Underground, Overground: Wandering free

I love this part… deciding where to go, how to get there. I’m planning on leaving Hanoi around the 7th, 8th of April and so have a good week to take the train up to Beijing.

My parents arrive in Beijing around the 15th April and we start out for Mongolia on the 18th.

Bejing – Ulan Bataar – Irkutsk – Ekaterinburg – Moscow – St Petersburg – Riga – Stockholm – Copenhagen – Esbjerg – Harwich and then Liverpool.

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There is nothing better than having a brand new empty passport and immediately having to fill it up with visas. The sight of a visa in your passport is the promise of a trip to come, part of the excitement of preparation. However, not being in your home country and applying for visas can be surprisingly tricky.

The route we’re taking means going through 3 countries that require visas for Brits: China, Russian and Mongolia.

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The last few months that I’ve been in Hanoi, I’ve not taken many photographs. I’ve also not really travelled around too much. Partly that was to do with working, but also my mind was fixed on where I am going next and I lost the desire to explore.

What is good about putting all these pictures together from when I first arrived, is to remind myself about why I loved Hanoi and wanted to stay…

A week into Borneo and I was annoyed at myself for feeling too ill and spending days asleep in hostel bedrooms wasn’t my idea of a good trip. Part of my plan had been to travel by bus or train up along the coast and go through Brunei, but having wasted time feeling sorry for myself I decided to thank god for Airasia and their budget flights.

When I got to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah I was feeling much better and psyched myself into wellness by booking a trip to Uncle Tan’s Wildlife camp in the Kinabatangan Valley.

Before that though, I spent a good couple of days just relaxing in KK and heading out to an island in the Abdul Rahman national park, a small group of islands about 30 – 40 minutes offshore by speed boat. Never having been a beach bunny in the past, it still feels a bit weird to me to just go and lie on the beach doing nothing, but hey, it was better than lying in bed.

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In Sepilok, about 6 hours by bus from Sabah’s capital KK, is the world reknowned Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre. Spread over a huge area of Borneo forest, it provided a protected, natural environment for displaced (through deforestation) and rescued (from captivity) orang utans.

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One of the most famous places to visit in Hanoi is the lake in the southern part of the Old Quarter. Everything seems to converge here – street sellers, cafes, cyclos, tourist shops, tourists…

The legend of the lake goes that in the 15th century Heaven sent the Emperor a magical sword so he could drive the Chinese out of Vietnam. After the war was over, the Emperor visited the lake where he saw a giant golden tortoise swimming. The tortoise grabbed the sword and disappeared to the bottom of the lake restoring the sword to its heavenly owners. The name of the lake Ho Hoan Kiem means Lake of the Restored Sword. (thanks Wikipedia!)

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I made an effort to get up especially early to visit as the Mausoleum containing “Uncle Ho” (not Uncle Mo as I had in my head) is only open mornings until 11am. The Mausoleum complex houses the mausoleum itself, a Ho Chi Minh museum, a pagoda and a house.

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The first thing that hits you (and you have to be careful to make that a non-literal expression) is the traffic . There are just so many people all out and about on the street at the same time. The roads are packed to bursting with motorcycles, bicyles, cyclos, taxis, cars, people. They truly seem to be the life and soul of Hanoi, everything happens on the street… Ground floor houses for the most part are converted into cafes, shop fronts and businesses. A short walk down the road will involve stepping in and out of the road as you try to dodge the mass of parked motorcycles, and the groups of people sociably gathered to talk, eat, or work on the pavements. Crossing the street takes a bit of nerve at first, but when in Rome… do as the Hanoians do and put your best foot forward. There seems to be a kind of give and take on both sides… if you hold your nerve and calmly keep walking, making it clear which direction you’re going in, the traffic accommodates you and neatly manages to swerve around you at the last moment. It helps that there are less cars than motorbikes, as swerving a car out of a pedestrian’s way is going to cause no end of trouble.

You definitely need to develop some kind of 360 degree owl rotating swivel neck to keep an eye on the road…