Anyways, it’s 9pm here. I’m really tired; it’s technically 6 am in SF, and I’ve been up for god knows how many hours. I finally met up with Sean and we went out on the town for one night. Tomorrow we head for Ha Long Bay. But we don’t have to be on the bus until 11:30.
*The next day*…
(I’ve been wanting to use that gif for so long…)
OKAY. So here’s what went down today. Starting from getting on the plane AT LAX, I had a very, very long flight to Taipei, Twain. Think 13 hours long. On my flight I played a lot of Mario. Here’s a picture of some the characters dabbbing:
I thought it was funny anyways.
The older Chinese lady next to me was so nice. She kept giving me food! (At one point she gave me a muffin, not sure where she got it from though. Then at another point she gave me the banana from her meal). I also spent a long time on one of the mario levels(the “deep woods”); that game is great, and amazing.
Anyways, after my 14 hour flight, I finally landed in Taipei. We need need any immigration forms or anything because I was transferring to Hanoi. I saw this awesome “payer station” while I was there; I thought it was neat. Each room had the appropriate religious items for preying(christians had a pew/podium, and the other ones had rugs/dividers):
Next, I ordered my first “non-american” meal. There was some pho water, some chicken/sweet doughnut bread/an egg, and then rice. I wasn’t sure what to do with the pho water, so I just poured it into the chicken/doughtbread container(since I felt like that was the right thing to do). Who knows though, I may just be an idiot. Like that one time I tried to cook my eggs while in Japan, only to realize they eat eggs raw ?
After that, I took the flight to Hanoi. Pretty uneventful, listened to some podcasts. Did you know that stainless steel bolts in Thailand erode faster than normal, not because they’re close to the sea(and the sea salt), but because a lot of these rock formations have magnesium which accelerate the degregation process? I thought that was pretty interesting; that’s why they are trying to move to Titanium bolts in all these southeast asia countries.
Finally I arrived at Hanoi. The airport was not the most beautiful place:
The airport was literally overgrown with weeds and stuff(between the runways.
I got my bag, then went through immigration. The lady that checked my passport/visa felt like she was literally staring into my soul when she checked my visa. And I don’t think she liked what she saw. So angry D:
After that, I got my SIM card, got some cash, then called an uber.
Some quick notes on money/phones/travelling in another country;
1) Get a ATM card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees, and more importantly, reimburses ATM fees(Charles Schwab is great for this — it reimburses up to $100/month I believe on ATM fees.)
2) Get a credit card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. I think they’re about 3-5% every transaction if you dont.
3) Grab some cash from the ATM when you arrive at an airport. They are usually cheaper than exchanges.
4) Grab a SIM card for the country you are in. This is important! I don’t know how people travel without cell service, but it must suck. Before you enter the country, do some quick research on the best SIM/carrier around. There’s usually one obvious winner. If you don’t do this, you can get scammed into buying some shitty carrier SIM for some shitty price.
5) GET AN UBER TO YOUR HOTEL IF POSSIBLE. I can’t stress this enough. If you get a taxi, you WILL be scammed. That’s how I ended up paying $60 for a 15 minute ride to my hotel in mexico. Uber is great because it’s a fixed price, and they can’t scam you. 10/10, would reccomend uber for everywhere you go.
Okay, so now back to the travels.
I actually lost/left one thing on every flight:
- Nalgene bottle on the way to LA
- Laptop charger on the way to Taipei
- Head cushion-thingy on my flight to Hanoi
I’ll just pretend I was making a sacrifice to the flight gods to keep my safe.
Here’s me leaving the airport:
On my uber ride to the hotel, I saw not one, not two, but DOZENS of Soviet Hammer & Sickles. I was like:
There was a Hammer & Sickle sign flying high at the airport, on the bridge we crossed, pretty much everywhere.
It’s intresting…it seems that North Vietnam is still very happily heavily communist. I actually found out that traveling to Vietnam was only re-opened around the early 90s when Bill Clinton normalized relationships with Vietnam.
So I finally get to the Hotel. The thing is, Sean booked the hotel, and he wasn’t landing for another couple hours, so I was stuck wandering around the city while I waited for him to get her. I went to a bakery, ordered some DELCIOUS food; then I went to a sitdown restaurant. Something weird to note about Vietnam: they apparently don’t wait for you to decide what you want; I guess they expect you should already know? Everytime we went to a resturant, they handed us a menu and then IMMEDITELY asked us what we wanted to eat. Like gurl, I just got this menu, give me a second to decide! And if we told them that, they’d just hover around until we finally picked something. Maybe there’s something I don’t understand about this culture, but it’s just kinda strange.
So after that, I go back to the hotel. I actually tell them again my friend is coming later and that we’d check in the, but they let me check in early! with like no verification. Pretty crazy.
I get up to the room, and see this:
I’ll note too at this point I hadn’t showered for like 2 1/2 days. So I promptly got in the “bath” and took a shower. I tried to take a nice spa-bath too after, but they ran out of hot water 🙁 It was all just a facade….
Not bad for only paying $40 though.
After that Sean finally arrived, so we went to a local place for some beer. It was called “The new Sphinx”, and it was empty; it looked like a karaoke bar meets a casino meets a strip club. Sean had some frog; I tried it, wasn’t a big fan.
At this point, I feel like I should mention that traffic here. It’s IN-SANE. I thought my friends were exaggerating about it, but it’s seriously a mircle people arn’t constantly getting run over. Basically people just weave in and out of each other, but never end up hitting each other. A car will get within inches of a motorcycle, or vice-versa, and never hit teach other. Sometimes they’ll even completely disregard lights, and just blow through them. But that’s okay, because they’re using their horn, so obviously people will see/hear them. /s
After the Sphinx, we decided we were hungry(well I was, because I didn’t eat FROG). So I found a dim sum place on lonely planet, and we decided to head over there.
This is where our adventure for the night begins.
The dim sum place was on the 36th floor of this building. We go over to the building, and it’s SUPER NICE. Like, maybe the tallest building in Hanoi, everyone is dressed well. We spend a couple minutes wandering the various entries trying to find out how to get in. Sean is a bit concerned(as am I) that we are a bit underdressed for the occasion. And that it’ll be too pricy. Finally, after taking an elevator to the 6th floor, and then to the 36th floor, we get to the resturant. It looks super nice. But the prices arn’t so bad!(less than a dollar per an item). I ask them for a table of two.
“Do you have a reservation?” “…Do we need one”?
Apparently it was all booked up on Christmas eve…who would have though.
Not to be deterred and waste all the time it took us to get here, we went back to the elevator and found someone that worked there. We asked if there was a place to get drinks/a viewing area, because come-on, this building is tall AF. She told us there was a rooftop bar on the 65th floor. #Score.
So we take the elevator up, not sure what to expect. This whole time me and Sean are feeling grossly underdressed(I’m wearing my torn up jeans and some old tennies, he’s wearing about the same). We get to the rooftop bar and it’s beautiful! I just start following a guy that was ahead of us, trying to “look like we belong”. We’re intercepted by a waiter asking if we need a table. We finally get a table near the edge; we’re a bit apprehensive about the price of things, since this place is gorgeous. Turns out, Vietnam is cheap. Most mixed drinks cost $10. Whew. So I order a pina colda, and Sean orders a Singapore Sling. Here’s a view of up-top, with my “pina colada around the world”:
Other side:
Pina colada:
Yes it’s quite foggy up here, but hopefully the rain in the next few days will clean it up.
AFter that, we head back down. There’s another eating place I want to go to(since the dim sum failed), so we head off.
We end up going to this lake/plaza area where everyone is walking around. It seems really cool. We head off in search of this “Quan Bia Minh” place(Bia means beer, i’m all about that). We end up getting a bit lost, wandering around, and find a street vendor making this weird ice cream. Both Sean and I get some:
We think about getting some Thai food(because Thai food is delicious), but decide to try and find this Quan Bia Minh place instead. we finally locate it — a eatery on the second floor overlooking the “chaos”. I had found this plae as a suggestion in the lonely planet book, which is why I think everyone here was white.
I had the *BEST* Vietnamese food so far — Bún chả. At this resturant, it was like beef in some peanut/beef tasting broth, and some rice noodles on the side. Dipping the rice noodles in the broth created an DELICIOUS flavor. And all for about $2. Woohoo!
After this, I was feeling pretty exhausted. It was 5am SF time, and around 8pm here. I told Sean one more bar and then imma pass out.
There was a bar that lonely planet said was nearby called “Le Pub”. It classified it as “a place for expats and locals to mingle and hook up” — I thought that was a great description. We walk there, and turns out, it no longer exists? In it’s place is a restaurant called “Garden Grill”, or something similar. Same address and everything. Well, that’s too bad.
We decide to wander around some more, I get some boba(ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!). We start wandering down this street that is just FILLED with coffee shops. This was near Hang Tre, in the Old Quarter. I mean literally 80% of it was coffee shops. You’d have like 2-3 coffee shops right next to each other, across the street, everywhere! You could stand anywhere and be in sight of a coffee shop. Did I mention how many coffee shops there were?
We went into one of them, I ordered a peppermint tea(I don’t even like peppermint and it was delicious!), then as my eyes were slowly closing, we decided to call a uber and go home.
So it’s 9 am right now, on CHRISTMAS! (Merry Christmas ya’ll). We’re going to get some breakfast, then head to Ho Long Bay. I’m still really concerned about the weather, as it’s supposed to rain a bunch in the coming days, but we’ll just have to play it by ear.
That’s it for today. See you tomorrow.