This is from the typed-up version of 144 pages of handwritten diary which I wrote over the 17 days I was in Vietnam (May/June 2024). I corrected it as I typed and added a few comments in square brackets. My intention was to use the diary as notes and transform it into a witty yet informative and concise travel diary-guide. Arguably, I should have stuck with that plan, but my handwritten word-vomit seems to capture my mood and authentic thoughts, so I’ve kept it pretty much as it was initially written.
Reclining monk rage, “Yes, I got a pig”, pens
Day 1. Saturday 18 May 2024
The lights on my second plane have just dimmed. It’s 02:32 (Qatar time, 00:32 UK time) and I’m definitely ready to sleep. My seat is in the middle of four but a spare seat in the middle next to me, plus the seat appears to be Premium (though there is no official Premium Class on Qatar Airways), so it’s kind of OK for leg and sprawl space. I say it’s OK, but who wouldn’t far rather be in a flatbed seat in Business or First Class?!
I figured I could start writing while we’re taxiing (very fast). I’ve no idea how this will work out, what I write. But I wanted to write some pre-Vietnam thoughts.
What am I expecting?
Pretty much too hot to walk far. I’ve been to Middle East, Japan, Singapore and India in summer, so I think I have a fair understanding of how hard it’ll be. But it’ll still take a lot of getting used to, and I know I’ll never be OK with it and at no point whilst I’m outside will I look anything other than a sweaty, red-faced tourist.
I think the noise, motorbikes and hectic-ness will trouble me. I hope I adjust and sort-of accept it like I do in Delhi.
I think not being able to read signs or menus and people not speaking much English will be difficult for me – speeding up to take off; it will never cease to amaze me how a large aircraft, a 777, can go this fast on land and actually take off – but I think once I get over the unfamiliarity, I’ll sort of enjoy the anonymity.
What do I want from this trip?
I want to get an idea of what it’s like to live in Vietnam. I always try to do/experience/see as much as possible when I go away, but for this trip I don’t want to do that. I am hoping to relax and enjoy the sense of the place – I’m glad no one is next to me or behind me, the boy in front [who I later realised was a monk, probably in his forties or fifties] has already fully reclined. It’s a struggle to resist the urge to push against the back of his chair or be completely cool and fine about the sudden reduction in space his reclining has inflicted on me. What was I saying about wanting to relax and enjoy the sense of place …
Probably not my best plan, but I’ve only booked the first three nights (an AirBnB that sounds lovely, and which is far more expensive than anywhere I plan to stay again, £177 for three nights, to include my birthday on Monday). I will then move somewhere cheaper, somewhere else in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) before my 22-hour train journey to Hue. I’m already starting to question why I booked a seat rather than a bunk in a sleeper carriage for that journey. I think a coach would have been more comfy than the train but oh well. I have a train seat reserved for that first part and I have booked a coach from Hue to Hanoi so I can compare train versus coach comfort.
Expectations?
Food will be a mystery and I won’t know what/how to order.
Right now, it feels like a big deal, away for two-and-a-half weeks on my own, somewhere for the first time, not really done any research (I don’t want to), only three of sixteen nights’ accommodation booked and 38 hours of travel between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
I need to shut my eyes …
[That was all I wrote for Saturday 18 May at the time. It took me a few days to really get into the diary writing and to be less “I did this … then I did this … then I ate this … then I drank another seven coffees”. I soon realised that the purchase of a selection of exciting pens (why oh why can I not resist a cute/interesting/super fine/not black or blue or green or red ink/cheap-but-good pen?) and the discovery that there are coffee shops everywhere (there should be a special word for cafes in Vietnam, neither café nor coffee shop accurately reflects what they are) and that people seem to sit in them for hours, including students studying at big tables. Once I discovered the joy of alternating pen colours and pen-feel and that I could sit in various cafes to write, I wrote more and more and more, though that obviously doesn’t guarantee more coherent and interesting content. I don’t know if I can count how many coffee shops I sat in, but at a guess maybe fifty. Yes, I know, it does suggest caffeine addiction. But most of the ones I sat in had either air conditioning or fans and by sitting in so many coffee shops I ended up walking further and exploring more, plus the coffee shops were fabulous, for the coffee, for the people-watching and for the constant feeling of being in Vietnam, somewhere new and unfamiliar and fascinating.]
