Who went?

I met to other volunteers through workaway, Kalen and Shay. They are both from the US and a delight to be around. They work at a Kindergarden co-owned/lead by my host, where they teach English to preschoolers.

The three of us had met exactly once before this (at said kindergarden), where we talked for maybe 20 minutes max. So we decided the only reasonable thing to do was to take a trip togetehr! (I love travelling, I really do. But it sets standarts for both social interactions and common sense, that are just… wild in any other setting.)

Anyways, we all survived so none of us was an ax- murderer, probably. And I didn’t even feel like a third wheel 95% of the time, even though the other two not only knew each other before this, but are a thing on top of that!

I call that a success 😀

How did we get there?

So… turns out Vietnam actually has a pretty solid intra-country bus network? Who knew? certainly not google maps, I’ll tell you that much.

What they dont seem to have is easily available information about said busses’ schedule. or at least they can’t be found by yours truly on a friday afternoon.

My host Phan just sent us to the main bus station in the area (or possibly in Hanoi? They weren’t the clearest of instructions.) so thats what we did. And becuase it was pretty far and we did not want to spend taxi money, we got a GrabCar. Way cheaper.

Once we arrived there, the real chaos began! First we just wanted to find an ATM, because my travelbuddies did not have cash on them. However, when we tried to ask someone where to find one (google maps had once again betrayed us), he did not listen to our questions, or didn’t understand them. Personally I’m leaning towards the later, but who knows really.

Instead he took us a teeny tiny office where some dude with really long fingernails on only one hand told us we coud get on his(?) bus for 180.000 dong or less than 8 euros per person, all the way to Halong. (I thought the nails thing was some wierd fashion statement i just didn’t get, but I later saw another guy with them so I really can’t say).

When we finally managed to tell nail guy that we were really just looking for an ATM at the moment, he called the first guy back and he lead us to the next available one. It was super close too! Maybe about 200 m away from where we were? The problem being, that it was across a very big, very busy street crossing that terrified us, since in vietnam things like right-of-way and trafic lights are seen as friendly suggestions at best (except for Shay, who is a self-proclaimed thrill-seeker, or what I call a maniac). The guy however, just took me by the hand and walked us across the thing and back with zero hesitation.

After that (and since the price they gave us was about what i was told to expect), it seemed like a good idea to stick with them for our bus ride. So we payed for our tickets and got lead across the entire bus parking lot to a minivan with maybe 7 seats (if you feel generous).

The drive itself was pretty eventless, except for us annoying our driver and getting shushed twice (twice!!! I think we were mostly just talking to loud? There was never any explenation because languagebarrier. You just kind of have to live with not knowing why things are happening half the time, if you’re in a country that you don’t speak the language of. It’s it’s own kind of fun, mostly)

Appart from that the most notable thing to was our driver stopping in a (decently creepy) alleyway for a smoke break. And you better believe we made a lot of jokes about waking up without our kidneys, but it was all in good fun and we never actually felt endangered by anything but the occasional trafic law violation. (and even that was mostly just learned reactions since people here are actually pretty attentive drivers, probably more so than in Europe)

Arriving at Halong

By the time we arrived in halong city, it was dark and we were hungry. We had somehow all forgot to pack a single piece of food. So to catch two birds with one stone (save money on taxi fees and get food) we decided to walk towards the place we wanted to stay at and find a food place to get dinner at on the way.

And here is where the differences to Hanoi started to become obvious. First of all, Halong has actual sidewalks, which felt like an incredible luxury. It also has essentially no streetvendors (that we saw), so we had to walk quite a bit until we found somewhere to eat.

We did end up at a place that sold beef nudle soup, aka Pho (after leaving a promising smelling restaurant speciallizing in buffalo for being to expensive), where the next problem arose.

Shay and Kaleb are vegetarian and vegan respectively, which is not common at all in Vietnam, from what we can tell. They did however still want Pho specifically so we managed to convey that they wanted the noodle soup without the added meat on top. While they tried their hand at intercultural communication using a mixture of gestures, the cooks extremely limited English and my phone for google translate (I was the only one with data, since I got a Vietnamese simcard. That advice from my host has honestly saved me so much trouble, you have no idea), I got chatted up by a nice lady.

Either I’m the least intimidating one of us three or people feel bad for me because I’m left alone by my companions, but for some reason the locals more often than not decide, that I’m the one to talk to. Not that I’m complaining mind you, it’s great and I get all the tipps on where to go next! (Now that I think about it, it could also be because I have clearest pronounciation, being a non-native speaker? Ii’s probably a mix of all three, honestly). I also get shown a ton of baby fotos, because a lot of the people that talk with me are mothers with young children learning English with or for their child, which is amazing in my oppinion.

The food was good, the company great and the price amazing! If we now found a good place to sleep it would be a great way to end the day. I had previously looked up hostels with “Hostel World”, an App recomendet to me be my american friends and we were going towards that direction.

However, when we arrived at our supposed destination, the hostel was nowhere to be seen and when we asked someone living on the same street, they had no idea what we were talking about. After walking around for a while and seeing no success for our efforts, we decided to give up and just choose the next best hotel or hostel we could find. of course as soon as we said that we stumbled uppon half a dozen standing one next to the other!

We chose one were we knew checkin was still possible (it was around 10 pm at that point) because there was still someone at the front. The price turned out to be reasonable and they had an AC so we took the key and went to our room. It had two big beds and I got one to myself ! The joys of being single on the road. Really underapreciated, if you ask me.

So after a shower (delightfully cool) and the obligatory lokk down the balcony (a death trap) we went to bed and decided to give ourselves the luxury of sleeping in instead of packing the whole day full of activities.

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