Vietnam – day 1

Thursday, 12.12.2024

Hanoi – Hai Phong – Cat Ba

Hanoi is definitely not a quiet city. Good thing I brought earplugs. Early in the morning we’re woken by the aunties already preparing food for the whole day. We get up at 8am, pack everything fast and head toward the market. Along the way we stop for coffee at some man’s stand. We ask for no sugar, no milk, but it’s sweetened anyway. We sit on mini stools for a bit and continue. At the market we buy a little container and a knife. Jozef towers three heads above everyone else. Near the market we find a spot for breakfast. We have a pho bo soup.

We try to find an Agribank ATM, which has the lowest fees, but can’t find it anywhere. Once we give up and go withdraw at a random ATM, we spot it right next door. We withdraw 3 million dong, almost €120. Today we want to move on to Cat Ba island. We found out the bus to Hai Phong leaves from Gia Lam station, still about 3 km away. We cross the 1.7 km long railway bridge over the Red River. And it’s not exactly pleasant. In the middle there’s the railway, on either side motorbike lanes, and along the railing a very narrow walkway made of reinforced concrete blocks that don’t look very trustworthy.

But the chance it’d actually collapse is pretty small. We walk through Hanoi’s non-touristy alleys now. There are top-tier barbershops right on the street here, but it’s still early. We reach the station and ask the lady at the window when the bus to Hai Phong leaves. She points us to a stall right by the entrance. We buy tickets for 120000 dongs per person, and it leaves in 10 minutes. The bus has nice leather seats, but it’s built for Vietnamese height. Buses here also work as couriers. You just wave down a bus and it’ll deliver a package to a pickup point, where the other side can collect it. One man was sending a meter-tall lime tree, so they put it on the seats instead of the storage compartment.

It’s interesting watching the landscape out the window, but I’m tired too, so I sleep for an hour. The bus drops us off on the edge of town, earlier than we’d expected. There’s no scooter rental nearby, so we walk 4 km across the whole city. A lot of people wear masks here, so the air quality’s probably not great. I’m getting pretty hungry, but we sort the scooter out first. We happen to find a rental place a bit sooner than the one we’d marked on the map. We wake up the man, who’d just dozed off in a chair, and he calls over someone who speaks a bit of English. We agree on 2 days for 300000 dong. We try on pretty much every helmet, and Jozef finally picks one with little bears on it. We set off.

I have to navigate, so I’ve got my phone in one hand. He tells me that when I spot a good place to eat, I should tap him on the shoulder and we’ll stop, but by the time I notice one, we’re already 100 meters past it, and then we join a fast highway. So no eating for a while. It takes us about 45 minutes to reach the ferry. My leg’s gone completely numb from the scooter, so I hop over to buy tickets, 2 people and a scooter, 48000 dong. We wait about 15 minutes.

We board and go up to the second deck for the view. I’m pretty cold, since it’s all open. Jozef told me back home that it’d be warm in Vietnam, he wore shorts all last time he was here, and he’s still got them on now. Half an hour later we’re on the island and quickly speed off toward the town of Cat Ba, specifically to the harbor. We want to book a boat trip for tomorrow. The moment we stop, a woman catches us offering a trip for one million two hundred thousand, which seems like a lot. So we go look further. We’d thought there’d be a lot of people offering boat trips, but there’s nobody anywhere. Eventually a man approaches us, who has a tour agency there, and we book a trip for 590000 dong per person. That includes a full-day cruise, lunch, kayaking, some swimming and Monkey Island.

Then we finally head to our hotel in town. It’s really cheap, but with good reviews. A friendly Vietnamese woman greets us. The room has two windows, but with maybe 10 cm to the next building, and a walk-in shower. We drop our things and go eat. The town center’s fairly touristy. Jozef’s shocked at how much it’s changed here. Construction everywhere. Where there used to be a beach there are now about 30 machines building some megalomaniac project. We head back the way we came, since there were restaurants there we liked the look of. But suddenly we can’t find them, and when we do stop somewhere, they’re offering odd dishes. And Jozef had told me we wouldn’t have to hunt for restaurants here. I’m getting properly hungry now, and nervous, but finally we sit down at one that also pours beer. We order beef noodles and the lady prepares it right in front of us, outside. Within a few minutes we’ve got food on the table, so I’m happier now. On the way back we look for some kind of baguette, but find nothing, so we go buy fruit at the market instead. We buy mango, bananas and dragon fruit.

Once we’re back at the hotel, we eat some fruit and then I completely black out for about an hour. I wake up feeling pretty fresh, take a shower and edit videos. It takes me a good while and I go to sleep after midnight.