Day 18 - Luang Prabang to Hanoi

  Hanoi, Vietnam
Thursday, September 20, 2007

Again we woke early, without an awful lot to do today before our flight to Hanoi.

We were tempted to take a tuk-tuk to one of the nearby waterfalls, but - terrible as this sounds - we figured that we'd probably see much better waterfalls later on in our travels, so we decided to have another nice relaxing day instead!

Katie has been loving her Laos coffee & warm baguette for breakfast, while I've been using having no breakfast as a good excuse for having a bigger lunch ;)

I'm not really sure what we did today to be honest, we had a bit of a wander, did some internet stuff, then sat in the guest house garden reading books, which was lovely.

It was absolutely 'scorchioooo' today, with cloudless blue skies, and Luang Prabang was saying goodbye to us in all her glory.



I remember waking up really excited because I was thinking about the other day when I was uploading our photos onto Facebook/TravelPod in one of the internet cafes around the corner and the card became corrupted, losing all of our photos so far.

I realised that even though I'd deleted the 'full size' images from the PC's "My Documents / My Photos" folder after I'd finished uploading them, the files might still be in the PC's "Recycle Bin" and I therefore might be able to save them onto a CD!

In theory all I had to do was get back on that very same PC, save the full size images onto a disk and at least I would have retrieved SOME of the 'lost' photos, right?!

Errrr, wrong :(

Imagine my surprise (and swearing) when I got to the very same internet cafe to find that OVERNIGHT (I'd been there yesterday!) they'd upgraded ALL of their PCs, so the old terminals were nowhere to be seen?! What were the chances of that?! 

The PC towers were the same, but they all had brand new operating systems installed and so all of the recycle bins had been deleted on each machine!

It was absolutely unbelievable, the last glimmer of hope that we could salvage some of the full size photos had been brutally snuffed out. I guess that those photos were just not meant to be.

All we can do now is bring the card back to London in a few weeks and hope that someone somewhere can work some magic to fix it.

In case anyone can help... whenever you put the card in a PC or a camera it says "card error" and asks if we want to "format" the card. I know that agreeing to this will completely wipe the images if that are still on the card, so I keep saying no, but I'm worried that it also might mean that the card is already blank, i.e. there are no images on it. I'm trying to keep positive but I will be soooooooo gutted if the photos are lost forever.

Anyway, after that setback we had some lunch down by the Mekong river which was really lovely, more nice food & a great view.

The food in Laos has been fantastic overall, so fresh, so tasty, and so cheap.

I was also really starting to like the mighty Beer Lao and particularly the newly discovered Beer Lao Dark, which is absolutely delicious. Oh well, all good things must come to an end.

This was where we had lunch, see what I mean about the view?



For the record (I know how much you all love the food bits!) I had egg fried rice with vegetables and cashew nuts, with a mango shake, while Katie went for a green curry soup with prawns and a watermelon shake.

I finished off with a DELICIOUS mango pancake, which was a fluffy American affair covered in butter and topped with PERFECTLY ripe mango, which is in my opinion clearly the king of the fruit world ;)

Just as we were leaving we saw a boat full of Buddhist monks in their orange robes gliding across the river. It looked so serene and peaceful and really made an impression on me.



After lunch we jumped into our airport minibus and headed to possibly the smallest airport in the world; it was like a shed! 

It reminded us both of the Ryanair airport we used when we flew to Gothenburg in Sweden for our dear friend Christel's wedding, which had only one luggage belt and about 2 staff!

Naturally Katie thought that today's airport was "cute", although I was slightly less enamoured after paying 4,000 Kip for a small water (we'd been paying 2,000 for a large one the whole time here)... all I could think was BLOODY AIRPORT RETAILERS! ;)

Luang Prabang airport is set inside lush green mountains and you had to walk from the terminal to get to the plane, which was a tiny little twin propeller job.

Of course I warned Katie that you get thrown around like a pinball in these things if it gets windy, even if there hadn't been a breath of wind all day! I'm that sure she appreciated the advice ;)

We were flying with Vietnam Airlines and thankfully our Laos Airline tickets were not as dodgy as we feared... and even more miraculously Katie's backpack was actually UNDER the baggage allowance! Only just mind you, 19.6kgs vs the allowed 20 kgs. Phew.

The plane was small but "cute" again (how exactly can a plane be "cute"?!) and we were right at the front in row 1, which I would LOVE to say was business class, but sadly not...



We got served a jam roll, some random nut medley and a tub of water, which was odd but ok and inside an hour we were descending into Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, amid some very foggy conditions.

Before I forget, the Vietnamese apparently tend to separate most words by syllable, so they call Vietnam "Viet Nam" and Hanoi "Ha Noi". No doubt I will forget all about this when I'm typing updates, so bear with me!

We've always heard great things from our friends who've been to 'Viet Nam' so we were really looking forward to visiting our 3rd new country of our 8 month trip of a lifetime!

We expected Ha Noi to be hot, busy, manic and smelly, which is spot-on based on what we've seen tonight!

We just about managed to squeeze into a rather overcrowded airport minibus and as a result went on a very long route all over the city. It was a shame that it was so dark because all we could see was traffic outside. 

Which reminds me, the roads and levels of traffic here are absolutely MENTAL. We thought that the Thais and Laotian drivers were bad, but OH MY LORD compared to the Vietnamese they're the safest drivers in the world! The Vietnames are MANIACS.

We've also never seen so many motorbikes in our lives; I would hate to guess how many we saw coming from the airport, they were like a swarm of killer bees or something.

The guidebook also warned us that Viet Nam is VERY "hard sell" and that we should be prepared for people trying to rip us off over everything and anything. 

Hearing something like that makes you quite cynical about trusting people, or even having a basic conversation; it makes you very guarded, which is not natural for either of us, even living in London!

As soon as we got off the bus in the 'old town' area we were almost literally jumped upon by the owner of a local hotel, who was polite but very insistent that the hotel we wanted to go to was "full", whereas his hotel was "just as nice" and "over there". He became very animated when it became obvious that we weren't interested, but we didn't believe a word of it and just wanted to get to our hotel.

We thanked him for his help and got out of there sharpish... I could see that Katie was not enjoying her first rude and noisy Ha Noi experience, so I tried to get us to the hotel asap.

We soon realised that the hotel bus had dropped us in completely the wrong location, probably in front of his mate's hotel or something. However, it didn't take long to get our bearings and we found our preferred hotel without any real drama.

Ironically the hotel we wanted to stay at was full, insofaras they had spare rooms but we'd have to move around 3 different rooms in 3 nights, which is no fun, so the kind lady on the desk helped us to find a room in a nearby hotel of a similar standard, bless her.

She came off the phone and said something like:

"Ok, they have 4 free rooms for 3 nights. One is US $40 with no windows. One is US $45 with a small window. One is US $50 with a big window and the last one is US $55 with a nice balcony"

I groaned inside, fully expecting Katie to want to go for the one with the balcony, but miraculously she seemed more interested in the second most expensive rather than the most expensive?! I resisted the urge to check her forehead for a fever...

We walked up the road to the hotel that the receptionist had spoken to, before Katie changed her mind about the rooms!

We must have taken no more than 90 seconds to walk there, yet when we got to the front desk the guy says "Oh very sorry, 3 rooms gone now, only $55 room left."

We were like "What?! You've sold 3 rooms in 1 minute?!" and the guy actually started SMILING and nodding his head! Hmmmmm....

So we tell him "forget it, we don't want to spend more than $40" and we went to walk out, when MIRACULOUSLY they found another room. But only one mind you!

He took us up to the 8th floor (helpfully the lift only goes to the 6th floor), but the room was big and looked fine so we took it and threw our heavy bags on the bed. We were too tired to be hiking around Ha Noi that late at night looking for another hotel room. 

We have a tv for the first time in ages, which has a channel called "Goal TV" that sounds tremendous; the room even has a bath (our first one in 3 weeks!) and a small security box which is LOOSE in our wardrobe... what foolproof security!

Katie's still not 100% sure about the room/hotel, but even though $40 is steep for our budget it's central, seems safe and has decent amenities, including FREE INTERNET on the one prehistoric PC downstairs. Wooo-hooo! ;)

Katie wants to check out some other cheaper places tomorrow (what is going on here?!) so we may end up moving hotel, but I'm quite at home here to be honest.

In fact I feel very at home in the city itself, I almost feel like I've been here before which is a bit spooky. My Dad has always called me a "peasant", so maybe I was a Vietnamese peasant living here in the past?! You never know...

I enjoyed reading all about the history of Viet Nam from the 'American' war onwards (from an interesting book called "The Girl in the Photograph" which was about the girl famously photographed running away from an American napalm strike with arms outstretched) and I'm excited about having a good look around the old 'northern' capital.

Things have certainly changed since the late 60s/early 70s but you can tell that we're still in a very 'socialist' country, there are police and officials everywhere for example.

However in many other ways Ha Noi seems just like a smaller Bangkok, Hong Kong or even Tokyo: it's full of people, light, noise and energy.

I think Katie is less impressed; she keeps talking about how dangerous the roads are and how much she misses the scenery and friendliness of Laos.

You'll be pleased to know that I'm being as warm and compassionate as possible, suggesting that she "better get used to it" because everyone here will be trying to rip us off every minute of every day! Seriously, I promise to look after her, don't worry ;)

We have 2 full days here in Ha Noi before moving onto to a place east of here called "Halong Bay" which is supposed to be really beautiful... you can go kayaking between 200 islands or something, which sounds cool.

We've planned a tentative Viet Nam itinerary to take us up to leaving Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in the south, from where we'll fly to Hong Kong before coming back to London for 3 nights to attend our good friends Milly & Sven's wedding, which we're REALLY looking forward to!

When we're back in London Katie will see her mates and I'll see mine, so if any of you are around on Friday night in central London let me know, it would be great to see you! ;)

Ok, Katie has just got back after calling Milly for her birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MILLY), so we're off to bed, or rather she is, while I watch 'Goal TV'...

By the way, I was a bit gutted to see that Jose has left Chelsea, he was great fun and VERY entertaining... who do they reckon will be the new manager?! Cappelo? Ramos? Kerry Dixon?!

Ok, sorry for the long post today, tomorrow brings us a new day in another new country.


lots of love,


Al & Katie xx