Right, so we left HCMC and went back to Hanoi. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in light of a couple of things I mentioned in the last couple of posts, Hanoi seemed a much quieter, more manageable city on our return.

After the touristic experience of Saigon I was happy to skip our planned stay in the old quarter and head straight to Pauline’s place for the remainder of our stay.

Yesterday we got on a plane to Singapore, then hopped on a train to the north side of the island, then took a bus to the border, another bus over no-man’s land and, bags on backs, hiked the short way to an expensive and dingy hotel in Johor Bahru. Noodles in an awesome market, then taxi to the airport in the morning.

Now we’re in Panang. Zomg. Tropical island.

But first, some parting shots from Chinatown, Saigon:

We’re leaving today, and I’ll be glad to be out of this city.

Quite simply, the traffic here is insane.

There are other things I’m not to keen on- such as the huge amount of Bali-style Aussie tourists here for a cheap holiday, but that’s sort of what you buy in to when you stay in the backpacker area of a city.

No, it’s the traffic. I’m shellshocked. PTSD. The only way to go anywhere on foot here is to step off the crowded footpaths, past the algae filled gutters and out into the road.

From there it’s a matter of blind faith that you’re going to make it to refuge of the next unoccupied piece of footpath without getting fucked up by some 13 year old on a motorbike, or some angry looking man talking on his cellphone while looking not where he’s going, but at whatever mercentile activities are happening on the side of the street.

After a while of this you get numb to the fact that you’re risking, to a small degree life, and to a much greater degree limb, and just get on with it. Until you get to one of those intersections that just seem to be six directions of car, truck and bike traffic operating according to some archaic survival of the fittest set of “rules” that make no allowances for pedestrians unless they’re willing to just step infront of the largest vehicles and simply hold up their hand to say “Wait for me.”

Yeah, those intersections can waste half an hour of your time as you stand, staring incredulously on the side of the road suffering some form of emotional breakdown akin to, I imagine, the last moments of a condemned person as they finally realise that there are no more options. Only death.

Sure. Okay, maybe it seems like I’m over dramatising this a little. On the other hand I’ve witnessed several inter-bike collisions, and watched a blind man get smashed into right in front of me. (He just grimaced horribly. Didn’t even yelp..)

And just when you think you’ve made it to safe ground, and are letting your frazzled nerves be felt through the numbness, someone _will_ ride their motorbike right up onto the footpath and try to kill you, in order to park, or just circumnavigate a particularly busy piece of road.

When you move on again, finally having figured out the directions of traffic, vectors of danger, and found a relatively safe place to cross, a handful of people will decide to ride across on coming traffic to take a corner on the wrong side of the street, 100 meters down from you, in the fraction of a second between furtive glances in all directions.

Oh, and the bike probably has a 6 foot spear of steel rebar sticking out the front.

I’m ready to leave now.

Walking, walking, walking.

We left our hotel and headed in the general direction of richie-ville via a market we’d been to last time. At the market we drank incredibly disappointing coffee - I’m certain it was made from a 3-in-1 coffee mix sachet - and walked around watching the processes of butchery, fish-mongery and whatever that trade is where you try and sell bootleg DVDs to westerners.

After the market diversion we kept heading in the direction of Versaceland.

Although there was more of the luxury brand stuff around than we remembered, the area definitely felt similar to last time we were in HCMC. After wasting a little time, we swung back around past Saigon river and stopped at this awesome cafe to make up for the earlier folly. This place had an extensive menu of different blends of coffee, which you could get served in whichever format you like - with milk and ice, in my case. This place felt right, since there weren’t any other whiteys in there, but plenty of young Vietnamese men.

Then we set our sights on lunch at some remote place further north of where we were. The guidebook said it was good, so we set off, going up a fairly major street lined with funky clothes shops. We stopped at a shoe shop and Lili actually managed to find a pair of discounted genuine doc martins that fit her. Of all the places to find shoes.

Anyway, we made it eventually, after I lead us through several wrong turns. The food was indeed awesome. Fantastic Vietnamese pancake/crepe things full of pork, prawns and beansprouts, plus we had some spring rolls that were good too.

Eventually we rolled back to our hotel, calling the day a success.

We decided to keep things fairly relaxed today, since Lili’s been feeling a bit under the weather for the last day or so (and I’ve been flirting with some kind of cold or flu since before we left Australia..) and to that end we started our day with a long sit in a cafe, drinking Vietnamese style coffee and surfing the net.

After a while being in such close proximity to our fellow tourists started to get right on my nerves and we packed up and left.

Our hotel has very decent shower facilities, so I had a very decent shower, and thus refreshed we went out exploring.

Exploring is probably too strong of a word, because really we were mostly retracing steps we made those years ago when we stayed in HCMC last. Same market, same cafes, same park, same same same.
We stopped for lunch at a place serving Bun Bo Hue- a style of noodle soup (from Hue! who knew?) but decided to just order some spring rolls and a plate of noodles.

Sadly, everything came out garnished with peanuts. I wasn’t really phased, and ate a few springrolls that seemed to not be touching any actual peanuts. Then ordered some soup, which came out sans peanuts. Despite my gung-ho approach to the springrolls, I haven’t felt like I’ve had even a mild allergic reaction.

We walked around more. Drank sickeningly sweet mango smoothies and came back to the hotel to rest.

For New Years Eve we went out with Pauline and met up with Ella and Ros for dinner. After eating we went on a brief tour of Westerner bars around the old quarter, my favourite being Mao’s Red Lounge, for its comfortable seats and occasionally cool music. Naturally we weren’t the only people attracted to the place and so over the course of a couple of drinks the place filled up with loud folk, and the music volume raised accordingly and we moved on in search of a venue for easier conversation. After checking out The Funky Buddah (and, possibly having an LSD flashback, I’m not sure… oooh laser lights..) and being set upon immediately by a gang of aggressive bartenders, we finally opted for Roots, a reggae themed place that wasn’t _too_ offensive.

Sadly, us kids were flagging by this time, and after another round of drinks we basically went our separate ways. Lili and I were home before midnight.

I feel obliged to acknowledge that Pauline was the only one of us with the drive and party spirit required to do New Year’s properly. How can my generation be such a bunch of failures?

Happy New Year!

There’s a small lake within walking distance of Pauline’s place. We walked to it, and then around it.

I was heckled more or less constantly by young guys who wanted to acknowledge that my haircut was “Numba 1! *thumbs up*” which was fun for a while, then tiring, but it’s nice to draw some positive attention. I’m amused that I am more of a curiosity to the youngin’s here than they are to me.

Anyway, we finally found a place that served local style coffee and sat down. Its as good as I remember it. Rich and almost chocolaty in combination with the sua (milk, from a tin.. aka condensed).

Thus invigorated I felt up to taking some photos:

Later, on our way back, we stopped for lunch at a place doing Bun Cha - grilled pork in a sort of papaya seasoned broth with noodles on the side, to be submerged and eaten with the pork.

Pauline took us out to dinner again, and then we slept.

We woke early and finished packing our stuff, then hoisted our bags onto our backs and retraced the steps we made in getting to our hotel.

The MRT was busier than I expected for pre-dawn. Mostly kids, apparently a team of street hockey playing girls were seeing a friend or two off at the airport. Or something.

Anyway, we made it okay and managed to get breakfast in a Chinese restaurant. You can never tell when a Chinese place is going to turn out to be good. I’m sure there’s some function involving tackiness of decor and inverse apathy of staff or something. In any case, the food was a-okay and we made it onto our plane for the relatively short flight to Hanoi.

The inflight entertainment was actually on demand this time. I watched the new X-Files movie. Lili’s system was broken. Hah.

Hanoi airport is amusing after Singapore. Hell it makes Brisbane international terminal look like a bustling hub. It took about an hour for Lili’s bag to come out and then we braved the horde and got a taxi to the Sheraton near where Pauline lives.

After warm welcomes we had a fairly sedate afternoon with a brief tour of the surrounds, and explanation of the house/gate/etc and finally some dinner.

We don’t have time for cultureshock you know, we only have four weeks away and we’ll be making the most of as much as possible.

After an almost feverish night of dry aircon hate and jetlagged body clock confusion, the sky lightened on the cityscape view from our window and we got up.

Lili found something promising in the guidebook about a plane that served coffee and somethingsomething. Coffee? I’m game. I took some non-exiting cold and flu medication as a rather ritualistic bid for good luck and we set off back to the local MRT station where we learned that you have to take your single/return journey tickets and get a refund on your deposit - all via machine. Having done that we bought proper tickets which you just swipe any time you go in or out of a station to automatically pay for your trip. Clever right? They have a similar thing in Hong Kong, but after throwing several large amounts of money at the problem, MY home city couldn’t even agree to how something like that should work. Idiots. Anyway, at least I get to enjoy living in the future when I travel.

SO we made it to this place and there was indeed coffee, which was very reasonable, and there was food, which I enjoyed far more than I think was reasonable. I hate french toast with very salty butter and kaya(?) - coconut jam stuff - which I smeared liberally onto the toast.

I dunno, it seemed sort of weird, but then.. it just tasted good, and I ordered a second serve.

Breakfast done we made our way to Little India, taking our time and shooting a bunch of photos along the way.

Little India was cramped - the streets were lined with shops, which as the day wore on expanded their wares out onto the footpaths until it was basically impossible to not walk on the roads most of the time. That was okay too, the traffic here is a-okay. I only nearly got run over once. Go me.

We happened across a huge mall specalising in Comptuer & Electronics Equipment, or something. I got jeered by one shopkeeper for not having a filter on my lens - quite a reasonable thing to call me out on, but still, fuck off. Finally I found a card reader for the now practically niche Compact Flash cards my camera takes, which was reasonably priced. We ate a light lunch in little India and came back to the hotel to rest a bit and figure out a plan for dinner.

Dinner was in the CBD. We tried to eat the national chicken rice dish but failed, because apparently nobody makes it on the weekends. In fact, dinner was lame, but at least we saw some more of the city. Icecreams for desert and preparations for leaving tomorrow. Finally internet, and now- sleep.

We decided on the plan that we’d make our own way to the hotel. After all, it would me mid afternoon, plenty of time to figure it all out.

We checked over our travel documents and figured out where the cheap hotel we’d booked is located and then, after getting our bags and negotiating customs, made our way to the MRT light rail station and hopped aboard.

Somehow, despite buying our ticket to the wrong station, we managed to get off at the right one and the turnstiles opened for us at the swipe of a card/ticket/thing..

Then we walked, backpacks on, for the ten minutes or so it takes to get to Lorang 6 in Geylang and found our lovely little hotel. We checked into our room, and tried to find room for our bags around the bed which takes up something like 95% of the floorspace. We managed to head out again and found a fairly inoffensive looking Chinese restaurant and ate some reassuringly familiar dishes before navigating the oh-so-seedy streets back to the hotel for sleep.

I think I’m getting sick and 8 hours of airplane airconditioning followed by a night of dusty hotel + more bad aircon left no doubt, but I’m pretty sure I’ll bounce back when we get to Hanoi’s more hospitable climes.