I had decided I would head over and check out the water puppet theatre. I said my goodbyes for the 2nd time, and wandered back to the Hanoi Backpacker's to see if Darragh and the lads were still interested in going with me, but they ended up deciding to hang out and relax instead.
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| Best walk of shame couple ha ha |
So I just wandered on down towards the water puppet theatre, bought a ticket and stepped inside to enjoy the show. The show was quite entertaining even though it was all in Vietnamese. Water puppetry apparently started in the rice fields in remote villages, where the locals would create these puppets and have a show in the rice paddy. It's now been passed on through time, and now is reproduced in a theatre setting in Hanoi, and Saigon I believe. So I sit down, and grab an English program, which just basically tells the order of the “performances” of the show. We were treated to some amazing music, played by a crazy array of instruments I've never seen before. I had a hard time even picking out what sounds were coming from which instruments at times, since the performers looked so delicate, especially on the string instruments, that you could barely tell they were even plucking a note. They also had some vocals, and they would cover songs about the section of the play at the time. It was actually quite humourous as well, even though we didn't understand what was being said. I also spent a fair bit of the time trying to figure out if the puppet strings were from above the set, or from inside the set house, as it seemed nearly impossible for the puppets to not tangle with each other based on some of the moves being performed. After about 1 hour and a bit, the performance was done and I was on my way back to the hotel. I arrived back, and again much to my surprise, the German girls were still at the hotel, as their taxi still hadn't shown up still ha ha ha! So they were forced to take an even later bus that evening, so we I just chilled out with them a bit longer before they finally were on their way, and then wandered back over to the Backpacker's Hostel yet again.
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| Water puppet band in action |
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| Coconut tree climbing puppet |
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| Final scene of water puppet show |
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| Hanoi at night |
I arrived, and found one of the Norwegian guys from the previous night hanging around, and he invited me to come sit down with his group, but then I followed him over and he just sat at the tour desk talking to one of the girls there. I felt kind of awkward lingering around, and didn't really know anyone else there, so I just sat by the post, reading tour posters and such. Shortly after though, Lisa and Lea called me over, as they were sitting at the table hanging out. It was their last night before heading off to Canada the next day, so they were having one last party night. I joined in with them, and we ended up having a few drinks and catching up a bit, when Annie and Ingrid showed up, in their suits of course, ready for one last night out, so they came and joined us as well. Unfortunately, we were only able to have the cheap hostel drinks and chat for an hour and a bit since the hostel closed really really early this night...like 10:40 pm they did last call...on a Friday! What the hell right. So we joined up with the hostel pub crawl group, and went wandering along, ending up again at the bar/nightclub I was at a few nights earlier. We arrived there, and the Canadians and I settled in and bought a sheesha, and enjoyed that, while meeting some super wasted Perth guy, who was passing out at the table. At one point, he went up to buy several drinks, paid for them, and forgot he had bought them, and left them behind. Lisa happened to be there, and say it, so she grabbed them, and we all had free beers, win!
But once again, the place we were attending was shut down super early, this time by the police. Annie told me a funny story about how one of them actually slapped her ass and told her to get moving ha ha ha....damn these Vietnamese cops are pervs! They cleared the whole place out by about 12 am...which is kind of crappy for a nightclub, but oh well, so everyone spilled on over to the next place, where we probably hung out another 30 to 40 minutes before the police then came in and shut that place down, yikes! Annie and Ingrid had to go on their Ha Long Bay tour the next morning at 7 am, so they were shutting it down for the night, so I walked with Annie back to her hostel, and said our goodbyes as we wouldn't see each other again, so long Swedish g/f! I was pretty tired myself, so I just wandered back to the guesthouse, although I did get quite lost for about 30 minutes on the way back. Even though I had a small map, the streets in Hanoi's old quarter are so windy and unmarked at times, so it gets to be extremely confusing. I got back and caught some much needed sleep.
The next day I woke up, and figured I would try and get down to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum to check out his body since the last time I was there, it wasn't open, plus I wanted to do some shopping and organize some crazy snake eating that night too. I wandered over to the Backpacker's again, to check and see if Darragh and the lads would be keen on the snake eating that night, and if they wanted to get out for the day. I arrived and found them all to still be in bed, even though it was already 1 pm, so I hung out in the hostel common room, chatting with Jackie, a Scottish girl I had met several times throughout Vietnam, and she informed me that the Mausoleum was actually closed by 10 am, damnit! So I just hung out for a bit with her and her Canadian and Swedish friends, who told me a hilarious story about Ade, Darragh's friend, with regards to his manhood, saying he was like a spear ha ha. I later told Darragh and John this over coffee, and we agreed to call Ade “The Spear” from that point forward. I also said my goodbyes to the Canadian girls, as they were off on their way home and hung out a bit longer until Darragh and John were ready to go for a wander around and check out the local market.
We made our way down that way, as I wanted to get one of the military red star Vietnamese hats, as well as look for new sunglasses and such, while the boys were looking for other things. Before I could even get to the market, I found some lady on the street selling the hats I was interested in, but she made too high of an initial price, and I wanted to look around a bit more, but once she realized I was interested she just kept hounding me and hounding me, and subsequently dropping the price. Eventually I got the hat for $1.50, damn Vietnam is cheap! After that we made it to the market, which was bustling, but didn't really have anything for me, although Darragh and John did do some shoe shopping, and I even convinced Darragh to get some hipster glasses!
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| Not enjoying the shoe shopping so much! |
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| Shoe shopping with John and Darragh |
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| Hipster John |
After the market shopping the boys wanted to head home and shower and get ready before we were off to do the snake eating, while I kind of wanted to go and try to find a wild dog barbecue stand, to at least take photos, and maybe give it a try! I wandered around a bit more, but was unable to find any stands nearby, so I just went back to the hotel, showered and packed up, and organized a taxi ride for the next morning to the airport. After getting that all out of the way, I headed back to the hostel, to look for the boys and head out for the snake thing. I found them, and they said they still weren't ready, but to hang out for 20 minutes or so, so I grabbed a beer, and chilled with Matt and Lenny, who were having dinner and a few beers. They were actually keen on the snake thing as well, so once they were all finished up, they were ready to go, but we were still waiting for the others. Eventually, after about an hour and 20 minutes of waiting for them, they all emerged, and said they had found 2 girls from their room who were keen to go as well. Then, when we went to the tour desk to book a taxi cab, we found out that there were another 6 Canadians who also wanted in on the snake eating thing, so suddenly we had a huge group. We got our two taxi van cabs and were on our way.
The driver of our taxi didn't seem to know where he was going, and seemed to take us on some wild ride, into some strange areas of town, and had to keep stopping and asking for directions before finally fining the place. We arrived and were greeted by the owner and her staff, and were taken over to the snake pens to see the snakes. They also offered the ability to eat other random animals such as Porcupines! We hung around the pen, and one of the staff members took out one of the snakes and let us play around with it for awhile, to kill some time until the other van arrived. Their van had gotten even more lost, and it took them a good 15 minutes extra to arrive. They finally arrived, and we all were shown to the dining area, where more time was wasted, trying to determine who all would actually eat snake hearts. There were 4 of us who were keen to eat the actual hearts, but only enough people to split 3 whole snakes. The whold system of what to order and what you paid was a complete mess, but eventually we settled it all out, and one of the strangest experiences of my travel life began.
Lenny was the first to go, and much to the shock of the group, the snake he was to eat the heart of was actually a snake we had nicknamed Gus, who had been hanging out at the table and playing with the whole group, so Lenny looked like a cold bastard. We all huddled around, as the staff held out the snake, cut it open, and Lenny bit out the still beating heart of the snake! And then the staff held out the snake and dropped its blood into shot glasses. After that, it was then John's turn, and finally I was up. I really like snakes, so I actually felt kind of bad as that cool creature was sliced open, but I just closed my eyes, and bit down and swallowed the heart whole, I didn't even bother chewing, as John's snake heart had actually exploded in his mouth when he bit it, and I didn't really want that sensation ha ha!
Here's a poor video link...
http://youtu.be/v68I04V-ffM
After my turn, Matt finished off the snake heart eating group, and the staff took the snakes off to be prepared in various dishes. We all sat around, and enjoyed some beers and conversation over the crazy events of the night. Eventually, the staff brought out shot glasses filled with snake blood and rice wine, as well as shots of snake bile and rice wine for everyone. Not everyone was so keen on the bile shots, including the two English girls that came with. Poor John wanted to have a video taken of him doing these shots, and Darragh screwed it up twice, so I had to film him a third time, as he took his third shot of bile.....needless to say, when I tried my bile shot, it was so awful I almost vomited, but at least the snake blood shot wasn't so bad! After that, the staff brought out various snake dishes, including spring rolls, minced snake meat, and snake and rice, and we all chowed down on that.
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| He loves snakes, honest! |
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| Matt eating the beating snake heart |
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| Matt chasing his snake heart |
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| Staff removing blood and bile from snakes! |
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| Snake blood war paint! |
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| Snake blood and bile shots! |
After dinner was all wrapped up, we paid our bills and were on our way back to the hostel, arriving to find the place quite packed and ready for another big night out on the town. Of course, being a weekend night, the bar itself shut down super early again, but no worries, so we we wandered down to the Hair of the Dog to hang out there in the shisha lounge. It was John, Darragh, The Spear (Ade), and this cute German girl named Nina, who The Spear had been working on for several days now. They all sat down at a table, but there wasn't really much room for me, so I was kind of a bit of an outcast, so I grabbed a seat with two Danish girls for a bit, but eventually they wandered off so I just kind of hung out around the table by myself...loner! I found it quite entertaining to watch both Ade and Darragh both trying to make their moves on Nina, but I kept noticing her looking me way at times with an interested look, but didn't think too much of it. I was actually getting kind of bored, and thinking about heading home, when the place ended up closing and they were all going to head over to the Lighthouse. This Nina girl told me to tag along with them, and I figured why not, so we were on our way. We arrived there, and found the place to be absolutely packed compared to the previous night, which made for a pretty good party. I kind of just hung around the pool table area with Darragh and Nina and John, while Ade was out wandering around trying to meet girls, but then would always come back and keep hitting on Nina. I kind of just played it cool, but kept noticing her getting closer to me at times, and really starting to chat me up, but I still didn't act on it. We were there for probably an hour and a bit, casually flirting, when John was talking to her for a bit, and came by me and gave me a nudge and said I should definitely go for it.
I had been talking to her for awhile, about her interesting love triangle, but she did tell me she wasn't interested in either of the guys, so I guess that was a green light, and I just went for it. I was kind of being sneaky about it, as I didn't really want the other guys to get too pissed off, but it was a fun secretive little thing. At one point I did notice some trouble brewing by the pool table, as some foreigner was arguing and getting into one of the Vietnamese guy's face, and I could just sense trouble brewing. As I mentioned before, I've heard stories about Vietnamese people ganging up and beating up foreigners pretty ruthlessly, and sure enough, after I pulled Nina off to the a safer spot, the one guy took a swing at the Vietnamese guy, and all of a sudden there were 3 Vietnamese jumping him....the stupid idiot then took to hiding under the pool table to escape the melee, and there was probably 5 Vietnamese guys around the table at this point, kicking under the table at him...ahhh stupid stupid. Eventually, staff managed to come over and pull the guy out, but not before he got punched a few more times, and they got him out of the building. Eventually it was getting pretty late and Nina wanted to leave, so I offered to walk her back to the hostel. Normally I'd try for a bit more, but since it was already 5 am and I had to be up at 7:30 am to leave for the airport, and she was staying in a hostel I didn't bother, so we just had a last makeout session and said our goodbyes, and I was off to the hotel.
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| Darragh the sexiest man at the club! |
I obviously didn't sleep much, and was up early to head off to the airport to make my way towards the Philippines. I was exhausted of course, grabbed my last bowl of Pho soup, checked in, and was on my way to Singapore, trying to catch a bit of sleep on the way. I arrived in Singapore, and had to clear customs, since my layover was about 12 hours, the airline recommended I retrieve my baggage and recheck it in, as it was likely to be lost, and this ended up leading to a fiasco for me. If you look at Singapore on the map, you'll see that it is clearly further West than Vietnam, yet the time zone is apparently 1 hour ahead. I decided to sleep in the Singapore airport a few hours, right by my check in counter, and get up an hour and 15 minutes before my flight to check in. I woke up, and casually looked at the flight board, and it said my flight was having it's last call, wtf!!! I ran over to the check in counter, asked around what time it was and found out it was already 6:10 am instead of 5:10 am...fml! So I had to rebook my flight, costing $100, plus rebook my connecting flight in the Philippines, for another $40, so it was a $180 mistake basically..ughh....and that ends my Vietnamese adventures, will continue with the Philippines next!
Rye
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