Asia

May 26, 2014

Hoi An

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, cooking class, Hoi An, saltwater hostel, vietnam

As we get on the bus from Hue to Hoi An with Edda, the German girl, it starts raining. A lot. We drive for 4-5 hours, before we get to Saltwater Hostel, which opened less than a month ago.

We are really impressed with the place. While its location is so-so – quite a bikeride into town – it looks modern, appealing, and most of all, clean. The cleaning staff really works hard – I leave all of my belongings on my bed one day, and when I come back, my bed has been made, my stuff neatly placed on the bed, and there is a free pack of Mentos right next to my folded pile of clothes! Probably a mistake, so I eat it before anyone notices.
They also have a nice pool, and it’s very social. I recommend it to anyone going to Hoi An!

The day we arrive, they are doing their very first pubcrawl, and since we’re all about making history, we go. We only go to two bars, but I get very drunk. I mostly hang out with a German and an Irish guy, while Sara hangs out with a group of Danish guys that I seriously dislike for their need to be condescending, slut-shaming pricks. I am home at around 2.30, after dancing with an eccentric Vietnamese lady and being hit on a 10-year older English guy becomes too much to handle.

I stole this picture from Edda. She has a bunch of very silly pictures of me from that night, but I decided my drunk face is enough to share for now.

I wake up the next day very hungover. After a shower and breakfast, I immediately run up to my room to curl up in bed. Then we hang out at the pool until it’s time for a cooking class that the hostel helped us book. We ride on bikes to the local market, where a guy explains the different products we will be working with.

Then we ride out to the countryside with vegetable farms as far as the eye can see. The chef/teacher is fun. He makes us wear ugly hats, throw pancakes in the air and gives us yellow cards when we do somethig wrong. He also thinks I am 17, and says we should get married. Anyway, we make Hoi An springrolls, papaya salad, Vietnamese pancakes, and chicken in claypot.

Ingredients for Hoi An springrolls

While we sit down to enjoy our meals, we are enjoying the view of farmers tending their rice fields or picking basil and mint. As the sun is setting, we ride the bikes along the river back to the hostel, enjoying the breeze and the view. We are so full he might as well have rolled us back, though. It’s around 7 pm, and we pass out right away and don’t wake up until 9 the next morning.

We’ve heard that Hoi An is famous for replicating clothes from pictures for no money, so we ride the hostel’s free bikes into town, have a look at the big market, and then go to a tailor. I give them some pictures, and they give me a minimum price. It’sso expensive, I could’ve bought the stuff in the pictures at least twice. Edda is surprised too, and only gets one of her dresses shortened, while Sara gets a dress and a coat. We have to go back for a fitting at night, so we gp back to the hostel to relax a bit. Then, an hour before her fitting, we go into the town and see the Japanese bridge, all the lanterns and the shops. We sit at a café and have some cake and enjoy the beautiful, cozy little town.

The fitting is over quick, so we just walk around for a while, checking the shops out. When we get home, Sara and I want to get our open bus ticket to Nha Trang confirmed, but the receptionist who calls the bus company is told that we have to show up to do that – something the travel agent selling us the ticket insisted wasn’t necessary. With an hour until their closing time, we hop on bikes and drive the around 4 km to confirm our damn ticket, and then 4 km to go back. I am tired and have a headache, so I have a quick shower, a quick pack, and then I go to bed. Of course, some girls come into the room after midnight and start talking and rummaging through their bags, not giving a fuck that we are trying to sleep. Then, a guy starts puking in the bathroom – loudly! – for like 20 minutes. I wake up around ever 2 hours, pissed.

Our final day in Hoi An consists of a trip to the city to pick up Sara’s clothes, where the ladies at the shop also gets us some bags of coffee each when we ask which coffee is the best, then we ship some of Edda’s stuff home at the postoffice, and have vietnamese lunch at a small family home/café that the clothes ladies have recommended. We have White Rose dumplings, which is a Hoi An specialty. They don’t have a particularly strong taste, but they’re very good.

May 21, 2014

Hot in Hue

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Hanoi, hue, purple forbidden city, Sightseeing, vietnam

After a cute, traditional Water Puppet show in Hanoi, we get on the VIP train to Hue. Or should we say shit train.

Looks like she really enjoyed the show

13 hours later, we arrive at Hue City Hostel. A guy knocks on our door, thinking we are two Danish girls he has met earlier that day, which we obviously aren’t. We run into him at the restaurant next door for breakfast and decide we will take a walk around Imperial City with him and a German girl, Edda, who has a bad sunburn. Halfway there, her skin starts blistering, so she has to go back. The guy, whose name is Laurence, is about to catch a bus, so he can’t stay too long either. So basically we barely see anything but the outside of the war museum.

For dinner we go to Nina’s café, and I have the egg noodles with vegetables and mushrooms. SO delicious.

Wow, many yum, such delish, so food

The next day, we do a daytrip around Hue, where we meeta woman we were walking to on the train. We sail on the Perfume river, see tombs and temples, and check out the Purple Forbidden City. Exhausting, to say the least. Hue’s the warmest place I’ve ever been to. It’s constantly around 40 degrees, and the humidity!!! But it’s beautiful, and people are so kind here.

I’m really bored of uploading pictures, because honestly, they’re just buildings. But they’re so beautiful!

May 18, 2014

Halløj, Hanoi!

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Hanoi, hanoi hilton, pho, vietnam

I feel like a greater power is trying to warn us. First, there was the earthquake while we were in Chiang Mai. Then, we decided against taking the 30 hour bus ride from Vang Vieng to Hanoi as we had planned, and Sara told me one of those busses had driven off a cliff. We had decided to just fly to Hanoi, and less than 12 hours before our flight, there was a plane crash in Laos. Jeez.

After we arrive at Hanoi Hostel, it starts raining for the first time in two weeks. As we’re out looking for an ATM. The ATM we find is out of order. We feel like the bad weather is just following us around! We take a cab to a mall with a cinema, thinking that Maleficent has come out. It hasn’t. So we watch Godzilla instead, and I once again think that God is trying to kill us, because I am almost bored to death. People around us are on Facebook during the movie, or have brought their 6 year old kid to this thing. It’s just odd.

After the movie, it’s still raining, so we get another cab home. We have a map and an address, which we have to show the driver several times, but he tries to drop us off at two hostels that are nowhere near ours – and of course he wants us to pay for his mistake. We end up getting our receptionist, because the driver doesn’t speak english, and they argue for like half an hour before we convince him to get the price down just a bit.

The next day we are supposed to do some sightseeing. Supposed to. Apparently, everything is closed on Mondays – except the Hoa Lo Prison Museum, also known as the Hanoi Hilton. Since I enjoy that kind of stuff, we go there.

One of the big cells

I guess we should have bought the guidebook, because this is confusing. What were the prisoner’s crimes? There isn’t much information to find here. The death cells are super creepy, and there is a room dedicated to stuff about American prisoners during the Vietnam war – they even have John McCain’s uniform that he wore when he was shot down. So yeah, I guess you could say it’s sort of interesting, but nothing like I expected. We are there for like an hour.

We do some walking for hours around town, trying to find a decent brashop, but give up and go for a brazilian wax at a spa, that has hard, green wax, and Sara and I get to lie right next to each other, admiring our Shrek vaginas. That’s always fun. Then, we go for cheap sushi. The chef doesn’t speak english, so the waiter tells me that the chef think I am “vewy biootifull“, and he makes me an extra piece of sushi – yep, a heart! Sweet. And awkward.

We go back to the hostel and enjoy an hour of free beer on the roof with out kiwi roommate Jenna, before we head to Purple Cherry to get pho.

It’s a much nicer restaurant than we thought, on the roof of a nice hotel. And in a pretty bad neighbourhood. We can’t finish our huge portions and hurry home to relax.

Two of our roommates (we are a total of 8 in the room) are Danish, and they are super talkative when we come back. Honestly, I don’t really like Danish people when I’m travelling, but also the conversation can get really weird when you are both from the same place, so I see if I can get away with pretending to be Californian (since I’ve only been to LA). And it works, and of course they are being totally Danish and bragging about free education and healthcare and how they don’t even have to think about what they want to do for the rest of their lives, they can just get as many free degrees as they want. See, this is why I hate Danish people. I want to brag about that!

So now we’re just chilling until we catch a night bus or train to Hue. That’s going to be fun.

Oh, by the way, I’m officially a millionaire.

May 18, 2014

Final thoughts: Laos

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Thoughts on Things, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, final thoughts, laos

I have spent so little time in Laos and barely seen anything, so I don’t have much to say about the place.

One thing is for sure: It’s a very beautiful country, green hills everywhere you look. Such an attractive place.

I mean, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT?

Kids are everyhere. They are running alone in the streets, or with their parents at work. Honestly, I saw more kids than I saw adults. And they were all adorable.

Service was non-existent, but even worse than ever before. We once sat in a restaurant for over an hour without even ordering. If you try and call for a waiter, they are out pretending to be Waldo, or they completely ignore you. Shame, because this country had potential to be an awesome place to visit, but it’s hard booking tickets, getting a room or ordering food.

All in all, I know that I could have seen or done more, but Laos wasn’t really for me.

May 16, 2014

That time I thought Sara was dead

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Drinking, laos, scary stories, tubing, unfortunate happenings, vang vieng

So, on our first day in Vang Vieng, we pretty much think there is only really one street here and tha’s it. We stay at Easy Go, which seemed nice at first, until we have to endure another night in a fan room, which makes us soak the beds in sweat. I wake up, feeling severely dehydrated and unable to do a simple task like showering or brushing my teeth, so we decide it’s time to check out and go to Central Backpackers. Most restaurants play Friends all day and night, so we honestly spend two days just chilling on a bed of pillows, watching TV. I’ve been in this weird state of laziness since Bangkok, and I haven’t wanted to drink or really meet people since then. It’s quite awful.

This is what paradise looks like to the lazy backpacker

On our third day, we decide to go tubing, which is what this place is known for. We meet two Danish girls, Siw and Christine (random that I found another one, since it’s such a rare name back home), and an American guy, Tyler. We all go to the first bar, shotgun a can of beer, have shots, play beerpong and then we go out on the water.

At the next bar, I play flipcup, have cocktails, more shots and probably another beer. You get a nice little bracelet for every shot you do. By the third bar I am wasted. I lose Sara in the grass somewhere between the third and fourth bar, and after drinking at the fourth for a while, I get worried. I have just assumed she was going to catch up anytime, or maybe she’s met some of our friends on the way on gone back to the other bar. A guy I’ve been drinking with goes out to find Sara, but after 10 minutes it starts raining. A lot. He doesn’t come back, and the girls at the bar start to get pissed with me that their friend in’t back, so I decide to swim against the current in the rain to find her.

I am calling out her name, but nothing but the hard rain responds. The river is cold and dark, sometimes really deep, sometimes I can feel my feet stick in the gooey mud. I am scared, because I don’t like deep and dark waters, and because all that I can think of, is how I have to call Sara’s parents and tell them that their daughter has drowned. I swim for at least half an hour (since I wma searching very hard, and the weather makes swimming more difficult) before I reach the last bar we’d been to. It’s packed with people, and I look everywhere, crying hysterically. Suddenly, a few of the people I have been drinking with see me, and run over to see what’s wrong. They try to comfort me and tell me that she’ss alright, but I don’t believe them. I’m drunk and scared. A couple of french guys come around and jokingly say (in a french funny way – so without a smile on their faces) that she is probably dead and it’s my fault for not taking better care of her. Of course this upset me even more, and one of the girls takes me away from the crowd and tells me to go home.

I cross the river to get to a bar with no people in it. A big local family is sitting there, and as I approach them for help to get a taxi, I break down. Still, they take me to a taxi and demand 20.000 kip. I am tired, sad and desperate, so I just hand the driver money. As he’ss about to drive, three very demanding spanish girls jump on board and only pay 10.000 each. They keep asking him to drive faster so they can get their deposit for the tubes back – I realise I have lost mine at the fourth bar, when I went out swimming to look for Sara. After they’ve been dropped off, the driver doesn’t bother stopping at my hostel: he tells me to get off at the same place as the girls and walk in the rain. I try to argue, after all I have paid double, but he lets me out, and I walk barefoot in a bikini in the rain, crying.

I walk up to the room to find Sara asleep. I don’t even feel relieved, I just feel anger. I startethrowing things at her to wake her up and show how upset I am, but her side of the story is different than mine. She feels that I have abandoned her, and I am the bad guy. More upset than ever, I walk out, go to a restaurant and have dinner and watch Friends for hours. I calm down quite a lot, but not enough. I stay up till about 3 at night, still very drunk, and buy an amazing burger on the street just before falling asleep.

Best burger ever

Bracelets from tubing

The next day, I get Sara’s version of the story. She called for me while we were approaching the fourth bar, passed out in the tall grass by the river, then was taken to some local’s home, where she vomited, before being driven back to the hostel and helped to bed.

The yearly rocket festival Bun Bang Fai is happening that day to celebrate the beginning of rain season, but we don’t bother leaving the restaurants.

At night, people get what they wished for: rain. And lots of it. It’s storming, massive lightning bolts appear all over the sky, and the rain is brutal. The power goes out for quite some time. The ground floor is flooded. The door to our room on the third floor can barely stay closed from the strong wind. I guess no street food for me tonight.

All in all, Vang Vieng was an experience.

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