Welcome to the first post of the Vietnam blog! My journey began at Heathrow Airport on the evening of 8th July. Wetherspoons accidentally gave me 2 pints of beer instead of the one I ordered so it began with a good start. As I sipped my beer and watched Chelsea play I waited for my 11 hour flight to Guangzhou to begin. I flew with Southern China Airlines, which I had never flown with before, so I was slightly nervous about whether I’d actually be able to fit in the seat. Thankfully I could, and I spent the first hour of the journey trying to learn how to play Mahjong on the inflight entertainment with little success. Then came the in flight dinner; 100 points if you can guess what it was.
If your answer was ‘I have no fucking idea and neither does Sam’ then you were correct! The foil contained ‘chicken and rice’, although there was no chicken so it was basically just rice. There was bread (obviously), some sort of inedible salad and a cake that basically tasted like the inside of a Jaffa cake. At least the beers were good, I had never had ‘Pearl River’ before. Fast forward 8 hours and I arrived in Guangzhou!
Guangzhou airport was incredibly surreal. Nobody spoke English and nowhere accepted my card so I couldn’t buy anything. There was WiFi, but the Chinese government banned almost all the apps on my phone (except Paddy Power for some reason). My adapter plug didn’t fit the sockets, and I couldn’t buy another because my cards weren’t working, so I pretty much spent 5 hours walking around the airport and watching the planes take off. The airport was nice, but the toilet was a shithole (literally).
5 hours of mind numbing boredom later, it was time to get the plane to Hanoi. But unfortunately my 2 hour flight was delayed by 3 hours. Also the seatbelt sign means nothing in Asia, turns out anyone can just get up and go to the toilet 30 seconds before the flight and nobody can stop you, as several elderly Chinese people showed me. I was also gifted my second meal by China Southern Airlines, which was also described as ‘chicken and rice’.
It came in a package, and was wrapped in seaweed. It was almost all rice except for the vegetables in the middle that I could not identify. As soon as I bit into it all the western tourists on the plane gave each other a funny look, as we couldn’t tell if it was actually meant to taste that bad or if it was Chinese cuisine we weren’t accustomed to. 2 hours later I arrived in Hanoi, 21 hours after I began my journey.
I bought a SIM card, and as soon as I left the airport I was immediately hassled by a million Vietnamese cab drivers. In an effort to reject them I kept walking out of the airport, before I found myself in the middle of a thunderstorm in a car park in Hanoi. Embarrassed, I walked back to the arrival gate and tried to order a cab with my new SIM card. Unfortunately it took a few hours to work and my taxi app didn’t work, so I was forced to return hat in hand to the same hassling taxi drivers. I obviously found one within seconds, and after he responded that he took card, we got in his car and sped off from Hanoi airport.
I learnt a few things from this taxi journey. A: apparently texting while driving is completely fine in Vietnam as my cab driver spent half the journey texting his friends on his phone and showing me videos on instagram. B: littering is fine in Vietnam as he managed to finish 4 cigarettes on the 30 minute journey and threw them all (including his lighter that ran out) out the window. C: Vietnamese men are just as disgusting as the British; I told him I was 21 and he showed me a Google translate message that read ‘I was married when I was 21, I wasted my youth getting married so early’. He also gave me unsolicited advice on how to pull Vietnamese women, which consisted of ‘say you’re European and have money’.
I finally arrived at the AirBnb, which Jagan was nicely waiting outside for me even though it was 3:30am. I showed him my card and he helpfully informed me that he didn’t take card payments, despite very clearly telling me he did when I got in the car. Thankfully Jagan had cash, and after Jagan nearly fought him when he tried to grab money out of his wallet we paid the fee and he left. It was 700,000 dong, about double the normal rate but I was so exhausted by that point I couldn’t care less. Also it was only about £22 anyway.
FINALLY, after 22 hours of travelling and 3 different countries, I managed to lie down and enjoy some beers with Jagan and Dan at the AirBnb. They were both exhausted, but seeing as it was only about 10pm UK time I was full of beans. I finished the beers that Jagan bought me and fell (jet lagged) asleep at 6am that morning.
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