Day 1 Vietnam

After a 8,5 hour flight I arrive in Kuala Lumpur, the first flight went fine actually because I slept in the airplane. When I was through security again I met up with Natasha who also just landed from her flight from Sydney. We bought some watermelon and waited and then our second flight was together, 3,5 hours to go and then we’re in Hanoi!

We arranged for the hotel to pick us up and it took around 40 minutes to get to the hotel. Happy we arrived and wanting to rest and a shower we came at the hotel, unlucky it was not even 9 in the morning. But luckily our hotel room was allready ready so we could go in, amazing. We got welcome juice and the hotek staff was super nice, the hotel also looked very fancy. We freshened up took a little nap and then went out to find a place for lunch. The streets were full of people and traffic, very busy. Finding a place for lunch was also funny as there are no real restaurants, only streetfood places, they all have tiny tiny chairs hahaha. When we found something they came to our table and gave us noodles and rice while we hadn’t even asked or ordered anything. We found that everybody around us had the same tho and just started eating it, with chipsticks ofcourse, and we also ordered some springrolls too. So good! I think we payed 65.000 Vietnamese dong= 4 Australian dollar = 2,5 euro. The funny part is I don’t even count in euro’s anymore, there is so much currencie calculating going on hahahha. We walked around and got a fresh mango later, the lady cut it for us and oee so fresh and sweet! ?

We got our nails done when we found a place, shoes off before you walk in and no English so just hands and feets of making clear what you want them to do. The place was so tiny and I was all twisted because one girl was doing my toenails while the other did my hands haha. We were very happy after. Back to the hotel, through the heat, sweating all the time because of the high humidity. That’s why a shower after a day of walking around feels so good. Off to the nightmarket! It was good that we came to Hanoi on the weekend as the night market is on then and it’s so crowded. There also was a k-pop festival going on and we saw BTS performing, nice! The Night market was next to a big lake and it was crowded, music, lots of little chairs and places with food and lots of dancing in the streets as well which was our favourite part!! We joined in on some line dancing or just dances that somehow everybody seemed to know, so funny. So we joined in and tried to follow, it was very fun. After that we walked a bit further and there were people doing latin dancing, we watched for a while and then I danced with somebody too hahaha and after that Natasha and I did some attempts on dancing together!

We decided it was time to grab some dinner as it would’ve allready been around 9. Noodles! The food is delicious and I’m allready quite good at the chopsticks, this is my life for the next month, haha. I might be glad to eat with utensils again when I’m back at home!

After dinner we walked to look for a club and we passed the beer corner. It’s so chaotic, little restaurants everywhere with tiny chairs outside, and people e v e r y w h e r e. It looked nice even tho it was so crowded, people were drinking beers everywhere and having a good time. We passed by and went into a club called hangover.

Day 2

Goodmorning! Breakfast is served! Our hotel has a delicious breakfast, we can order from the menu and get something from the buffet. Fresh fruits with yoghurt?and pancakes or eggs and lots more, a great meal to start the day if you ask me. After that we went to the hotel room again and when we went outside we were immediately overwhelmed by the heat and the humidity which makes you instantly sweaty hahah, not nice.

We walked around for a bit and went to a place called new day to grab lunch, Barack Obama was here as well and that’s why we thought it was funny to go. We ordered salad (me) and rice (natasha) and got a mango smoothie and watermelon juice, what else! Hihi, so good! When we finished the lunch we ordered a grab, scooter. We both hopped on a scooter with a driver and they drove us to a nice park.

Train tracks! Later that day when we find the train track in between of a narrow street we walk around take some photos and then sit down for a drink to wait for the train to come through the narrow streets! A whistle and quickly they removed the whole terras and they told us to stand against the wall. We had to wait and eventually another wistle and some screaming that I assume meant like get off the tracks. Then the train came rushing through with a honk. Wow I, we didn’t expect the train to be soo close! It was a bit scary haha but also a whole new experience. The train was quite long and it took a while before it was away again. After that they put the terras, all the chairs and tables back and we just finished our drinks like nothing happened, haha!

A quick shower, and out again to grab food at the night market before we go to the puppet show with two Vietnamese friends that are friends of Natasha’s family. The puppet show was weird but also a bit funny hahah, we ofcourse couldn’t understand it as it was in Vietnamese and we couldn’t help looking at each other from time to time and just laugh like what’s going on here. Another thing that Vietnamese do is ‘do balloons’, so Trang and Sim took us to a lounge where we tried some balloons. Basically doing balloons means inhaling the helium. I can tell you it was a weird experience but we had a fun night. We did decide that we won’t do it again tho because it didn’t feel like it was good for your body. Also the balloons are very expensive and this was the biggest expense during our holiday I can tell you that.

Day 3

We slept untill the alarm went off, had breakfast again, hmm fresh fruit, mango, watermelon, banana etc. with yoghurt. Then we went to our rooms again and had a little nap untill we had to check out. We didn’t really want to go out as it’s just so hot and the idea of sweating all day and then hopping in the night train, which was planned for the night, didn’t sound so attractive. So we bought mango’s and duria and sat down in a starbucks, with aircon. After a while we went to visit a beautiful tempel called Pagode Tran Qouc. We weren’t so covered and so we had to buy fabric to wrap around us as a cover for our shoulders and knees and we went in to have a look. With a scooter back to the hotel again to find out that we could have a shower in the hotel. That news made us so happy, you wouldn’t know how much! So we had a shower and we felt so much better, ready for the night train to sapa! We took a taxi, loaded our baggage in and went to the train station early. Once we arrived and got to the right spot our train was allready there so we got in.

Glad we were inside again because it was still bloody hot outside haha. We reserved a 4 berth cabine for the trip which means 4 beds, 2 bottom bunks and 2 tops. We had the bottom ones and luckely the 2 top onces staid empty! This meant we had the room for ourself, yas. The train departed at 9ish and we arrived in Lao Cai at 5:30. We slept pretty okay actually, tho the matrasses where thin and hard but okay. We got out in Lao Cai and waited for the public bus who took us to Sapa, which took around an hour.