Logistics and Karaoke

Yesterday was a brilliant but utterly unexpected day. OK so I knew I was doing tour with Hanoi Kids having found details of them on Travelfish and read the great reviews on Tripadvisor I'd signed up for a tour on my first full day in Hanoi. What happened in the course of that tour however was not what I thought might have been on the itinerary for the day. 

So a very lovely and smiley student called Trang turned up at the agreed time of 10.30 to meet me for the tour. We sat in my hotel and discussed what I wanted to do. 1) Walk around the Old Quarter 2) Buy me a scarf and if possible a jacket as it was bloody freezing in Hanoi something I hadn't expected. No problem and off we went. 2 minutes in scarf purchased, result. Trang knows a shop where we can buy North Face jackets very cheap (they make them in Vietnam) we can walk there and see things on the way. Excellent. 30 minutes later jacket purchased. Now we're off to the Hanoi Hilton, what's left of the prison where the French kept political prisoners and later on the Vietnamese kept US pilots including John McCain. All a bit grim. Then we had an amazing lunch at Quan An Ngon, clearly a very popular restaurant with the locals it was packed. The food was amazing and it was brilliant to have a local recommend dishes to try. We had Vietnamese Pancakes, Broken sticky rice with pork and beef in the southern style with noodles. Yum. It looked like it might be a bit more expensive than some places but at about five quid for two of us and drinks I was more than happy.

Now it was after lunch where I was expecting the tour to come to an end as Trang had a class to go at her University. However after a walk back to her motorcycle I found myself on the back of it on the way to her Logistics lecture at the University of Foreign Trade in Hanoi. First time for everything and all that. As I sat down in her lecture creating quite a stir amongst the other students I couldn't help but laugh at the situation. Here I was going 'back to school' on my travels. 2 hours later (I didn't learn much, something about Hamburg rules and shipping containers sinking) we left and went to a pagoda near by which was filled with students playing various sports like badminton and I met some more of her friends. They were very inquisitive about me and where I come from and I found them all to be very friendly. Apart from the old lady who appeared out of the shadows and started hissing at us. Alarming.

After the pagoda we walked to a cafe that was bloomin miles away as Trang had invited me to join her and some friends for a karaoke party. It turned out to be a Hanoi Kids social in a private room on the top floor of a shiny cafe (somewhere, god knows where in Hanoi) with 40+ of the guides. It was amazing, they sang a mixture of western and Vietnamese songs and some played guitar. Trang had repeatedly asked me through the day what song I would be singing and I had either avoided the question or just point blank refused owing to my rubbish voice. I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad I never agreed to it owing to the fact they were all rather talented! 

So my 'morning' tour saw me return to the hotel nearly 12 hours later, after some sight seeing, shopping, a motorbike ride, university lecture and karaoke party. Totally unexpected but utterly brilliant. I can't guarantee the same kind of experience but if any of you ever come to Hanoi you have to do a Hanoi Kids tour it's the best way to see Hanoi and get a proper local experience. 

Photos to follow when I can upload them.

Traffic Dodging

So I thought when I left Nigeria that the last of my traffic related woes might be over. Until I arrived in Hanoi. On my first evening here, after finding myself being 'upgraded' to a single room because the dorm I'd booked was full (not ideal when you are solo traveller) and feeling a bit lonely I decided to go and explore my surroundings and get some dinner. I quickly developed a strategy of only walking down one side of the street meaning I basically did a big circle because I was too scared to cross the road. Seriously. This city is bonkers. 

I'm very grateful that on day two in Hanoi I did a tour with Hanoi Kids, Vietnamese students who offer free tours in exchange for the chance to practice their English. I was taught how to cross the road, basically just go and hope for the best whilst sort of weaving through the motorcycles and uttering a mantra of "I don't want to die". Well I added the last bit myself. More about the Hanoi Kids tour in the next post.

Tiny but mighty

Thai Massage, one of the many things this beautiful country is famous for and possibly or at least at this moment the thing I love the most. You can’t complain when it costs £6 for an hours massage and although parts of it verge on incredibly painful, when you leave at the end you walk away feeling as though all of the parts of your body are where they are supposed to be.  It doesn’t seem possible for someone so tiny (as all the thai ladies who do the massage seem to be) to be that strong. There am I am blissfully drifting away under the wooden shelter on the beach listening to the waves lapping the shore when the tiny ninja/masseuse goes from gentle massage to limb bending high jinx and before you can say “is my leg supposed be over there?” she’s somehow clicked your whole body into alignment. I wonder if I can fit her into my rucksack for pop up Thai massage after every flight/bus/train journey?

Not the service I used, but it made me chuckle.

Scaramanga’s secret lair

It’s hard to believe but I’ve been in Thailand for a week already. In fact this time last week I was in a state that can best be described as delirium after travelling through the night and two planes later arriving in Bangkok on approximately zero hours sleep. Then came the fun of standing in an immigration queue for nearly an hour whilst TV screens above the booths flashed up images of ‘Thailand the land of smiles’ which felt slightly ironic at that point. After the passport was successfully stamped it all got a lot easier, bag already on the belt (no surprise), straight out and right next to the area where my free shuttle from my bargain hotel was waiting to whisk me away to the delights of an actual bed. Oh the joy and indeed I even managed a smile (or ten, or twenty, I was only in bloomin THAILAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

Crazy lady that I am I went straight back to the airport the next morning for another plane ride (do you call it a ride?!) to the island of Phuket. I had grand plans to do all sorts of adventuring and trips and the like but I must confess I have mostly been lounging on the beach, under an umbrella of course. You don’t get a tan like mine without serious dedication to the shade and factor 30+.

My most exciting adventuring to date was on a day trip to the Islands in Phang Nga bay in search of James Bond Island where the Man with the Golden Gun was filmed. It involved getting on a big boat, getting off the big boat into smaller boats to do some sea canoeing  in and out of caves and by doing some sea canoeing I mean sitting in an inflatable canoe whilst a jolly Thai man paddles you about. OK so I did have a wee go at the paddling malarkey but I thought it best to leave it to the professional especially when it came to navigating through the caves where we had to lie down in order to get through. Potential hazard.

I’m pleased to say we did find Scaramanga’s not so secret lair and the famous sticky up rock. Alas he was not in residence so we could point and laugh at his third nipple and nor was 007. Of course I took the opportunity to take a cheesy photo with mock finger gun (neither golden or very gun like) and there were lots of other people taking  photos of the rock on their head or holding the rock up with their finger and the like but not a single other person pretending to be James Bond. I mean you go all that way on a trip specifically sold as ‘James Bond Island’ and no one pretends to be 007?!?! No theme tune humming either. Schmucks.

Cheesy photo below and a much wider selection via the link over yonder.