Our unwelcomed entrance to Vietnam included two overnight buses (blasting Lao music ALL NIGHT, squishing three full grown adults into seats built for two, infants wailing away, frequent slammings on brakes, crazy downhill speed stunts, and urine/b.o. smelling locals). Exhausted, we boarded our final three hour ride; a truck taxi on pot-holed dirt road through northeastern Laos to the border city.
All of this, and not even a kind welcome. The Vietnamese guards were nice enough to rid us of our extra ‘kip’ (Lao money) at a terrible rate. We were warned that locals in this border village were not used to having foreigners, and the ‘bus station’ was a mere 500 meters walk into the village. The ‘bus station’ as mentioned, was little more than a man whose teeth were in a worse state than his rusted and dirty mini-bus. He offered us the ridiculous price of 40US$ for a ride to Hanoi. We were able to bargain him down to 30, but the going rate is about a quarter of that price. Tired, hot, sweaty, muddy, we had no choice but to board this bus with it’s tiny seats and it’s men with outlandishly long finger and toenails that they ever so conveniently placed between the seats that Danny and I smushed into.
The ride should have been 8 hours, but somehow we got shifted once more. We stopped at every village, crossroads, town, and random house on the street, paired with a gentle constant quadruple horn honk at stops, gos, curves, straights, ups, downs, pretty much at any given moment the brake was replaced with the horn. We arrived around midnight in Hanoi at an unnamed bus terminal to a crowd of pushy Vietnamese men who wanted us to ride on their motorbikes for an exorbitant price. Thankfully, we knew of these scams and began our walk to the Old Quarter, realizing after just a few minutes, that we would never make it due to our current state of fatigue. A few blocks away we flagged down a taxi, who put us on his meter and promised to take us to one of Lonely Planet’s suggested guesthouses (it was way too late to look around). The meter rose faster than any taxi in New York City, and shafted again, we ended up paying 198,000 VND (about 12.50$) for a 15 minute taxi ride in circles. I was so mad, I envisioned myself spitting at the taxi driver’s face, but somehow managed to keep my cool and snatch the 2,000 change as rudely as possible.
WELCOME TO VIETNAM. The locals are unfriendly, unless they are trained in tourism in which case they forcefeed creepy laughter at inopportune conversational moments. Bargaining takes on a violent undertone; as foreigners we are expected to pay five times the prices locals pay (which is okay for a vacation, but in long term travel is impossible to keep a budget!) We’re hoping people are simply more pushy in the city, and once we leave for the south, we will encounter a friendlier vibe.
We departed Hanoi after just a few days, to the humid and hot Cat Ba Island located in Halong Bay, just a few hours bus ride east. We slept in a tent on the beach, burnt our fair skin in the powerful sun, swam in the warmest sea, and took a boat tour to see more islands around the area. The water was clear and greenish, the limestone rock cliffs magnificent and large; they created some magnificent and large thoughts and emotions within me. There were natural bridges eroded into many of the rocks, some were more narrow at the waterline, upside down tear-drop shaped protrusions of stone and green plant life. We met a sweet sweedish family who travels together every summer in southeast asia and I felt inspired by them to instil the love of exploration and adventure to my future family.
Back in Hanoi, our last day together, I must rush this post as Danny and I have a date with the Prison Museum to see photos of John McCain behind Vietnamese bars. As for my future in Asia, I’ve had lots of questions about what’s next, so here’s a vague itinerary:
1. Buy a bicycle this week, and gear, and cycle around Vietnam until the end of my visa (about three weeks.)
2. Ride into Cambodia and explore Khmer culture, cycling through and stopping at many places along the way.
3. Enter Thailand via bike, explore wildlife in Hat Yai National Park, and meet my new employer at the end of August in Surat Thani.
4. Teach english part time in the port city of Chumpheon, with easy access to many beautiful islands and beaches. (Breathe, eat, sleep, learn Thai, practice yoga)
5. Undergo teacher training at Pyramid Yoga Center on Koh Phangan from February until April 2009.
6. To avoid a severe beating from family and friends, return to New Jersey and share the shanti things I learned in the past year.
Hopefully, the money will last and my bicycle will not fall apart. No worries, I am prepared and safe for such travels (MOM, BREATHE!)
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship, or train (or bike). There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape.”
The ...