…was a text I sent to Vera while watching an endless parade of characters on Hanoi’s “beer street”.

And I did get drunk (or tipsy – doesn’t take much these days), and the donut lady did come by again. Prayers answered. And I’m soooo glad, because while drinking my final beer, not only did a flamboyant street magician come by and perform (either he was good, or I was tipsy, or both) some surprisingly entertaining tricks, but I also watched an adorable four or five-year old girl sell tissues to the table to my right and full on (yet good-naturedly) slap the guy in the face to get him to hurry up with the payment. Then, she went to the table to my left, stole that guy’s last mozzarella stick, went back and offered it to the slap recipient – who jokingly opened his mouth – before then pulling it back, licking the entire thing, and offering it again. I swear to you, that girl is my brother reincarnate. It’s obviously heartbreaking to see a girl her age peddling wares, but she was healthy, cleanly clothed, and clearly on a path to dominate the world.

Hanoi and the surrounding areas

I had about a week in Vietnam, and so as not to spend it in transit, I spent all of it in Hanoi with short excursions to the surrounding areas. That includes Sapa, Halong Bay, and Ninh Binh.

 Hanoi

I really like Hanoi. It’s vibrant and chaotic, but friendly and harmless. It’s full of backpackers, but doesn’t have a debasingly debaucherous vibe. The (street) food is fantastic. It’s dirt cheap. They’ve done a pretty good job of preserving and curating local & national history. The traffic is insane but respectful (like La Paz, but if nobody obeyed red lights and a quarter of the traffic drove the wrong direction). And it’s quirky. It’s laid out thematically, where you’ll have a block of shops selling the same stuff.

The photos are kinda crap, but hopefully you can see enough to get the gist. The days I had in Hanoi I spent wandering the old quarter, eating, shopping (communist Vietnam inspires some crazy capitalist consumerism), and relaxing.

Today, my last day, I took a scooter taxi (had to at least once) to the prison where American POWs including John McCain were held and treated much better than the prison’s previous owners, the French, treated the Vietnam revolutionaries. Then I went to Vietnam’s first university, founded with Confucian ideals back in the late 11th century. There, they have a pond called “The Well of Heavenly Brilliance.” Meanwhile in America, even the nation’s most prestigious universities have sold naming rights to restrooms. I shit you not: One of our current supreme court justices (not even one of the evil ones), while Dean at Harvard Law School, approved a $100,000 donation to the school in return for naming a men’s restroom. The dude’s name: Falik. “Falik men’s restroom.” Admittedly pretty funny, but admittedly, I’m not very mature.

Sapa

Sapa is in the northern highlands of the country and has the spectacular terraced rice fields that adorn screensavers everywhere.

The trek was a two-day, one-night, pretty touristy, pretty casual affair, led by one of the ladies of the local Hmong tribes. She explained their culture (get married between 15-18, start popping out babies), their cultural changes (arranged marriages until 5-10 years ago, more freedom for women now), and their way of life (men are too shy and stupid to learn English, so they stay home subsistence farming and raising the kids while the ladies go out and guide or otherwise work in the tourism sector). The ladies feel “old and unwanted” if they are unwed at 18. Maybe I can use that as an argument to convince V to tie the knot. Yeah, I’m sure that’ll have the intended effect!

Halong Bay

This was a day tour, out the door at 8am, back at 10pm. Again, a super touristy thing, but I didn’t have the time or desire to figure out how to avoid it. And from what I heard and saw, no matter how you do it, you’re surrounded by tourists. Still, Halong Bay was beautiful, and as a bonus I met a lady in her late 50s who had been working as an international teacher for decades and had incredible stories to tell about all the places she’d lived.

I got to kayak as well, which was fun, because my kayak sank while I was still pretty far from the dock. When I realized what was happening, I paddled my hardest to one of the nearby row boats, handed my phone to a bewildered tourist, and capsized. Then I floated like an idiot while the row boat captain drained the water from my kayak, before, undeterred by the giant crack I had somehow missed while stepping in, as well as the lack of a plug for the rear drain which was probably my original undoing, he tossed it back in and sent me on my way. Thanks, I guess. I hustled back to the dock, catching a few “who’s the douche trying to get a workout” looks along the way, and thankfully I made it without having to sacrifice my phone to Poseidon. Fun!

Ninh Binh

Ninh Binh was the same set up as Halong Bay: get picked up early, dropped off late, and the rest is covered. Ninh Binh is also known as the “inland Halong Bay”, so there you go. While this was perhaps one of the worst-guided tours I’ve been on, it was nonetheless really cool. The area is the same kind of karst landscape, but with rivers, not sea.

The word that comes to mind when trying to describe our last stop, the Thung Nahm bird sanctuary, is “primordial”. If it were a US national park, it’d be one of the coolest places in the world. As it is though, it’s incredible on one side, and a romantic if not a little kitschy resort on the other. Even with that, it was enough to give me the increasingly rare thrill of a new, awe-inspiring natural setting.

And that’s it. Over the next couple of days I will fly back to Berlin, and in less than I week, I will be back at work. Because it deserves it, I will have a separate post on how I’m feeling about all of that.