It’s gone incredibly fast, and at the same time it feels like a long time since I left Denmark.

Overall status: calmer than on arrival.

Less overstimulated. More curious.

Arrival

If we rewind to Feb 22, I arrive in Hanoi Old Quarter at the hostel Buffalo. The first two days are hard.

New big adventure. New country, new culture, new way of living. New, new, new. It’s too much all at once. On top of that, I’m sleeping in a shared room with five girls from the Netherlands.

I arrive around midday after a long trip with poor sleep and have to settle into a shared room with five girls who don’t seem interested in who I am, or whether there are things we should agree on. I find out I’m sharing the room with Sanne, Margit and Sara. I don’t get around to talking to the other two.

It goes fine, and they’re nice. But no matter who I’d shared a room with those first two nights, it would have felt like too much. Not what I needed on day one.

Day 2 I’m still finding my footing in my new existence. My luggage gets adjusted, and I identify gaps that need fixing.

Old Quarter is intense. Small, tight, hot alleys with constant traffic, loud music and people who want your attention. The senses get overstimulated. Smells from food you don’t know. Humid heat mixed with traffic you haven’t gotten used to yet. Colorful signs in a language you don’t understand. A chaotic wall of sound from honking, engines, shouting and music.

After a few hours I need peace. To cool down, take a shower and rest. A shared room with people I don’t know doesn’t bring calm. So I flee from Old Quarter.

I find a small private room four kilometers away, still in the middle of Hanoi. Here I gather myself, sort out the most important luggage issues and make plans for the stay. I start to feel more at ease and get a handle on some basic words and terms. The menu becomes a starting point.

The city becomes more familiar, and I spend time hopping from café to café to find the best one in terms of price, comfort, quiet and design.

On day 4 I have the energy to give Old Quarter another try. I find a hostel with a private room and stay there for the next week.

Hanoi everyday life

The days in Hanoi have mainly gone to exploring the city, visiting sights, going to cafés, learning to speak menu-ese, and settling into my new existence.

Hanoi is enormous, and even within the fairly small area I move around in — western Ba Dinh, Hoan Kiem and a bit of Dong Da — there’s more than enough to see and experience during my stay.

I’ve become really fond of finding small cafés where I can sit and lose myself with a cup of coffee in pleasant surroundings. Hanoi has plenty of places like that. They’re just hidden enough — both online and physically — that you can get lucky and find a quiet oasis in the middle of the city, and feel a little privileged to have found a place not all the other tourists have discovered.

The best cafés have a second or third floor with a balcony, where you can sit in the shade with a light breeze and look down at the crowds below.

Excursions

During the week I also get a bit outside of Hanoi.

Besides Hanoi, I’ve been on two day trips to Ha Long Bay and Ninh Binh. Fully arranged tours with a guide and everything included — I basically just had to let myself be herded around.

Ha Long Bay

In Ha Long Bay we sail around on a cruise ship. Lunch is included, and the program has three activities: caves, kayaking and the beach.

The caves are exciting but hard to describe. Enormous cavities inside the cliffs with tons of rock hanging overhead — shaped by nature. A small town could hide down there, sheltered from wind and weather. Personally I liked the caves. They were magnificent. I wouldn’t frown, though, at others who found it a bit boring.

The kayak trip goes into a lagoon. The nature is beautiful, small monkeys show up to eat bananas, and we paddle under a cave opening. What steals the experience is the tourists. I won’t pretend to be a kayak expert, but I’m not the worst either. When someone gives up trying to steer around a collision, and two kayaks bump into each other in slow motion while the passengers shriek, it says something about the level. With 50 kayaks on the water and maybe 10 with people who’ve done it before, collisions happen.

The beach was a bit boring, if I’m honest. It was actually the thing I’d looked forward to most. I had a towel and swim trunks with me, but when we arrived in the afternoon, it was overcast. The air was mild, but not really warm. A few people lay on the beach, even fewer swam.

I jumped in. The water was cool — not cold — around 20–22 degrees. But I couldn’t quite relax. All my things were in the bag on the beach, and I kept a constant eye on it. One of the downsides of traveling solo.

The cruise ship itself was lovely: three floors, two indoors and one with a sun deck and pool. While we sailed, I lay down on a sun lounger on top. It was genuinely pleasant.

On the way back there was an evening atmosphere on the sun deck with snacks and juice. The pool was heated up, and people hung out with music and conversations. I met two Scots in the last week of their trip and got a couple of good tips along the way.

All in all it was a good trip to Ha Long Bay.

Ninh Binh

The Ninh Binh trip didn’t start super positively. The transport was a big bus we had to ride around in all day. There were about 40 of us for three activities plus a lunch buffet — same concept as Ha Long Bay, just with a bus instead of a cruise.

I wouldn’t call myself a germophobe, but there are few things that can make me curl my toes like other people’s germs. Imagine sitting on a bus for two hours out, an hour around, and two hours home — and the man behind you coughing and sniffling the whole way. If I get sick in the next few days, I’ll know why. As the icing on the cake, he’s five minutes late getting back at one of the stops.

So I’m in a bad mood at the thought of potentially ending up sick, because I couldn’t be bothered to pay an extra 50 kroner for a smaller tour group.

The first activity is a temple visit to two temples for old Vietnamese kings. A decent stop with a bit of history on Vietnam and Vietnamese culture.

After that the bus takes us to the restaurant along a 4–5 kilometer dirt road full of potholes and with no room for oncoming traffic, which has to back up or half into the ditch. Then it’s buffet time — with the same crowd of tourists. I push my way to the front, fill my plate and hurry away before too many people share the same serving utensils.

Luckily I strike up a conversation with a group of Albanians — two couples on a trip — and get a nice lunch out of it.

We get driven to Tam Coc, where we’re going to sail up the Ngo Dong River and through three caves — hence the name Tam Coc, “three caves”. It’s a boat trip of just over an hour. The river is busy with boats.

I sail with a Frenchman, Julian, and a Brazilian, Gutierrez, whom I strike up a conversation with along the way. They’re also traveling solo and have been away for one and five months, respectively. We talk about traveling alone and exchange contact info. The boat trip is peaceful, if a bit long. It’s beautiful along the Ngo Dong River, and I fully understand why the area has been designated a UNESCO site.

The last activity is Mua Cave. Despite the name, it’s a small mountain with around 500 steps to the top. There are many tourists on the stairs, and the tall, uneven steps make the climb hard. I manage to get to the top. The last steps are steep and slippery.

From the top I can see yet another peak next to it — higher than the one I’m standing on. The stairs had split, and I’d chosen the lower one. So there’s nothing to do but go back down to the split again, pet the mountain goat on the way, and take another trip up.

Every time I’m somewhere like this — high up with a steep slope or a drop — and people position themselves right at the edge and don’t stand still, something twists inside me. It’s probably some kind of phobia, but I simply can’t handle drop-offs. My toes curl when others don’t respect the edge.

The ride home on the bus is unpleasant. Mostly because I’m sitting in a soaked t-shirt in a bus full of sweaty tourists, the majority of whom apparently didn’t bring deodorant. I regret not having a spare shirt in my bag.

Overall the trip was less comfortable than Ha Long Bay, but the company was better. The boat ride in Tam Coc was a bit long, but I wouldn’t have wanted to skip it. It was an outstanding nature experience.

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