When you hear that we journeyed twenty five hours by bus, your first thought is "that sounds terrible!" or something like that. And it almost was. We booked our bus ride on a normal (upright seats) bus, but when we got to the bus station we saw a sleeper bus (a bus where the seats are more like a bed) and opted for the upgrade on the last two seats available - and it was well worth it. We took off at 6:30pm, stopped for a nice dinner at 9pm and drove through the night, able to lay down to sleep almost through the full night. At three in the morning we stopped for a bathroom break and a very drunk Vietnamese guy got on and took the spot that another man had. He was an unfavorable neighbor who stunk of booze (no doubt he was celebrating the New Year) and snored through the night.
The next stop was at the border at 6am. We waited around for three hours to get across and into the next leg of our journey. It all went smoothly with a quick lunch stop where we had to point to a menu and hope that the nice Vietnamese women understood our requests for rice and eggs. Later that night we ended up in Hanoi around 9pm. We took the hostel that the bus driver recommended along with all the other backpackers on the bus. Starving as we'd only had two small meals in the last 27 hours, we ventured out into Hanoi's busy streets. Unable to find a restaurant, we walked through various alleyways, each alley full of makeshift restaurants competing to serve the same dish. We ended up on the "fish soup" corner where we pointed to some unknown objects, chose our noodles, and awaited our meal, which ended up being rather disappointing, especially combined with the warm beer we were served.
More on Hanoi in the next blog! Now its sleepy time... Lotsa love, Nolan
No comments:
Post a Comment