Hanoi: Paradise Found (vehicular anarchy aside)

We arrived Tuesday night into Hanoi. It reminds me of Managua. A tropical big city in a third world country. People congregate on the edge of the road playing cards and hanging out. I imagine that houses are small crowded and hot so people stay outside as much as possible. One the more simple scavenges for Vietnam was to have a cabbie take you to a restaurant of his choice. I didn’t realize what a leap of faith this was until we ended up at a very nice restaurant right next door to a restaurant that offered an 8 course meal of Thit Cho . Thit Cho? Dog. I ordered vegetarian spring rolls just to be on the safe side (and they were phenomenal).

Wednesday we took a 3 hour cab ride to Ha Long Bay (a bonus scavenge involving water…. SO up our alley). This taxi ride was reeeeeeeeediculous.. Pedestrians and livestock lined the shoulders of the roads while scooters, military trucks, busses and our cab competed for the one lane. After the 3rd time our driver played a game of chicken with a bus I demanded that we pull over where I would then play a game of chicken with Travis --refusing to go anywhere until he helped me figure out how to tell the cab driver to cool it on the passing (i lost).

About 10 miles from the HaLong Bay a man on a motorbike began to follow our car. It was a weird interaction where we saw him see us at a stopsign and then hop on his bike and follow us. When we got out at the Bay port the weird guy remained about 20 feet back from us. We went into a store… he waited… we went to the bathroom…. He waited. A small scene eventually occurred as Trav called the guy out… I’m still not sure what the deal was….maybe it was innocent enough and he was scouting for his boat renting friend OR maybe he was trying to rob us…. OR… maybe he was planning to slit Trav’s throat and sell me into the sex slave market (It’s going to be years before female travelers recover from that damn Liam Neeson movie). Our language barrier is too thick for us to ever know but Trav got rid of him easily enough.

Putting up with Trav’s occasional moodiness is a small price to pay for the safety blanket he puts on me traveling and I (literally) would not feel safe crossing the street in Vietnam without him.

Cab ride and weird guy incident aside… Hong Long Bay was amazing. We rented what’s called a “junk” for 2 million Vietnam Dong (the denominations of money in Vietnam are huge… 2 million dong is about $100usd). The junk was about 60 feet with an upstairs and downstairs and came complete staff to drive the boat, cook and serve drink ($100 usd goes a long way here). We cruised the bay for a couple of hours. We stopped at a floating fish market to buy lunch. Trav picked out obscure fish for us while I played with the market owner’s 3 year old son. If you ever want to befriend a toddler… I suggest a glow stick. In the 10 minutes we were there I watched him almost fall in the water twice, cry twice and giggle endlessly over the glow stick and an oreo. Things may be way different in Asia… but toddlers are universally the same (and endlessly entertaining to me).  We spent the rest of the day seeing the caves along the bay and just chilling on the water. We only got the points for the one bonus scavenge on Wednesday as we spent the whole day there.... but it was my favorite day yet

We woke up very early this morning and “scavenged” all around Hanoi. Very cool clues that led us to the Hanoi Hilton (where POW prison where John McCain was held for 5 years during the war) and other interesting sites. The food in Vietnam is incredible (TUDU worthy Dori!) although we were pretty conservative with what we ordered (the dog restaurant got me a bit creeped out). We passed on the points for the food scavenge that included watching as a woman chopped up a live snake and plopped it’s heart on a plate for you to eat while mixing the blood with a shot of whisky (it supposedly helps with fertility and virility) but some of the other teams didn’t. If I haven’t mentioned this before…. All the Littlepage women (and there are 3 generations in this competition) are badasses.

I’m currently on a tiny tiny prop plane on my way to Laos. I’m quite thrilled to be going there--- as the waterfestival is currently going on (I believe this is a bit like New Year but with water rather than fireworks). I will be more thrilled when I’m off this tiny plane. Zoe’s 13 year old niece is sitting beside me. Lily is an old soul. Before we took off she patted my knee and told me that I’m much safer in this plane than I was on the streets of Hanoi. True Enough. xoxo