Sos, here's some Hanoi shenanigans...
After Laura's and my debacle at the Laos airport, we met an English guy on the plane named Dua (remember that name for future entries, that's all I have to say about that for the moment.) Our one hour Vietnam Airlines flight (lovely plane by the way) landed us in Hanoi around 6:00 pm on Sunday night. The airport was super nice, which was not a sign for things to come.
After riding in a taxi (our first real car in weeks), we reached the hotel and met Lucy and Mairead. Hanoi was absolutely insane in terms of traffic. Everyone drives motorbikes and it's practically impossible to cross the street, like Frogger x 391. Once we got semi-adjusted to that and settling in to the hotel, we headed off for a Pizza restaurant where I spotted a rat during dinner, yum! We went to some small bar that made a really good drink called a Dirty Girl or a Nasty Lady or something like that and celebrated Laura's belated birthday for the first time (out of about five more times to come) as a whole group.
The next day we didn't do much but switch hotels to a backpacker hostel where the owners and people were super friendly which made me want to stay there for the rest of the trip. It was also the only hostel that was set up dorm style that we actually stayed in this entire time. We were in a 10 girl bunk bedded room with showers upstairs; at night the owners had a barbeque on the roof and we played dice games with the other travelers which subsequently sent us on a dice hunt for the next 5 days.
The following morning was a nightmare for me. Laura, Lucy, and I went to see Ho Chi Minh's dead embalmed body (why you ask? I don't know, there's nothing else to do in Hanoi) and after checking out his old house (or whatever it was) and his used car collection (oh, how exciting), the three of us got two motorbikes back to the hostel. Stupid me got on the motorbike myself witht he driver and they got on the other one together (no problem, we've been doing this the whole time), but I got on the one with a driver who was wearing a Viet Cong hat (lots of people wore these in Hanoi.) I'd had no problem up until that point telling people that I was American, but as I wasn't thinking when this guy asked me, I told him I was, and then he started ranting about how two of his family members died in the war in 1972. I just kept saying I was sorry, but then he was telling me how his face got messed up (disfigured mouth) from serving in the army as well, although he was no older than late 20s which made it impossible for him to have gotten the injury from an American soldier. Anyways, then he was going on about how now there are amputees because of us (and what seemed like particularly me) and then went on again about his family. When I got off the bike (where he dropped me in the wrong location) he said something like "Americans who work here - I have this for them" - then opened his glove compartment and took out his butcher knife!!! I didn't think he was gonna do anything because we were on a crowded street and he just wanted to intimidate me or teach me a lesson or something (he also tried to charge me more after showing me the knife but I wouldn't give it to him, just gave him the proper amount and stormed off.)
I walked around for about 15 mjinutes trying to follow directions people were giving me but I couldn't find our street so I hopped on another motor bike. This driver kept thinking I was saying the street was Ngo Quyen rather than Ngo Huyen and was trying to get me to get off at the fancy hotels where I was like nuh uh, do I look like I can afford that?! After a 20 minute ride I just told him to drop me off at the lake. I hopped on another motor bike which took at least another 20 minutes and after again stopping on that fancy street, and then stopping to ask directions multiple times (don't these drivers knwo their own city?) we finally found the street. Only thing was that after I gave him more money than we had originally bargained for, he was then trying to get me to pay him more and I refused; I thought hew was going to run me over with his bike. BAD DAY.
Once I finally arrived back at the hostel, the owner told me my friends didn't see me there so they went for coffee (I know I shouldn't have believed him but I wasn't in the mood for a joke), turns out they had been scouring the street for me for an hour. I got over it pretty quickly as Lucy and I headed to a water park near the city during the afternoon. This place was like something out of a horror film. It was connected to a deserted amusement park and half the rides were closed, definitely not a place you'd want to get stuck at night. We had fun anyway (aside from me snapping my back in half on this stupid ride where the force you to go face forward on a mat) and had our own motorbike driver that came back to the park to pick us up.
Nightmare bus ride followed after my nightmare day, more on that next. Meanwhile, you can read about Lucy's motor bike accident in Hanoi here.
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