Good evening Singapore and welcome to episode 21 of Sleepless in Singapore. Today is June 9th, 2024. I am still in Germany but luckily will be flying back in two days. And today I'm going to tell you a little bit about the continuation of my Southeast Asia trip. Specifically Vietnam. So please make yourself comfortable. Sit down, lie down and let my voice be your guide to a restful night.

The first thing that comes to mind about Vietnam was that I actually took a plane and back then I took a cheap plane or cheap airline. And it was kind of uncomfortable and it was annoying and there were queues and all that. And that is a little sad because there are really wonderful ways to get from Bangkok to Hanoi by train and by car instead of by airplane. Obviously it takes a lot longer but it's not that I was in a rush back then so not sure why I took a plane.

If you go by train you can go up from Bangkok all the way to Chiang Mai in Thailand and then you can make your way from Chiang Mai over to Laos which is what I did on another trip. I think I told you a couple episodes back. And then from there you can take a car and it takes a couple of hours. But you can get via land border to Hanoi. And of course the other option would be to go the way via Cambodia from Bangkok via train to Cambodia. And then Cambodia you can cross over into Vietnam in the south. And then it should be, I know it is from friends, I know it is an absolutely amazing trip all the way up from, I don't know, Ho Chi Minh all the way in the south of Vietnam up to Hanoi all the way in the north. It's a couple of thousand kilometers but many people rent bikes or you can also go by train for many parts or by car of course. You can go all the way up and that's a quite epic adventure.

Maybe if I get lucky I will do that soon with my friend Alex. Actually maybe not that soon but hopefully we will do that. We've been talking about getting a motorcycle license here in Singapore and I actually signed up for the theory test at the Singapore Drivers License Institute to finally have my German driver's license converted to a Singaporean one. That's going to be in a couple of weeks the test and I'm already studying. And yes then we're thinking about getting a motorcycle license and then maybe not so much for the license because you know in Vietnam they don't care that much if you have a license or not but we both felt it's a reasonable thing to do to learn how to properly ride a motorcycle. And then there's this very very nice motorcycle route in Vietnam that we might want to do.

Anyway back then I took the plane and it was slightly annoying but eventually I made it and I was landing in Hanoi and I took a taxi to a little hotel which was very nice. In Hanoi there are many of these boutique hotels in the old quarter or pretty much anywhere in Hanoi. And they are not big hotels they have like I don't know maybe 10 rooms. They are in regular houses from back then and people there they go they go all overboard to make you feel welcome and make you feel good and it's relatively cheap or at least back then it was relatively cheap. And of course they are simple places they are not like five-star luxury hotels. But the rooms are all right. I stayed in a couple different ones. The rooms are all right and they really try to make up for the more standard rooms and all that with politeness and hospitality and really trying to make your stay worthwhile. Giving you guides on what to do, actually organizing trips. It's all part of the boutique hotel experience.

So I stayed at a very nice one. I forgot the name and I couldn't find it in my pictures now so I sadly cannot link it but I stayed at a very nice one of these boutique hotels and I remember I took a picture in the shower because the shower head was shoulder height for me and I'm not that tall. I'm like 180. Yeah somehow I just remembered that because I thought that was funny. And then after freshening up I went out. I walked around a bit. I had a list of things to try and Thai food already is amazing. So already in Bangkok I had a lot of my food stuff going on and I tried a lot and I was very excited. But Vietnam was even more exciting to me and nowadays I'm not sure if I would say Vietnamese kitchen is better than Thai kitchen or the other way around. I think they are both great. I really like both. But Vietnam was a first and I was super excited about Vietnam and I was super excited about Vietnamese food and so I went out and tried to eat as much as I can.

And the first thing I ate that evening was a salad or kind of a salad and there were like peanuts and grapefruit or actually not grapefruit I think pomelo. And that was absolutely delicious. It was like a refreshing salad. I think I had it a couple times after. I'm pretty sure I never had it before. It's a simple dish. I ordered it with some kind of grilled pork which also was very delicious. But this salad was amazing. And then I moved on and I walked around and obviously I had to get a pho. So I was looking up I don't know Google Yelp whatever the best place to get that and I don't know if it was the best but it was pretty good. I really enjoyed it. I had some beef brisket in there so that made me very happy.

And then because I did not have many better things to do I was just wandering around old town and eventually I was sitting down outside and that is a very nice experience in Vietnam because you sit on these tiny chairs. They almost look more like a like a footrest or I don't know they're maybe 30 or 40 centimeters high and everyone is sitting on them and they're just out there in front of the bars and restaurants and street food places and everyone there is out and everyone is sitting on these little chairs and having a beer or having a cigarette or just sitting there and eating and talking. And because I was alone and I didn't know what else to do I thought like okay I'll just sit there and have a beer and I guess I was catching up on my email and I very vividly remember that night because that was the night that I think I got a text from one of my old friends and colleagues that probably changed my life a bit.

So hello Nikki thank you very much for thinking of me back then. I got this text from Nikki and he asked hey I got this project and it's going a little south I'm not handling it right but I think your project management style Julian will fit that project much better. Would you want to take over that from me? And honestly at first I thought or even said no I'm not sure. But then we talked a little bit more not even that much and Nikki told me the numbers and I did some math in my head and I thought huh actually that sounds quite nice. So back then my idea was to work for a couple of days per month as a freelancer, a well-paid freelancer and then take that money I make in that couple of days and travel for the rest of the month like go on with my trip. It came differently I'll tell you another time but be that as it may that night in Vietnam on the streets of Hanoi sitting on these little chairs having my second Heineken I talked about my future not knowing that it would be my future but I talked about my future with Nikki and again thank you very much Nikki. I finally decided to cut my trip short only stay for another I think six weeks or so and then go back to Germany to take on that job.

And yeah I will tell you about that another time but that is why I remember that night so vividly and so clearly. So not knowing that I had this talk with a very big impact on myself I finished my beer and I went back to my room and fell asleep and then the next morning I did not have breakfast at the hotel because I think there was no breakfast but instead I was on my way to find a banh mi. Banh mi is this French baguette made in Vietnam with liver pâté and different kind of toppings it's like a sandwich a Vietnamese sandwich and it's one of my favorite things to eat it's absolutely delicious. And in Vietnam or in Hanoi at least it's at every corner like literally every corner there is some lady or some man with a little cart with liver pâté or butter that's been out in the sun half of the day which doesn't matter because maybe that just makes it taste even better. So I found my banh mi and I had an absolutely delicious breakfast and then I went on to do some sightseeing and I think the first thing I went to was the mausoleum which is interesting you can walk around there is a big space you can take some nice impressive pictures it was a rainy day a bit gray skies so I have this one picture with a very dark and impressive feeling to it of the mausoleum that would be the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh by the way.

And then I took a taxi which I found in the streets actually the taxi found me in the streets and maybe that was the first time on my whole trip that I properly got scammed because I got in the taxi and I asked the guy and he said no official taximeter blah blah blah and I trusted him and he started driving and I looked at the taximeter I couldn't see anything I looked at the taximeter I couldn't see it so I'm like yo there is whatever your your wallet or whatever is blocking the taximeter can you remove it so he removed it like half so I could only see half of the taximeter so I asked him again hey can you completely remove it and somehow he completely removed it and then he was trying to distract me by showing me stuff out of the window and I did look for for a minute and then I looked back to the taximeter and it went from one dollar to ten dollars US dollars in maybe 30 seconds or so so I told him to stop there immediately and he was like oh no problem blah blah blah and I kind of got a little angry also because I saw the the taximeter running up like crazy and I half opened the door while he was going already so finally he stopped and I uh I'm not sure if I actually paid him or not but definitely I left and I was a bit angry and frustrated because always especially when you're alone it's it's a difficult situation you're in a new country you don't speak the language you don't know what's right or wrong I mean in other countries taxis are just very expensive but that was Vietnam it was supposed to be cheap and the guy was not treating me nicely so anyway I found another taxi and I made sure the price is all right and the taximeter is all right and that one brought me to the Hoa Lo prison which probably you might know better as the Hanoi Hilton.

The Hanoi Hilton is an old prison now it's a museum and it's a leftover from the Vietnam war where the US military the soldiers were held by the Vietnamese and it's a very interesting place it's kind of interesting because the it looks somehow very real because they have these like life-size doll not dolls how do you call that like like life-size figures life-size replica of the of the prisoners back there and you could still see the guillotine that the colonialists used to execute the Vietnamese activists and and I don't know it was a very sad and an impressive place but at the same time I gotta say one thing about both the Vietnamese and also the Cambodian museums or historical sites they are not as historically correct or maybe they are not as objective not as organized not as straightforward as I am used to that from German prisons I'm sorry from German museums in a way that they somehow sometimes try to make it an attraction like for example in Ho Chi Minh if you if you travel for for a couple of hours with a with a car or bus you can visit these the Cuchi tunnels which I'm sure there is a lot of very sad history because those were the tunnels where the Vietnamese were hiding from the Americans right but they almost make it like kind of a an amusement park it's like hey here you can you can crawl through the tunnels and also they tell you a very very sad story about how the people were killed against the wall like being shot with Kalashnikovs and then five minutes later you come to a shooting range and they are like here please shoot with the same weapons like the Kalashnikov it's only ten dollars a round or I don't know something like that and that is kind of that is kind of weird and I had that impression in Hanoi at the one or other museum I visited as well it's a little bit like an attraction which I get it it's a way for them to make money but I'm not always 100% sure it's the right way to portray portray history.

Be that as it may the Hoa Lo prison I thought was still quite interesting and then from there what's also quite nice was like already afternoon or even early evening is the Hoan Kiem lake which is right in the in the city there's there's a big lake and people walk around and it's a place to to pleasure walk and it's just nice and then again I let it be an early evening because for the next morning extremely early like 3 a.m 4 a.m I had planned to leave Hanoi on a tour with a bus to see both Halong Bay and Sapa. Sapa was first and we took a bus there were like I don't know 40 people or so I took a bus that I have never experienced before because they had this very weird seats that you could make almost flat and there was a top and a bottom um bunk situation but it wasn't really bunks because you couldn't really lie flat you were in this weird I don't know like 135 degrees angle and you were very close to your seat neighbors so kind of everyone was just like sleeping next to everyone and the bus was very colorful and the lights of the bus were very colorful there was like pink and purple neon lights everywhere outside and inside in the bus quite the experience and sadly I think also there are a lot of accidents in Vietnam luckily no problem for us our bus was safe and didn't even drive that wild I believe.

So I was in that bus and I slept for a while and then arrived in Sapa and Sapa is this mountainous area you get to see a lot of rice fields and I went for a little like organized hike in a group and it was raining which kind of made it difficult to hike but they gave us these raincoats and an umbrella and um so we hiked for a couple of hours through Sapa my shoes were completely gone they are I threw them out later that day there was mud coming down the little trails we were using and sometimes between the rice fields it was so steep that the guides sometimes even the children had to help us and had to well take our hands so and many many of the group I think almost everyone except for me they fell into the mud one or the other time so everyone looked like hell but aside from that it was still beautiful it was so green I've never seen anything green like that and these rolling hills and these rice paddies and the wild nature and all the locals and and the little kids following us and a lot of them asking for money obviously and a lot of them selling like little little like wristbands and stuff like that they made but still it was just really nice it looked beautiful I took so many pictures of all these greeneries I took so many pictures of the Vietnamese children playing and following us I really have even though it was raining I really have very good memories of that Sapa area.

In the evening I stayed at this homestay and I don't remember too much of that I met a couple of people we were talking a bit we were having a couple of beers and we had local food they prepared some spring rolls you know some Vietnamese rolls and yeah I guess that was a nice evening as well everyone was probably happy to have a warm shower and all that and then we slept and then the next day we had to hike back or maybe like take a little bit of a different route but somehow get back from that homestay to the road and I remember there was a village where I bought a new pair of shoes a new pair of original Nikes for like 10 dollars which I also threw out again a week later because they were nothing close to original they were very uncomfortable but at that moment I was kind of happy that I could buy a pair of new shoes because my old ones were completely ruined from all the mud and dirt and water and and all that we experienced on the hike.

And then from there the bus took us to I think not even Halong Bay Halong Bay is this probably you know from from every other picture of North Vietnam is this mountainous ocean area where you where you're on these old boats and you're in the bay and on the old pictures it looks absolutely magical and even though we didn't even go to the real Halong Bay to avoid the tourists at least that what they that's what they told us we went to the bay next to Halong Bay which is supposed to be a little less frequented and a little less dirty so we went to the neighbor bay we boarded our boat and I had a very nice room there and the boat itself and the people absolutely amazing we had very nice dinner they were doing a barbecue like a Vietnamese barbecue this very nice grilled pork and that stuff they have in Vietnam and the room was super nice on that boat and I had a little like bull's eye window and it was all very very nice and in general you could also see that the nature probably would have been very nice if it wasn't for the 20 boats that are completely right around you and take a lot away from that magical experience obviously I realize I'm part of the problem going there as a tourist like everyone else and obviously I also understand why the locals have so many tourists because Vietnam is not the richest country and they are happy to have the tourists bring money but maybe find another bay if you go or maybe don't go to the bay maybe give nature a chance to take back a little bit maybe also save yourself the trouble of being there with a thousand other tourists it was nice but it kind of it's not like it looks on Instagram most places are not like they look on Instagram but I found for Halong Bay or the bay next door I found that to be particularly true.

And then to not end this podcast episode on a sad statement I moved back to Hanoi and after all the normal or even low-key experiences I felt like a proper hotel so I booked a room at the I think the Shangri-La or I don't know some some like nice hotel at the at the lake yes at West Lake and that was a very very nice and very welcome end to Hanoi because I felt very relaxed and I had a beautiful view of West Lake and then over the city it was a quiet area it was a nice area it was good food good breakfast and I took some time out and I just watched a movie in the evening and that put me in a very good mood to move on to my next destination.

But before that let's hear some Tom Sawyer and I'll tell you all about the continuation of my trip next week.