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A colorful doorway in Hanoi, Vietnam
Without planning it, I ended up spending almost a month in Vietnam during this little trip o' mine. It could just be spending $60 on the visa made me determined (initially) to get the most out of it. And I'm (mostly) glad I did, although towards the end I could have sped things up a bit and headed on to Singapore sooner. I also could have shaved off nights in Ho Chi Minh City and Hoi An to make the whole trip a bit more compact.
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Well, my month in Vietnam is winding to a close. Here's a recap of the specifics for how I did Vietnam! I don't think you need a full month to see this country; I probably could have planned better and finished this all in 3 weeks. And if I had planned it a little better, I could have definitely squeezed in two places in the south that I thought sounded interesting, Mui Ne and Da Lat. (I intentionally bypassed Nha Trang, the popular beach city, because I heard it was overrun with Russians and discothèques blasting cheesy dance music.) By flying from Ho Chi Minh to Da Nang, I sped up the trip a bit, then have kind of lagged with blocking off too much time in Hanoi as "down time" in between side trips to Cat Ba and Sapa. However, one of the things I've enjoyed most about this trip is having time to actually sit and write for the fun of it, and having the opportunity to do this here has been nice, especially since I found a great café with air con that hasn't seemed to mind me camping out in it for hours on end.
All right, without further ado, let's get down to business.
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"Hanoi'd" was the name of my last blog post that was randomly deleted when I went in to edit it. Thanks to the Squarespace app, there's no way to go in and get an original draft; for some inexplicable reason, the copy deletes and the document saves, so there's no way to get it back. Very, very annoying.
I thought it was apropos to keep "Hanoi'd" as the title because that is an apt description of my life over the past week. Thanks to some lame planning on my part, I gave myself a little more time in Vietnam than was necessary, and won't be flying to Singapore until Tuesday. This means that I've had loads of time in Hanoi, despite side trips to Cat Ba Island and Sapa. Way more than needed. And I already wrote about my trip to Cat Ba, but thanks to Squarespace's stupidity, I'll do a quick recap to get all ten of you readers up to speed.
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Bonjour, friends! I write to you in a delirious, sleepless haze from a café in Hanoi, where I arrived around 6 am this morning on a sleeper train from Dong Hoi. I wasn't sure what to expect with the sleeper train, but it was a comforable journey -- albeit a loud one, as the train roared, clanked, hissed, rumbled, screamed, wailed, rattled, hummed and sputtered all night long.
Having already been assigned a sleeper berth for my short train ride the other day between Dong Ha and Dong Hoi, I had an idea of what to expect. Four beds, each fitted with sheets and a comforter and pillow, and surprisingly comfortable and clean. I had no idea how to climb up to my bed on the ride between Dong Ha and Dong Hoi, but a Vietnamese woman in my compartment showed me how (there's no ladder, just small foot rests), and reminded me I needed to take my shoes off before climbing up. (Whoops!)
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