Last complete day in Vietnam…
Today, I left Hailong after the longest stay in one place in Vietnam. This night, I was alone in the 4-bed-room, yesterday, Melchior had gone to Hanoi, like Alex the day before.
I remember how I felt when I entered Iran, the unknown country that became quite familiar. There are some things comparable to entering China now:
A special political system, unknown language and writing and some restriction, making life more complicated. Regarding the people I don’t expect something comparable to Iran, but maybe comparable to Vietnam or Cambodia?
I tried to be prepared. Today, I noticed, that I had booked two hotels for February instead of January. In one case, I could change the dates and the room was still available. In the other case, there is no option to change, to contact or anything. I will just go there and hope that a room is free and maybe the accept the payment for January. If not, 19$ are gone and I will have to find something else (or reactivate my tent).
The reminds me on todays weather. It was sometimes even dry sometimes wet without real rain and the wind was active 2x for 1-2hours. Regarding the road, it was a more difficult ride than the last weeks, because there were more climbs (still only 800m for 100km, what is much for Vietnam but not for Georgia or Armenia) and one long street was very mixed regarding surface, between good and not deserving the title “road” (I only have a photo taken out from a video of a “normal” mud road, when it was really bad I didn’t think about filming)
and now, where is that truck??
When I had done my 100km (so that only 60km are left for tomorrow, because I have to pass the border, get a SIM card and change money, each of that can be time consuming between 1-3 hours!), I looked for hotels, but not only for the English word, also for “Khách sạn” (hotel) and “nhà nghỉ” (motel). But two times, they said (or “signed”) that they don’t rent rooms. Still I had plan B, looking for the places I had found on google maps and maps me. No hotels there, three times. Finally, I found a place. The whole city Đầm Hà looks special, with big roads and many beautiful houses, but nearly no shops and only a few restaurants and so, I was happy to find this house. In other situations, I would have gone, because the owner was very unfriendly.
In the evening, I went to a nearby restaurant with people sitting there, but they sent me somewhere else, I don’t know exactly why they didn’t want to sell me a dinner. But the other place was good. I came there, when the family also was about to eat and got what they also were eating (including an sausage that I didn’t like too much and ham) with a big bowl of rice, soup and fried spring rolls. And it was only 30k (1,2€). For my sweet tooth I wanted to go to a bakery shown on the map 1km away, but 30m from the restaurant was a cake-shop and tea house. On the menu, they had three different “cake creams”, one with chocolate, one with matcha and one that I never heard before. I was in the mood to order all three and they were unsure about my order, wrote down the price on a paper and still it was what I wanted. And then they brought me 3 cups with bubble tea!
It was not a wrongly written cream cake, it was a bubble tea with cake cream. This was a surprise. I showed them their advertisement for cakes and they showed me raw cakes (without topping or cream) they would prepare. But only whole cakes. I can eat and drink a lot, but after that big dinner and with 3 cups of bubble tea, I knew it could be hard to eat a complete cake alone and I gave up and went back to the hotel to complete my updated preparations of the China part.
Tomorrow, I will know more.
But maybe, I cannot post it, we will see if my access to internet will allow it!
I was about to go to bed when it knocked at the door. I put on some clothes and opened there to see the owner of the hotel with a policeman. Both were
awkwardly smiling, so it was obvious that they didn’t look for something bad. The policeman had my passport and compared the enchantingly beautiful image (© Mozart) with the sobering reality, but at least was satisfied to see the person registered in the books in the corresponding room. They went off and I went to bed.
