Mike In China

Upon my arrival to the Hanoi airport I quickly realized, I was alone. It was actually not as big of a deal as I had thought but there were definitely moments when I would sit back and think, wow, I'm alone in Vietnam, to my parents generation that must sound like suicide! After I got my bag I started searching around the luggage area for a person holding a sign with my name. One of the reasons why I picked the hostel I did was because it warned you about all the ripoffs at the airport and said that they would pick you up if you let them know. So after searching for a half hour I decided something was wrong and I would call them. After figuring out where I could use a phone I was told that the number I had was wrong. I decided I was going to have brave the taxi system but then realized all I had was the name of the hostel (because I had depended on the phone number!) and the taxi driver had no idea where some English named hostel was. We began driving into the city anyway as I panicked to myself wondering how I was ever going to find this hostel. I remembered reading something about it being by a church so I busted out my lonely planet and found the giant church in the area and had him take me there. It happened to be my lucky day because I chose the right church and there was a big sign for the hostel right next to the church. So I made it! I threw my bag in my lock box (I had opted for the cheapest room which meant I was sharing it with 11 other travelers) and wandered around to get some food and check out the local lake. I went to bed early because I was tired from the day of traveling but also because I didn't have much else to do. I woke up early the next morning and after getting some breakfast I decided to go on the recommended walking tour of the Old Quarter of Hanoi. It was amazing. Markets, shops, and HOLY MOPEDS. The amount of mopeds in Hanoi was insane. Not even that many cars, just mopeds, and tons of them, a consistent flow. Crossing the street was like playing frogger even more so than it is here in China. After the walking tour I bought tickets to go see the famous Water Puppets. It was pretty cool, but I must say I was quite disappointed. The first thing that disappointed me was that when I returned to the theater for the show to start I was greeted by an armada of tour buses from which flowed a river of elderly Caucasian tourists. I guess I was disappointed because this was supposed to be my big thrilling adventure, Vietnam! Not everyone goes to Vietnam! I am special! This trip is special! Oh wait, no, you aren't that special and this isn't that big of an adventure, everybody does it. DOH! I guess I don't know what I expected. The show itself was cool just because it was puppets in water, but that lost its appeal very quickly and I think I might have actually dozed off a little bit during one of the many small acts. The second major reason why I had chosen my hostel was because they advertised a BBQ every other night with beer specials to help promote the meeting of other travelers. I made my way up to the rooftop terrace and had a blast! Once again I was reminded of actually how non-adventurous I am. Everyone else had been so many more places and had so many more stories! That was the largest danger I found with backpacking, that you would constantly meet people that had been more places than you that would have cool stories and cool suggestions and it would just make you want to travel more! Even though I spent a month travelling Vietnam and Thailand I felt like I was just another one of those people on the tour buses because I didn't go see Laos and Cambodia?! At the BBQ I made a couple of friends and we decided to head to one of the famous "Beer Hoi" spots. Beer hoi translates to fresh beer and these little bars are nothing more than an old man with a home made keg and some child size plastic stools sitting on the sidewalk. The best part is the price, about 13 US cents for a big glass! We enjoyed ourselves there for awhile but unfortunately the fun police come around midnight and break everything so we went to another bar for awhile but didn't stay long because we were tired. I also wanted to get home because I had already booked a trip for the next two days to go see Halong Bay!