Day 11. Vietnam Diary – Hà Nội/Hanoi

Padded coach, conversing via Google Translate, dinner with President Obama (ish)

Day 11. Tuesday 28 May 2024

[No day 10 entry due to being on a coach all day and being knackered that evening and not wanting to write while sitting on a rock-hard mattress]

I’m sitting in Si Coffee Stories, a coffee shop in Hanoi that my friend Lindsay had liked when she was here pretty much the same time last year.

I got through my “stressful” day absolutely fine. I really need to not stress about so many eventualities that I perceive will happen. It’s only useful to stress out when things do go wrong and actions can and need to be taken.

I have no awareness of sleeping on Sunday night, but surely I did. I still had mild cockroach anxiety but things weren’t as bad as I anticipated: getting up; getting a taxi; getting the coach; and the drive not being as perilous as I’d been led to believe. [Or, perhaps more likely, not as perilous as it could have been]

My alarm was set for 04:10. At 04:04 I decided to get up – I’d been clock-watching for too long.

Incidentally, why do groups of tourists go on cycle rickshaws in big groups? A slow procession is currently going by extremely slowly. I see no joy.

Anyway, I got up and went down to reception to check out. The night receptionist was initially nowhere to be seen, but he soon leapt up from his (entirely appropriate) bed on the floor. He gave me my breakfast box, comprising two bananas, some mini pastries, oranges, four slices of “sandwich”, ie familiar processed bread, two white, two brown, and a pot of pineapple jam.

My next big stress was getting a taxi at 04:30. I set Grab for the bus pick-up destination … three-minute wait. A nice taxi and driver pulled up and drove me a mile along the road. As I’d seen from Google Maps, it was just a small shop front, which, just after 04:30, was shuttered. Hue at 04:30 is busier than London even. Nice busy, and not busy-busy. A few joggers, people looking like they were going to work/already working, cyclists and the usual scooters and a few buses. I saw a bat flying around. Sunrise was at around 05:15. By 04:45 it was getting noticeably lighter.

I was on a shuttered-up, fairly quiet street and paranoid I was in the wrong place – I know, I know, my ticket info from 12Go gave the address and map info and the helpful woman at The Scarlett’s reception had confirmed I should be there at 05:00 for my 05:15 (rather than the 1.5 hours-before suggestion on the website and booking info).

I was very happy to see, as the taxi pulled up to the Quang Dung Limousine pick-up point, that a young foreigner was already there. We spoke a bit. He was from Leeds, probably travelling between school and/or university, in Vietnam for four weeks, then to Cambodia. He was the first tourist I’d spoken to. He’d been on other buses and said all had been late. He was going to Tinh Binh on an 05:00 bus.

At about 05:10 a fairly new seven-seater MPV pulled up. We were the first people to get in the MPV (so much trust placed in a man who pulled up and indicated for us to get in the car, no common langauge) but three other people at other stops joined us. We hadn’t realised we’d be in that car for an hour. It was cool and comfy enough, though no idea how long we’d be in it for, thankfully heading north.

It pulled off the main road, after much “I’m coming through” beeping – another slightly nervous, this one quite young, driver. We then got on our VIP coach. You take off your shoes and are given a plastic bag (of course, more plastic). There is a central aisle, which Mr Leeds said must be a feature of VIP travel, his previous coaches not having a padded aisle. On either side were an upper and lower row of private beds (reclining seats, I think maybe 5x5x5x5). Mr Leeds ended up on the same bus and I don’t know that it was ever full, but people came and went. I think the five of us and three drivers set off at 06:20.

I could pretty much lie straight, there was plenty of room. So, so much more comfy than the train. Well, I say that in terms of seating and the sense of being in a private cocoon.

Of the three drivers, one was kind of sweet. One just seemed like an angry man and one didn’t have anything to do with me. The angry man made “Hanoi” sound like a dreadful swear word when he barked it at me to confirm my destination. We didn’t have designated beds but Mr Leeds settled into a lower bunk. 15 minutes into the journey, Mr Bark pulled back his curtain and shouted Vietnamese at him, indicating he couldn’t be in that bed. He moved. No obvious reason why. Mr Leeds was adamant about sleeping on a lower bunk. I was on an upper one. I think the lower bunks may feel less sway-y, and swaying is a constant feeling on those coaches on those roads and with as much overtaking as there appears to be.

The journey did not feel as terrifying as I’d dreaded, but had I been able to see straight ahead through the driver’s window, I would probably have been terrified.

I enjoyed – and, yes, “enjoyed”, though with moments of “woah, are we about to hit someone/topple over” – a bit of sleep, I watched two episodes of Race Across the World that I’d downloaded onto iPlayer, ate, didn’t drink enough water but still had to brave the tiny, perilous toilet three times (nowhere near as dirty as the train loo). I also discovered I could read (hit and miss whether I can read on coaches without feeling sick). I read the remaining three-quarters of a book that I finished on the outskirts of Hanoi.

We were due in at 18:55. We stopped en route A LOT, often to collect or drop off deliveries (more packages than passengers). We arrived in Hanoi at 20:10. Considering we stopped for an hour to repair a tyre and how often we pulled over, I think one hour fifteen minutes late was impressive. I enjoyed the scenery, though probably not as varied as I expected. Lots of rice paddies, individual mountains (ie more like lots of little mountain pyramids dotted around rather than ranges), water buffalo, ducks (I had assumed the ducks were just for the duck-eating market but in the Thailand episode of Race Across the World, I learned that ducks eat parasites amidst rice plants, and indeed the ducks were amidst the paddy fields). I also saw loads of small temples, shops and familiar-in-Vietnam street scenes.

We all got off the coach at one service station. I now have a slightly more favourable opinion of services up the A1. The loos were the first [and only] long-drops I had encountered and were stinky and filthy. But easier to manoeuvre than the coach loo.

I didn’t need lunch but you bought a token for what you wanted (from the lady in the conical hat/nón lá). Mr Leeds managed to buy a pho token but must have missed a stage in the process as he never got the pho he ordered and paid for. Everyone got off the coach without their shoes, just slipping on sliders from a huge box. You wouldn’t get that off a bus at a Moto in the UK!

Although the staff weren’t charming or welcoming, the driving, while beep-heavy with one driver in particular and clearly very high-speed-overtakey, was kind of OK.

I’m going to leave this café. I’m thinking of making myself relax for five – FIVE – hours with a pamper session. Not at all my kind of thing but I have realised – previously too, but more on this trip – that I always seem to feel a need to “get places” and not linger. This morning, I sat by the lake in the Old Quarter on a bench in the shade, with a nice breeze, albeit a hot, not at all cooling breeze. My friend Kaori and I met in Japan in February 1998. Her birthday is 23 March, mine is 20 May. While I was in Nara, Japan (incidentally, the first check point in series 4’s Race Across the World which I’ve been watching), she and I started having McDonald’s breakfasts on our birthdays. Most years, especially the past few years, on or near each other’s birthdays, we have a birthday breakfast. This morning, passing a McDonald’s by the lake, I decided to have my Kaori-and-me birthday breakfast. I sat by the lake. It was lovely to do. I had my usual sausage and egg McMuffin set, with hash brown and, instead of my usual tea (or water), I had an iced phin coffee with condensed milk, all for 79k vnd (£2.50). And the coffee was really good. So was the muffin.

As soon as I’d eaten, I felt a need to get going. I realised I had no time constraint, no hurry. I find it very hard to just sit like that, for no reason. But I want to sometimes. So I did. But I was irritated by a shoe repair man who Google Translated and point out he could fix my broken/worn sandal. Who knew the sole was worn and slightly flappy? He had a fair point, but he sat next to me while I was having my breakfast and contemplating the joy of sitting quietly. I realised the sandals were a false economy purchase, cheap Teva-style rip-offs that I’ve only worn every day here and just a few times previously. I’ll leave them here. [hahahaha, I brought them home; they’re still usable, though I really don’t like them much and the sole does need replacing or fixing]

So, I’m going to go to a money change place, a phin coffee shop and then will I/won’t I spend five hours of enforced relaxation in a spa?

It’s 20:04. I’ve been scrubbed, exfoliated, massaged, had a long, slow hair wash and head massage, a manicure and a pedicure and I had my eyebrows threaded somewhere else. It was good to rest today and be in a calming, cool environment from about midday until 17:30.

A Vietnamese hair wash is a soothing, comforting, delightful thing. The manicure and pedicure took ages, in large part because I was having a Google Translate conversation with Nhur. She’s 22. When I told her how much more expensive a spa day in London would be, she said I could adopt her in exchange for beauty treatments! We had an interesting chat about women, marriage and children. She said that in Vietnam girls used to marry and soon-after have babies at about eighteen. She said it’s changed now, instead more often sixteen! She said there is not enough sex education and girls and boys are having sex younger without precautions and then “having to” get married earlier. The latter bit I think I understood correctly, but definitely clear about sixteen and an absence of sex education. She said she was happy to be single for now and that it’s a common joke that there’s an interest rate with a boy marrying a girl, that the girl will love their child more than them. I may have misunderstood “interest rate’s” meaning though, but the girl loving their child more than their husband was definitely at least a factor.

She and her friend laid their arms against my not-seen-the-sun-in-years legs and said how lucky I was to be so “white” rather than “yellow”. It’s such an alien perspective to me, that they see their pale skin as “yellow”. I find it unfathomable that anyone would aspire to have my pasty white sun-free skin. It’s a shame we all over the world have so many burdens and complexes and stereotypes about skin colour when it should ultimately just be the casing for what we all have exactly the same of underneath.

Hanoi is very different to Hue and Saigon. It’s easier to cross roads here than Saigon, though that’s in part because it’s Sunday and there are a lot more traffic lights and seemingly less traffic. I say that, but there are a lot of vehicles on the road. Hue isn’t as big or busy, though I was helped across the road twice in Hue but only once in Saigon.

There’s a lot more emphasis on shopping for tourists. Saigon, or at least where I went, wasn’t particularly focussed on tourist shops, except in the market, Chợ Bến Thành, which was fairly awful, tat, compared to some of the shops here. There are loads of tourists here, ditto Hue. Maybe in Saigon they were/we were more spread out. I did walk along the main “beer and backpacker walking street” in Saigon, Bùi Viện, and around the same kind of area in Hue. In Saigon, I just didn’t notice so many tourists, though I have seen photos and videos of the road, Bui Vien, completely rammed with people at night time, including on Race Across the World.

For my spa afternoon, I chose a “A Glimpse of Hanoi”, 2,310,000 vnd (about £72), which was four hours and forty five minutes (longer in reality) of steam bath (that didn’t happen – I didn’t comment because I felt that the humidity outside was enough of a steam bath), body scrub with coffee (lovely, felt like a good, gentle, scratch massage), Hanoi signature massage (strong, a kind of familiar type of massage, that lasted ages), foot treatment (very lengthy), manicure and pedicure (no nail polish though). That was at Luala Spa. I mean, there are spa places everywhere in the Old Quarter in Hanoi. I liked the look of this one, and that package, as it happens except for the steam bath, was everything I’d wanted. I’d go again, but I wouldn’t because, as I said, there are so many spas that look and sound relaxing. But it was clean, nice staff, nice relaxing music and aromas and I liked the elasticated skirt boob cover – it reminded me of that dreadful woman in Little Britain who goes to the spa and offers sexual favours to pay her bill. I don’t feel I was channelling her though, fortunately, and all staff I encountered were female.

After the scrub – the woman who did that spoke no English – she escorted me to the shower cubicle and sat me down. At no point did she indicate the shower. I wondered if it was the steam bath as steam was, weirdly, coming form somewhere. I sat in my disposable pants on a small seat. Fortunately, I did think I was supposed to shower, so I went out to find her. Yes, shower. I asked about the disposable pants and a pair of silky shorts she’d given me. Google Translate said to share a shower together, me and the pants. All very confusing. Afterwards, when I lay down for a pre-head massage, she realised I was in damp pants and couldn’t stop giggled and gave me new pants and new, dry, satin shorts.

I had my eyebrows threaded afterwards, though it wasn’t much cheaper than in London. I probably should have tried elsewhere. It was 150k vnd, so almost £5. She did seem to pull each hair out individually and she did a decent job and didn’t ask if I needed my top lip doing – seriously, I feel very self-conscious when asked that in the UK. I’d ask if I wanted my moustache removed!

I then headed for early dinner at Huong Lien, where I had special bun cha (60k vnd), one fried crab roll (8k vnd) and a Hanoi beer (25k vnd). Anthony Bourdain had a meal there, maybe even at my table, with President Obama. Obama had the same meal as me, though a seafood roll rather than my crab roll. I always feel sad about Anthony Bourdain. I really enjoyed Parts Unknown, having years previously read Kitchen Confidential and disliked him a lot.

I then went to Circle K for water and condensed milk. There’s some phin coffee in the flat and I bought a 30k phin filter today so thought I’d make myself a Vietnamese coffee.

I’d seen from the taxi yesterday a tasty-looking cake shop round the corner from my flat. I bought a pineapple cake, which was basically a pineapple upside down cake. Delicious.

Tomorrow is forecast to be 36°C with a feels-like of 47°C. It seems storms are needed and are coming (I’ve not become a Vietnamese weather expert, I was told it was particularly hot today and I looked at the forecast). My cunning plan is to go out early, return here during the day and go out again in the evening, possibly to shoe street for some cheap sandals to replace mine. San, the lovely owner of this flat, said I should pay about 300k vnd. She said I’d be given a tourist price far above that. I hate bargaining. I’d be OK with 500k vnd on the basis of 300k for a local.

[I have noticed that I end the handwritten journal quite abruptly and I really don’t demonstrate a sense of flow. But I kind of like how random handwriting is, more so than typing. Reading back, I feel mildly disappointed by how inarticulate it sounds though.]