Hanoi

 My final (non travel) day was in Hanoi again. It’s a pretty neat city if you can get over the horrible air quality. It’s got one of the worst air qualities in the world and I didn’t wear a mask while walking around in the morning and I ended up with a headache and feeling quite sick. 

Hanoi has a really big cafe culture, the city has so many cafes tucked away in alleys and corners. As is common in Vietnam, you can find a lot of really cool places if you are brave and audacious enough to wander down small, dark, gray alleys and up sketchy looking stairways. Like walking through the wardrobe to Narnia you begin somewhere inauspicious (often grimy) and then suddenly you are in an immaculate cafe, often covered in plants, flowers, and/or books. The contrast is stark and never fails to feel a bit enchanting. My final day in Hanoi consisted mainly of me wandering streets and meandering into alleys and coffee shops and finding cute and different places. I’m going to miss Vietnamese coffee which is rich and strong and thick, but not at all bitter. Since milk isn’t really a think here if you have milk it’s sweetened condensed milk, which is quite delicious, but very sweet. I think I will return to it in some time, but for now I’m ready to take a break from sweetened condensed milk. I’m also so excited to have a meal without soy sauce when I go back to Oz. The only meals I’ve had that doesn’t include soy sauce is pancakes, and what I really want is a savory meal without soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, the food here is incredible. Some of the best foods I’ve had, and incredibly cheap, and I will surely miss it in two days, but I am so looking forward to some western food. 

I was able to catch up with my friend I met in Ninh Binh, Sarah (American) for an hour for coffee before she had to go catch a flight south to Da Nang and I also ran into a different friend Sarah (British) from Da Nang at my hostel and caught up with her a bit. It’s fun meeting up with people you found along the way and trading stories again. You never know when you’ll run into someone. 

In the evening I went to this incredible Bahn Mi place. I got a sandwich to go with the last of my cash, only to realize that it was an incredible sandwich, so I went to an atm (journeying to 6 atms over the course of half an hour of walking to find one with money) and paid a fee to buy another. I tried to buy two, but I confused them so much with my request that I ended up with just one. I had planned to take it with me to the airport in 5 hours, but all my adventuring to find a sandwich made me sufficiently hungry to just eat it while it was fresh. I do not regret that decision. 

I went to bed early, and got just a tiny bit of sleep before getting up at 1:30am to get a bus to the airport cause the ticket said to be there 3 hours before the flight. Turns out the airport didn’t even open until 2 hours before my flight so I sat outside and FaceTimed my dad until the airport finally let me in. Tired and happy I made my way back to Australia.

Overall Vietnam has been an absolutely wonderful experience. I loved traveling here and hope to come back one day.  feel like there is so much off the beaten path that would be really incredible to visit and spend more time in. I’d love to do it one day with someone else, traveling with someone else gives you the safety to stay in more remote places, but it was absolutely lovely being able to chose my adventure and do exactly what I wanted to do. Vietnamese people are incredibly nice and hospitable (once you get out of the main tourist areas where people are a bit pushy) and the food and culture is so rich and interesting. I’d absolutely recommend traveling here. Navigating transit here is certainly the most challenging part and having a small group to share private transportation would make the trip much more seamless. Nearly every challenge I faced was related to transit. That being said, had I not toured alone I wouldn’t have stayed at hostels and met so many lovely people along the way. It was such a pleasure to meet and share this experience with other travelers and enjoy in the art of exploration separately together.