Vietnam day 10

Saigon... shit; I'm still only in Saigon... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle.

My body really was not ready for the warmth and humidity of Ho Chi Minh after being in Hanoi for so long. Going to Korea a day later would really keep my body confused.

Sadly I didn't have all the time I wanted to do the touristy shit. I had to skip out on the tunnels :( instead I went to the war museum and purchased a bunch of cheap Xmas presents.

My flight was in the late evening again so I had enough time to make some friends at the hostel. I met this one bloke, Thomas, from Denmark, and went roaming around town with him. We found a park where locals were playing a game which involved kicking a shuttlecock with a spring on one end. It was bloody impressive how talented they were. It looked like an awesome version of tennis.

I decided to buy one of the shuttlecocks and play the same game. After realizing I had no foot-eye coordination i decided to revamp the game and slap the object instead. I called the game "slap-cock" and im definitely bringing it back to Australia.

Before I left forbmy flight I had an epic convo with one of the Vietnamese receptionists. She made me try quale eggs and some type of bean & garlic paste - it was delicious. She was only 21 and told me her dream was to live in England where its always cold. I didn't have the heart to tell her that dreaming to live in England for the weather was perhaps the dumbest life plan ever.

Vietbam day 9

My original plan was to slowly make my way down Vietnam overtime, but sadly because I had spent way too much time in Hanoi at this point I decided that I would simply book a flight to Ho Chi Minh in order to catch my other flight to Seoul on the 7th.

If only it were so easy...

I took a taxi at 6:00am to the airport only to find out my flight had been cancelled due to a technical glitch in the aircraft! They reimbursed me 400,000 dong and told me to come back in the evening for a replacement flight. This really sucked because I was hoping to get at least 2 days in Ho Chi Minh and now I would only have 1.

On the bright side though, Max (the Sweedish bloke I had met before) was flying into Hanoi in the early evening. I managed to have a beer with him and show him around briefly before I had to leave to catch my new flight.

Once I got to the airport for the second time I found that my plane had been delayed by 2 hours due to another technical glitch!! Grrr! All these delays and cancellations had me worried about the safety of the plane I was flying on. I had no reason to be scared though, we didn't even crash once.

Somehow I managed to make friends with 2 Canadians on the flight despite an orchestra of crying babies disrupting our conversation.  The 3 of us split an uber to our destination once we arrived. I got to bed at 2am.

Vietnam day 8

This day was rough. I really didn't do that much.

At one point I went for a short walk with Sean (the Irish bloke who completed his PhD) and had a pretty epic chat about European PhDs, fluid dynamics and advice in general about how to do shit. Apparently he had completed his PhD, won an award from SETI, plays several musical instruments and is thinking about starting up his own consultancy business in turbines that are used in vortex's.

While admittedly the chat with Sean was awesome and inspiring, my hangover had worsened at the sound of computational fluid dynamics so I had to go back and nap for a few more hours.

I surfaced close to 5pm and met Dan at a pub. Dan (who is about the same age as me) decided to handle his hangover by getting drunk again. He had found a Welsh bloke and had been heavily drinking since 1pm. Despite having my manhood mocked by Dan and the Welsh guy for not drinking beer with them, I decided to order a coca-cola with a swirly straw.

Later that night I went to the night markets. In all honestly I was more interested in the kabab stores on the adjacent street. One resourceful shop had managed to drill a hole directly into the ground into a gas pipeline underneath to cook my kebab. When it was done he simply clogged the sturdy hose with a plastic stopper...

Vietnam day 1

The sleeper bus from Vientiane departed at 5pm on the 27th and arrived at 7pm on the 28th. 26 hours of a bus ride is not fun. In hindsight I should have payed the additional $50 for a flight.

What made the trip so long was the Vietnam boarder. We arrived at the boarder at 2am even though the boarder security only showed up at 6am - why we simply didn't depart 4 hours later is beyond me. The boarder security was dreadfully inefficient, there were no English signs and a simple stamp in a passport would take up to 40 minutes. To make matters worse the infrastructure of the boarder was dreadfully incomplete. At one point we had to walk 1km through rain and mud to get from the departing gate of Laos to the Arrival gate of Vietnam.

Despite everything, I'm still kinda glad I made the trip because I got to meet a few cool Canadians and British people.

Once I arrived I made friends with an Irish bloke called Sean and a bunch of Germans and English people. We all decided to go out drinking at a place called 'le pub' (yeah, that's actually what it was called). There I ran into Michele and Marie! It was really great catching up! At 12:00 the bar tender pulled down the aluminum gate to the pub, closed the door, turned off the lights and told us to be quiet. I found out later that the city had a midnight curfew and the bartender wanted to avoid the attention of the police. At 3ish the bartender kicked us out though and advised us to go to another pub around town. Word on the street was this other pub was actually run by the Vietnamese Mafia who simply bribed the police to keep their doors open and music blaring all night long.

Vietnam day 6

I took a bus back to Hanoi with Michele and Marie. We left early enough in the morning to arrive by midday.

The first thing I did when I got back was drop my bags off at some hostel and walk around the lake. I passed several groups of elderly Vietnamese women doing a coordinated workout dance to old country western music. It was an extreemly bizzare sight. It was kinda like zumba but much much less sexy.

Layer on Marie and I had epic street food for dinner. It was a yellow sticky rice with herbs and beef. Nom nom nom.

I got back to my hostel only to discover two deaf guys were my only roommates. I asked them all types of questions about what it's like being deaf. They definitely seemed more complimented at my interest than insulted by me asking about their condition. I guess it's good that they didn't hear me snore that night :)

Vietnam day 5

We did it. We climbed Mt Fansipan today! We found a deal for $44 per person (still a rip off) and decided to book with that hostel.

There were 3 Israeli's, the 3 of us and 2 elderly Russians. The Israeli's were friendly and a lot of fun to talk to, but the Russians were slow, jaded and looked like they had at one point been an active member of the Mafia... Seriously, the dude had scars across is face, tatoos across his arms, and talked with the deepest threatening accent I could imagine.

The walk was beautiful. It was green and luscious. We often found ourselves suspended in clouds for 15 minutes at a time, but once they cleared the beautiful surroundings opened up for us. When we got to the top, we found that the Vietnamese were building a hotel at the very top. There was loud construction work, incompleted stairs, and a perfectly functioning gondola. I personally hated that they were building a hostel up this high for 2 reasons: 1) it was destroying the natural beauty of the summit and 2) I don't think it'll even be that popular since no fancy rich westerner could cope with minor altidude sickness at 3100m. That being said, the total climb took 13 hours to comolete, so I changed my mind about the working gondola pretty quick.

Later on that night I went out drinking with the Israeli's. They had managed to find a place selling home brew beer in recycled plastic bottles. They were only 15000 dong ($0.8) per litre!! Trust the Jews to find a good economic bargain, eh? I really enjoyed that night, they told me heaps about Israeli culture as far as their military and religion was concerned.  I think Israel will be the next place I visit on my next trip.

Vietnam day 4

Holy fuck I'm falling behind on my blog. I'm a week behind, let's see how well my memory copes.

We rented motorbikes today with the hope that we'd be able to climb Mt Fansipan. The travel agency said the cost would be $65 USD per person to climb which we thought was ridiculous considering several travel blogs said we could climb it without a guide.

The ride up was amazing. The road up there involved sharp turns on high elevations around mountains. Michele was riding his scooter with Marie on the back and was zooming ahead - he'd definitely seen 'the Italian job'.

Once we arrived we found an unoccupied building which we assumed was a security checkpoint. We simply walked straight past and were just about to start the hike until a half asleep security guard shouted from the top of the building beckoning is to come back. Shit. He told is that we couldn't hike without a guide and that no guides were available that day. We found out later that it was complete rubbish and that he must have been looking for a bribe. None the less we left with our heads down low and our bike engine revs high.

We decided to make the most of our rented motorbikes by driving down to a few waterfalls and checking out a few more villages. A good day all up, but still kind of disappointing.

Michele and I decided to verse each other in a game of chess later using a chess app. (We had an epic rivalry which ended in a tie back in Australia). Sadly we played 2 games and won 1 each. Another draw :( we should really play 3 games..

For dinner we went to a great place in the heart of Sa Pa right by the church. I honestly can't remember what we had, but it was aweosme. Oh yeah there was red wine too (I think).