I will never understand why taxi drivers come to bus stations to pick up tourists when they cannot understand a word of what you were saying. Hanoi Backpackers' Hostel had been recommended by numerous people along the trip, so thats where we decided to head. Quite a simple name of a place you would think? The name of the town, what it was, and who it was for. We pointed at our bags, made sleeping actions, tried saying it slower but nothing worked so we headed out to the main road where we finally found a taxi driver who knew his arse from his elbow and took us straight there.
It was around 7.30am when we arrived and I have never seen anything like what we walked in to. The huge lobby was full of people in bright sombreros and you could not move so at this point, after all the aggravation it took to get there, we were expecting them to be full. Luckily, we got a bed each and it is definitely one of the best hostels we have stayed in yet. We were quick to get out and explore the capital and to be honest, we didn't find much. There was a rubbish market, and a 'city gate' that looked more impressive in the hand drawing on the tourist map we had picked up. The main thing of note was what was on the other side of the gate; we had head stories of the locals eating dog in Hanoi (although who can be sure that they haven't eaten dog when they've ordered chicken - we are in Asia) but what we saw is beyond what we imagined. We were walking up the road and there were various food stalls which is nothing new but then we noticed a lady using a meat cleaver to cut up what looked like the back end of a skinned and deep fried dog. In disbelief, we kept walking only to find a basket full of whole dogs, still with their teeth growling. Not too sure why this is a normal food here and it made me feel physically sick so on that note, we headed back to our hostel.
Now, there are two Hanoi Backpackers, the original, and the downtown. Convinced we were following the map to the right one, we ended up at the original after about an hours walk so we decided to cut our losses and jump in a taxi - female map reading wins again! Every Sunday, the hostel have a barbeque evening with free beer. Never to miss out on anything free, we headed to the terrace and had a few drinks before heading down to the bar who give out free shots almost hourly. We decided to play spoons, and with this genius idea we made a lot of friends, albeit one enemy who did "not want to play this kind of game" and swanned off in her ballgown and full face of make-up (no love lost there).
The hostel put on a pub crawl every night and all the hostels around the area start in the hostel bar and move on down the road at around 10pm. The bar was good, and everyone was together which was nice, but the one thing thats starting to annoy me is that every club in Asia start to play some amazing songs and mix them all in to the same dubstep, clubby horrible noise, but apart from that it was fun. The bar was shut down by the police as Hanoi has a curfew and we decided to call it a night, not before getting a laughing cow cheese baguette as drunk munch, which has now become a weird craving of ours because its so good! We later heard that the bar crawl then heads to a dodgy club under a motorway bridge run by the mafia, wow.
The next day, we were determined to be cultured even though we were hungover, so we set off with two of our dorm roommates to see Hoa Lo Prison after taking an unexpected de-tour to the Temple of Literature (don't ask) and it wasn't really worth it. The artefacts in the museum didn't seem legitimate and after seeing S-21 in Cambodia, it was a bit of a let down. After this, we set off for our first massage, which was a slightly awkward experience all lying naked next to eachother, but hey ho, we are all friends here. We had an early night ready for our Ha Long Bay and Castaway Island tour which started at 8am.
What an AMAZING few days. Although it quite an expensive trip, it is worth every penny especially since you get a bright castaway hat (those sombreros we were so confused about when we first arrived). Now most of the funny things that happened on this trip shouldn't and wont be written on here but as a whole, it went a little like this:
We arrived at the port where we all split on to different boats. We were greeted by our Dutch tourguide Michael who spent the entire trip calling us English C***s which made us feel right at home. Boating around the bay was amazing, it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen so at first I thought it was going to be a shame that we were about to spend most of the trip too drunk or too busy to really take it all but then I realised that was a stupid thought!
We were given our bedrooms and quickly summoned up to the top deck where we were given the trip rules. No saying 'mine' or 'ten' or you had to do t-e-n pushups (you could opt to do girly pushups but only if you made sex noises whilst doing so) and you were not allowed to drink with your right hand. If you did, this was called out as a buffalo and you had to down whatever was in your hand. Luckily, I was caught out once, only with a bottle of water in hand. After our introductions, we were informed that it was shotgun o'clock (a time that seemed to roll around at too many times of the day) and we had to repeat the following chant:
MASTER SHOTGUNNER UP ABOVE, MAY THESE BEERS GO DOWN SMOOTHLY, QUICKLY, EFFICIENTLY, WITH MINIMAL SPILLAGE, AND MINIMAL AFTER-SICKAGE. SHOTTGUNNNN!
... and then shotgun our beers. After a few more shotgun's on the clock, we were off kayaking which was amazing.
After this, we had a few more shotguns and jumped off the boat a few times before having dinner and getting ready for the evening. We mored up and had a boat party that night where one of the other boats of our 4 came to join us for a game of dragon: a game that involved alot of swapping clothes, drinking, getting naked, drinking, telling embarrassing confessions about yourself, drinking, kissing, guys lapdancing in girls clothes and more drinking. What a great way to all get to know your new friends!
The party carried on thanks to our legendary bar man Hank and after a few too many, we all crashed out knowing we'd be up at 7am to start it all over again but not before having a HANK SELFIE.
Breakfast the next day was not a good experience but most powered through as 9am rolled around and it was shotgun o'clock once again:
Even though I got a hell of a lot of abuse, I decided that a 9am beer was not for me but the other two powered through. GO ON GIRLS. Day two, and we were off to Castaway Island where we stayed in little huts on the beach with our party room friends and just mosquito nets for company.
The island was completely private just for the people on the tour and all of the boats were there together. The day was spent jumping off the pontoons, swimming, rock climbing, high speed tubing, playing volleyball, tanning and of course drinking. I decided not to drink all day considering my hangover but before dinner I finally manned up and got a beer, only for a good reason of course. A couple of years ago, one of the tourguides sadly passed away, so as a tribute to him everyone on the island goes to his memorial stone, the guides say a few words and then of course, you all shotgun to him. Before the shotgun, the last words were "to new friends, to old friends, and to absent friends" to which I welled up and had to go for a secret cry with the girls in our hut. I find it so strange what little things can set you off when you have lost someone yourself but as the girls say, its better to get it out and i'm going to blame my ourburst on being drunk (on one beer). After my little moment, we had an amazing night, playing more drinking games, dancing, singing, late night DMC's on the beach and night swimming. The swimming was the most amazing thing as there is illuminous plankton in the sea so everytime you move, your body makes the water glitter around you, it was incredible and you cannot really imagine what it looks like until you get in the water. The hungover journey back to Hanoi the next day was horrendous - travelling home on a boat the day after consuming that much alcohol and having that little sleep should not be allowed. Thank you party boat crew, and everyone else at Castaway for the most fabulous time!
After recovering from our very un-cultured few days, we decided to head to Sapa which is in the North of Vietnam and is home to 6 of the 54 different tribes in Vietnam, who all have their own languages. The scenery here is absolutely amazing as the mountains are all covered in staggered rice and corn fields. We thought the best way to see this (and detox from Castaway) would be to do a two day trek. We took the night bus from Hanoi and on arrival met our tourguide, Ya. Ya is from the Hmong tribe and was amazing, she spoke a lot of English and explained all about Sapa while taking us around our 10km trek. We visited her home and met her family, where her husband cooked us dinner, which was some of the best Vietnamese food we have eaten yet! She showed us how they weave, dye and make their own clothes and explained all about their religion and beliefs. Ya was so welcoming and really made us feel at home but for some reason the travel company make the trekkers stay elsewhere, which wasn't even half as good, so we took photo's of her house to take back to them to convince them to let them stay there instead, I hope we succeeded!
After lunch, we bought some souvenirs from the girls who came with Ya, who were obviously only there to sell us stuff, but nevertheless we got some nice bits, and took a dodgy headwear selfie on the sly. We spent the afternoon trekking to the village where we would be staying and at our homestay we were greeted by the biggest and scariest German Shepherd in the world. It was barking at the door and the owners didn't bother to do anything about it, just expected us to run past and try and dodge it. Even Ya was scared so we knew it wasn't just us being typical westerners. To be honest, I expected a lot more from a homestay. The family wasn't very welcoming, we spent most of it sat awkwardly outside, had an awkward dinner and made our excuses to go to bed for an extremely early night. Luckily, it was believable since we had been trekking all day. The next day Ya was waiting for us with pancakes and tea before we set off on the shorter 3km trek. She asked if we wanted easy or hard, we chose hard as easy was just walking along the main road back to the bus but were soon eating our words when we realised that the hard route was so hard because it had rained over night and we were slipping all over the place. The route may have been a third of the length of the day before but it was a lot harder since there were more up hill treks and you also had to concentrate so hard not to slip down the mud. We met with a larger group doing the same route, and just like us they had proper walking shoes on but we were all over the place. Suddenly, a group of local girls, who were no more than 7 or 8 joined the group with flip flops and sandals on who were there to hold your hands and help you down the mud. The embarrassment set in but it was safe to say most of us needed the help! We got to the bottom and found the waterfall which was so pretty but this was tainted by trying to be sold more rubbish! I should know by now that no one in Asia helps you for free. All the little girls were swarming around everyone saying "you buy bracelet from me" if you said no the response was "but I helped you so much" or "I not your friend anymore". It was so annoying as we didn't ask for the help, they just grabbed your hand! To be honest, if we hadn't already bought bracelets the day before, I probably would have given in but if I bought something from every person who asked here, I would have no money left by now and an arm full of bracelets that all look the same.
The trek was so good, and it was really nice to get back in to doing something a little more cultured than drinking. There is no stop for us at the moment so we headed back to town, showered, ate and got back on another night bus back to Hanoi where we arrived at 3.45am. Great, we didn't have a hostel booked, as we were expecting to be back at a more normal time of the morning when we could grab our bags from the storage room before leaving, and we didn't really know where we were. So we searched around for a taxi, which are surprisingly hard to come by as most of the drivers were asleep, and got them to take us to Hanoi Backpackers. We snuck past the security (who were asleep - got to love Asia) and headed up to the fifth floor where we bedded down on the sofas. Apart from being woken up by a few drunk people and being tutted at by the cleaners, it was a pretty good few hours sleep. After this, we grabbed our bags and headed to the airport. I will be really sad to leave Vietnam, it has been fabulous, but its time for the next stop. HELLO LAOS!
P.s, we finally got a selfie with some water buffalo - sod you Koh Rong!
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