Vietnam – chapter 2

*Warning: this post is filled with love, romantic selfies and extreme happiness*

Preamble:
As you’ll remember very well, the last post included the story a wonderful visit from my mother and her partner. Well, this post is about some more special people who visited whilst Alex and I were gallivanting.

When I first moved to Barcelona in 2018, I didn’t know anybody or anything about the city. To try and meet people, I started attending language exchanges, playing 5-aside football and a bunch of other things. Despite the fact that around one year before, I visited both Madrid and Barcelona and did free walking tours to learn about the cities, after a few months living here I realised I still didn’t know much about Barcelona. I was mostly unaware of it’s history, traditions and it’s quirks. So I decided to book another free walking tour, since I would be sticking around this time.

I booked a tour focusing on the gothic area of the city, using the same tour company as last time. The tour I did previously with this company was fun and I ended up connecting with the tour guide over email and having some intellectually stimulating conversations (for me at least). Funnily enough, today, Aidan is a good friend 🙂

The day of the tour came, Friday 18th January 2019, I felt lazy after working the last days and wanted to cancel as I suddenly remembered that walking tours require active concentration and a degree of exercise for two or so hours. Somehow, I found it within me to go ahead with my commitment. The tour guide for today would be a Polish girl who had been living here and giving tours for some years already. She started the tour with positive, infectious energy and gave off a very comforting vibe which is always nice when in a foreign country.

During the tour, I noticed I was paying mild attention, actively engaging with shitty jokes and even asking the occasional question. My favourite part was being shown the old city radio building, which, before we had TV’s and such, would announce the Barcelona result on a tannoy outside the building. Huge crowds would gather and often they would celebrate the results together.
Actually, I think that’s all I remember (it was two years ago!). Oh, and an a very old chocolateria where families still go for their churros con chocolate. Mmmmm.

I realised some way through the tour that the tour guide had a special spark about her. She always wore a pretty and genuine smile and I loved everything about the way she spoke – from her body language to her accent. As I was living in the city, and all the other tour people were presumably here for the weekend to take 10,000 selfies in front of the Sagrada Familia, eat expensive tapas on Las Ramblas and then fly back out. I had to ask her out for a drink, right?

Naturally, I spent the rest of the tour considering how I would approach her, what I would say and how I’d word the offer in a way she couldn’t refuse. Then, magically, toward the end of the tour, she gave out her email address so we could ask for her list of recommended places to eat and drink all the Barcelona things. That was my way in, I thought. I could woo her over email. I was always better at writing than speaking as it allowed me more time to think, and thinking is usually good for me.

I let a few days pass and hit send. I’d added a little charm, a little flirt and a crappy joke. It worked. We spent the next weeks exchanging emails (today’s version of love letters) before we finally met up for that beer.

Why did I tell this story? Well, because I enjoyed it. But also because this girl, Natalia, was one of the special people who visited Vietnam, and here is that story.

That story:
We had made a plan. We would meet in the city of De Nang on January 6 and hire a motorbike to ride to neighboring cities Hoi An and Hue before flying to Hanoi.

I remember how excited I was when Natalia was arriving. It was also a feeling of promise and mild uncertainty – this would be the first time we’d spend two weeks side by side. I had a strong gut feeling that this would be a special trip and a taste of things to come.

Our first item on the agenda when Natalia landed? Food. And wow, how delicious the food is in this country!

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Predictably – the first day together was spent eating, delivering hundreds of kisses to one another’s cheeks, eating and eating more. After Natalia tried her first Banh Mi, we challenged ourselves to consume at least one per day.

One of the wonderful things about food in this country – it’s very customisable. Most dishes have a delicious, mildly spiced broth as a base, and whatever else you order comes on the side or on top. Delightfully, there are a ton of condiments on the table to mix things up. Think raw sliced garlic, pickled ginger, chilli seeds, soy sauce and fresh mint leaves.

After a few days of being soppy sloppy, we hired a motorbike and prepared for our little adventure. There is something extremely liberating about hiring a motorbike and the subsequent trip planning. Hiring a bike is one of my favourite ways of exploring a place, the times I did it in South America were some of my best experiences on the trip.

Somehow, Vietnam stands out. It’s landscapes seem untouched, or at least, undisturbed.
Everything about the country feels authentic and unchanged. Old traditions remain followed (some of them slightly irrational if you ask me… more on that in the next post), generations of families remain in the same towns with the same jobs. We were very excited to explore!

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Check out the pictures of the food market above. This was a random market we discovered after getting lost on the bike whilst searching for some tombs or other random historical site. With the reception we got, it seems as though a non-Vietnamese person had never stepped foot in this market. We were stared at, pointed at and for some reason I can’t understand, spoken to in Vietnamese. We bought some fruits and something rather strange. A lot of the market people were smoking some kind of tobacco that looked like tree bark. One particular woman wouldn’t leave us alone. Despite the fact she had clearly smoked so much that she only had 2.5 teeth left, we purchased some of this tobacco after trying one she made for us. (After finding absolutely no use for this ‘tobacco’, we left it behind…)
Oh, and here ended up being the cheapest Banh Mi we bought, although my memory fails me to recall the cost – it was cheap and as tasty as any!

Somewhere along our bike adventure we arrived in Hoi An. Here stands a famous Japanese bridge built in the 1600s. However, as the hardcore historians we are, we managed to misunderstand the whereabouts of said famous bridge and believed it to be the one below, simply because we ventured out at the dark of night and this bridge had lots of fancy golden lights illuminating it to the presence of tourists:

Anyhow, whilst on a street food tour of Hoi An, we met a lovely couple from the Netherlands, Kyo & Jurien. We spent the evening exploring the old town together (one bar, specifically) and were introduced to the most wonderful drinks deals we’d seen in our adult lives. Something along the lines of:
– First round of drinks free
– Free bottle of vodka
– Free shots
– Free boat

I got a little carried away at the end there, but this was a relatively accurate reflection. Anyhow, please enjoy Natalia’s reaction to her free Vietnamese vodka:

Here are a few more from that day:

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And are you ready for the cheesiest photo in the whole blog post?!?

After getting drunk and taking cheesy pictures, we get back on the wheels and head over to the next town, Hue. We did this not specifically to see Hue, but also for the journey. Between Hoi An and Hue is the Hải Vân Pass, a 21 km long mountain pass. We stop off a few times to take in the views and take pictures for you lucky buggers.
Somewhere along the way we stop by a super remote café (well, I say café. it’s basically a house with some tables, chairs and coffee making instruments), surrounded by nothing but forests and one main road. We drop in for a rest and fall in love ever so slightly with the family running the place. Family and friends are sprawled all over the hammocks and in chairs. Children are playing with the dogs (at least they’re not being cooked, yet). One may assume the whole family lives off the income from this café. When we later came back over the mountain pass we stopped off at the café again. The woman running the show insisted on taking pictures of us, so we called it evens with a cheeky selfie.

After eating a bunch more food we checked what else there was to do in Hue. We didn’t find a great deal in the town, but on the outside of town was an abandoned theme park. Yes. That’s right. HOW COOL??? Obviously, we had to check it out. We did some research and discovered that the park was deemed ‘dangerous’ and was protected by a security guard. Risk accepting the situation, we decided to go for it! We did spot the guard. Luckily, he was kept occupied kicking out some other visitors, so we snuck in, the secret agents that we are 😉

After exploring all Hue has to offer, it was time to head back over the mountain pass to De Nang and onto Hanoi. Naturally, we took a free walking tour in the city centre where we looked up puzzlingly at some monument, walked on an old bridge and saw market people selling barbequed dog.
We also ate a shed load more Vietnamese food.

One evening, we managed to meet up with Kyo and Jurien, our Dutch friends, for one final drunken night. Natalia and I had our first relationship test when, after a few drinks, she bought me a Pikachu balloon from one of those people who walk the streets all day holding hundreds of balloons. Almost immediately after accepting a brief Ash and Pikachu reunion I let it go, accidentally of course. Luckily, despite a few tears, we made it through the test and lived to tell the tale.

It was time for the bittersweet goodbye. Natalia would be leaving for Barcelona, where she would hang for a few days and prepare for her long-awaited trip to Colombia with her friends. Therefore, I forgave her for leaving. What we didn’t know at the time was how the world would develop in the coming months and how long it would be until we met again. But, we’d work it out – right? 😉

In case there aren’t enough yet, here are a bunch more sloppy pictures:

Finally, as per usual, here are some photos of random things I enjoyed discovering. Funny translations, odd requests, Tesco finest and some rather odd dishes.

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