So we waved bye, bye to Alice and now its just the two lungs fending for ourselves. Nice smooth flight with the highly anticipated VietJetAir – I say anticipated as their website has several concerning adverts suggesting anyone, yes anyone, can train to be pilot and also no one we know has ever heard of them and they definitely seem like the types to have bought easyjets retired tin can planes. All of the above proved true, with pleather seats to boot which are obviously the ideal material to fashion aircraft seats out of in one of the hottest freaking countries in the world… You know that sound when you peel your clammy thighs off of leather, its slurpy. The best thing about vietjetair was their uniforms, sort of cub scout’esk with their red shorts, red polo tops and little burberry caps SO CUTE.

The area around Han Oi airport (not at all near the city) is awesome to fly into, mountains on the outskirts and then loads of small towns on flat land separated by loads of greenery, looks so bizarre from the sky because of the sudden change from mountain to dead flat land, kind of like standing over those old town-print rugs you got in play-school… But way more beautiful.

Han Oi was to be our first experience of hostels – we checked into Han Oi Central Backpackers Hostel, at the heart of the Han Oi old quarter, not the most modern of hostels we’ve been told but with free breakfast and unlimited free beer in the evenings it was a great bargain for £3 a night. Decent shower too. We obviously took advantage of said free beer, and made many friends doing so. A pair of south african girls became our immediate faves not least because unlike all the Canadians, and I mean ALL the canadians who have up and left home just “aboot” in time for winter ay, they understand british humour and SARCASM. So here sprang a friendship based on the british ideal that real friends can say anything mean and hateful to each other (or anyone else) as long as your tone of voice denotes just the right amount of affectionate wit. They also introduced us to Rice Wine, which is basically just slightly better tasting paint stripper and in comparison makes Han Oi’s home brewed beer taste as delightful as freshly squeezed passionfruit juice. They had taken a fun english guy from hastings under their wing and we entered into a drunken Uno battle that could rival, well probably the Vietnamese war, in terms of its intensity and the resounding international strife that will live on in our hearts long into our journey. Its also worth mentioning that one of these girls was called Joy and she is literally the most Joyful person ever, so naturally I had to explain my on going struggle carrying the middle name Joy along with a hefty case of “resting bitch face syndrome” which her friend, (cousin actually) Roxy, also suffers from, so we enjoyed this bonding moment, until a rat ran up the wall opposite us.

We spent a few days exploring Han Oi, the shops are arranged on streets rather than in collective markets, so they have for example, Shoe St or Silk St or T-shirt St etc. although we had a decent map this could easily get you lost if you aren’t paying attention and there is plenty to distract you, for example the traffic. Crossing roads is basically a game of Russian roulette, we’ve found the best option to be to wait for cars to pass and then walk out in front of the thousands of scooters and motorbikes and hope for the best, slow and confident seems to work well and the bikes do try hard to dodge you despite walkers being the lowest ranking on the food chain, size being king. We seemed quite competent in the map reading department though, and unlike other people we met we didn’t get too lost in the criss crossing never ending streets, where the pavements are actually parking spaces for mo-peds, not pedestrian walk ways, so instead you work your way in and out of the road/drains/occasionally available three foot of pavement not taken up by a bike or locals sat around drinking iced green tea. There is plenty of street food on offer in Vietnam, people with BBQs grilling kebabs, ladies with baskets full of homemade donuts and sticky rice balls and on the corners of junctions you get gatherings of locals and travellers drinking and eating together from whatever big pot of food the women are cooking, all sat on tiny plastic stools. We tried a few local eateries our hostel receptionist recommended, including a DIY BBQ place where you sit on the tiny stools, knees up to your chin, unless you’re Jade, around a low table with its own grill and get given a large platter of meat and vegetables and then a bowl of a salt, pepper and chilli mixture which you squeeze fresh limes into to make a sauce. It was deeeeeelicious and fun to cook, we took along Joy and Roxy and our french friend Jeremy and all very much enjoyed it. We also found a local chain called Gecko, maybe not the most adventurous choice we could have opted for but it served delicious vietnamese food, cheaply too and came highly recommended as a clean safe venue – our favourite dish was undoubtedly the green papaya and spiced beef salad, absolutely excellent, probably my favourite food on the trip so far.

We headed to the Ethnology museum for a bit of culture and it was such a great place to get a real introduction to Vietnamese history with a tonne of info and artefacts from the original five tribes who first moved into Vietnam and from whom all Vietnamese people derive, meaning that the general public all have quite diverse histories and differences in physical attributes depending on which tribe their ancestors came from, compared with European countries and many other Asian countries. Most of these tribes still have populations who live in the much same way now in the rural highland areas and many have visited the museum to accurately build replicas of there homes, so we had fun climbing in and out of examples of old school vietnamese abodes, some of which were on stilts so I literally mean climbing… And also a fair bit of ducking on my part since the vietnamese are renowned for being petite, their ancient ancestors in particular, and the door frames reflect this. Jade didn’t have this problem as she has the same stature as your average vietnamese person anyway. There was a school trip roaming the museum too and the children had been assigned to practice their english with tourists so every few metres we had to stop and indulge, they were very sweet and gave us bracelets whenever we had a conversation with them so we were happy, who doesn’t love presents. Unfortunately we don’t have time to visit Sapa, where you can trek out to stay with these tribes and see the beautiful places that they live and the various industries they still practice, mainly harvesting rice crops and various crafts such as intricate weavings.

From Han Oi we took a two day boat trip out to the majestic Ha Long Bay. To avoid repetitive posts Jade is going to fill you in on that, probably at some point on this 14 hour coach we are currently on heading south to Hue for a days or so on before going to Hoi An, which with rave reviews from many friends we intend to spend a fair amount of time in before continuing south to Nha Trang and De Lat, eventually reaching Ho Chi Minh/Saigon.

Still struggling with photo uploading but you all have us on FB/Instagram so please bare with us and view on them for now 🙂

Love to you all back home, hope you are enjoying the sunshine, we are actually a little jealous as temperatures here are souring to 39degrees before 9am so we see your 22degree high and weep slightly, not that you could identify the weeping through ALL THE SWEATING. Rose x