7/21 Hanoi
Air Asia flight is on time, arrival at 8.30. The Vietnam Airlines shuttle buses are located on the right hand side at the exit, but even if you can not find them, other people will read in your mind, and indicate them. The cost is 2 USD. Once close to downtown, a “friend” of the driver gets on board, and try to sell fantastic and cheap hotels to passengers. If, like us, you have a ready plausible excuse (otherwise invent it) they will ignore you, and you will be left at the Vietnam Airlines central office. Once outside the shuttle, we are surrounded by xe-om, motorcycle taxi, and for 30 thousand dong they take us to the central station.
Our mission impossible is to find berths to Lao Cai for the same evening. The building is grey, unadorned, bleak, dingy, dirty. I am relieved by the fact there is a machine which distributes numbers to disciplinate queues, but I notice that people do not care for it, and while already I am talking to the employee, they continuously interrupt me. The only polite solution that I can find is to lean against the counter with my arms spread wide, to prevent them from approaching.
The best I can get is :
Hanoi – Lao Cai, train LC3, 22.35 – 8.05, cost 242000 dong, hard seat
Lao Cai – Hanoi, train LC2, 18.40 – 5.00, cost 405000 dong, hard sleeper with free cockroach
Since there is a only one train per day, for 7/29 I I book also
Ninh Binh – Hue, train SE5, 18.06 – 06.00, cost 403000 dong, soft seat, again with free cockroach
Exhausted our formalities relating to transport, and left the luggage in custody at the station (20 thousand dong, the backpacks are scared to be left in such filthy lockers), we take another moto taxi (30 thousand dong) to downtown.
We do a tour around the Hoan Kiem Lake, visit Ngoc Son temple in the center of it, and then the surrounding streets of the Old Quarter. I would say nothing special. It is a awfully hot day, because it’s sunny. Along the trail, almost always shaded, which borders the lake, in the early afternoon we are approached by hordes of students, 5 groups in total, one after another, eager to practice English. We are submerged with their requests to pose in their pictures.
After a lunch (30 thousand dong) in a kiosk in the old quarter, we have dinner at the Hanoi Soul cafe, located in a large building shaped as transatlantic in front of the lake, whose shores at sunset are illuminated by colored lanterns, and populated by many elderly tai chi practitioners.
Thousands of people, bikes, scooters are now in the streets, and crossing becomes a difficult task, as well as to find, at 21.00, among a huge traffic jam at the roundabout near the restaurant, a mototaxi which takes us to the station.
Here, we sadly get aware of what is expecting us for the night: a wooden bench in a crowded wagon, luckily with air conditioning. Obviously there are a lot more people than seats, but the Vietnamese are equipped with mats to lie down under the benches, and stools to place in the aisles. Reaching the bathrooms would thus become a problem, but after having “sniffed” them from meters away I decide that it is better to do without them.
Sleepless night. The monotony is broken at intervals by a neighbor who knows stunted words of English, and with whom I start surreal and funny conversations. Photos loaded on the phone help, however, and the cat of my boyfriend attracts laughter, surprise, and exclamations. I will understand soon, crossing on the street the first local samples, that ours is a giant by local standards! Some even doubt that it is really a cat !!