Nuoc Ngam Bus Station, Hanoi – 29th January 2020
Before all the shops had reopened, before a sense of normality returned to the town, I boarded a 5am bus to Nuoc Ngam bus station in the south of Hanoi. Arriving around two hours later left me with four hours to wait before my bus left for the south. I was hungry, and, determined to find breakfast somewhere, I took a city bus for just seven thousand dong into the heart of the old quarter near Pho Co.
Before I reached my stop, however, my phone buzzed and I answered tentatively. A man with poor English somehow managed to explain to me that my bus was leaving at 8am that morning, not 11am. Shocked and panicking, I scrambled off the city bus as soon as I could, frantically figuring out how I could get back to Nuoc Ngam, having already ridden the bus twenty minutes north into Hanoi. The time was 07.55. The man apologised and hung up.
Sitting on the steps outside a shop, shutters closed and unwelcoming, my mind began to race. I had reservations in Nha Trang and Da Lat for the next five nights, significantly more than twelve-hundred kilometres away. Before I could begin to calculate flight prices, bus prices and any other logistics, my phone rang again and to my relief the man informed me that they had a space for me on the next bus that day, leaving at 13:00.
Although somewhat relieved by this good news, my heart was still pounding as I hastily devoured a bowl of noodles sitting on the trademark plastic stools on the pavement. Determined to check in at Nuoc Ngam by 12:00, I hastily rushed into the oldtown and wandered around, shocked at how deserted the streets were. Some tourist-orientated shops were open, but most of the streets were lined with nothing more than metal shutters and grills, some dirty and stained, some adorned with uninspiring graffiti.
Charging my phone in a cute little coffee shop as I lazily spooned egg coffee into my mouth, I began to notice already how the citizens of Hanoi weren’t taking any chances with the news of coronavirus. Most people wear masks whilst riding bikes or sometimes even just to walk through the streets, but the sight of so many people working in the markets and coffeeshops, face obscured by the familiar surgeon’s mask, was unnerving. People washed past me as I sat there sipping my coffee. And as the clouds let loose their first drops, all I could see between mask and hat, were the deep, expressionless eyes of the Vietnamese.
After boarding the wrong bus and taking an accidental hour-long tour of Hanoi’s south-eastern suburbs, I arrived at Nuoc Ngam at around midday. I needn’t have worried about the delay. At 13:10 the man in the booth who had given me my ticket gestured to me to follow his friend, and I was led onboard a great white beast of a bus labelled Hoang Long (dragon king). After getting myself settled on the top shelf of the very back of the bus, I waited for an hour before we finally eased out of Nuoc Ngam bus station and onto the highway to the south.
The sleeper busses in Vietnam have two levels, an upper and lower bunk. There are three columns of beds in single file, and two narrow aisles in between. At the back are two wide shelves made up of five beds each. It was in one of these extra two beds that I laid myself down. The beds are not quite flat, with the backrest at a soft twenty-degree angle. They are the tiniest bit too short for your average western male, having been constructed for the generally shorter Asian races. And so, on the back shelf I found myself choosing the left the extra two beds, leaving my feet free to dangle off the edge of the shelf into the aisle directly in front of me. I was lucky enough to have the entire shelf to myself, with one empty bed to my left and three empty ones to my right. The windows were dirty and fringed by faded curtains. I could tell by the shabbiness of the interior that the bus had seen better days. Burns from cigarettes pockmarked the windowsill next to the notebook-size window which would only slide open a crack. Nevertheless, I nestled into the leather berth, pulled the two of the thin blankets around my legs and felt genuinely comfortable.
I have gone to this length in describing my surroundings because of how overly familiar I became with them. As previously mentioned, Nha Trang is close to 1300km away from Hanoi, around 800 miles. The time quoted to me when I purchased the tickets on the Vexere app was 27 hours.
I had been determined to take the train to Nha Trang (which only cut the journey time by a few hours), but had been too slow in booking, and when I tried to book, all they had left were hard seats. Turning down advice to fly to Nha Trang, this being by far the fastest, and in some cases even the cheapest option, I opted for the sleeper bus.
The first few hours passed quickly, as my excitement bore me onwards and I barely noticed the kilometres disappearing behind me. I shortly became drowsy, and switched my headphones for earplugs, drifting off into an uncomfortable sleep for the next two hours. I slept with my mask on.
I awoke as we were pulling into a small pitstop restaurant and was confused and disorientated as the passengers and drivers began tucking into great sharing plates of cabbage, tofu, fish, shrimps, and bowls of rice. I soon realised that this food was complimentary with my bus ticket and ate my fill before boarding the bus once more. The next few hours passed in darkness and I had no real understanding of how far we had travelled. The bus dimmed its internal lights not long after we had left the pitstop behind us, and soon I reached for my earbuds again and slipped into sleep.
This time, I slept well, roused only occasionally by the immense shaking of the bus as it charged headlong into potholes the size of paddling pools.
The sun must have risen while I was still sleeping, for when we stopped for breakfast at around 6.30am, the sky was already bright. Light shone through the white clouds piercing at my heavily bagged and bleary eyes as I alighted from the bus, slipping into the sandals they provided for us. At this stop I copied the other passengers as they washed themselves using water scooped from large standing pools at the back of the establishment. One bowl of noodles later, we boarded the bus again and set off.
The previous night I had realised that my battery pack, which had saved my life so frequently in the past, was in fact dead. Charging my phone at the breakfast stop left me with a precious 40%, and there were still ten hours left of the journey. With my kindle on 10%, I felt less than optimistic about the next few hours. Seldom using my phone, and spending most of my time admiring the beautiful countryside flashing past, I whiled away the day, snacking on Pringles, Pinatsu and keo lac, sweet bars made from honey and peanuts.
The further south we went the more tropical the vegetation lining the roads looked. The familiar rice-fields continued to roll on for mile after mile, but now they were punctuated by dense patches of jungle so wild and dense that it filled me with a thrilling sense of excitement. This was the Vietnam I had seen in films such as Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket. But it was real. Right here in front of me, the humid, sweaty jungles of Vietnam. I could smell it, taste it even. The change of air from north to south brought with it an indescribable scent of the tropics. It was a hot, wet smell that was almost lost beneath the stale air in the bus and the cool air-conditioning blasting onto my lap.
The lunch stop was busy, with three other busloads of passengers joining us there. Looking around intently, I realised that I was the only non-Vietnamese. Having gained an extra 20% from the lunch stop, I began checking our progress regularly on my phone. We soon drew close to Nha Trang.
I was busy inspecting my battery pack and didn’t notice the bus had pulled over until one of the drivers called out to me and beckoned me to step down from the bus. My heart raced with excitement as I scrambled to gather my things together and get out of the bus. Glancing at my watch I saw the times. It had been almost exactly twenty-four hours and twenty minutes since we left Nuoc Ngam bus station in Hanoi. Three hours earlier than I had expected. I grinned with excitement and elation at finally reaching my destination. But as the hulking white bus rolled solemnly back onto the highway on the last leg of its journey to Saigon, I realised I was not in fact in Nha Trang. I was almost 20km outside in the suburbs that surrounded the main highway running north to south. Before I wasted any time wondering how to get to my hostel, a man rushed over offering me a lift on his bike. Shortly before 15:00 I arrived on the doorstep of my hostel, my wallet 100k lighter and my hair wildly blown out of shape by the wind.
Washed, refreshed and changed, I set off for the beach. The first thing that struck me about the town was the Russian presence. In many of the touristy town I had visited in Vietnam I had seen many signs displaying the English translation below, and sometimes Chinese. Here, the signs were in Russian. Some had entire menus in Russian, and many places displayed both Russian and Chinese translations with no English at all. And as I walked the three blocks through the centre of the city from my hostel to the seafront, my eyes widened as every hundred metres or so a blue-eyed Russian couple would saunter past me. The beach was strewn with blonde Russians ranging from small groups of friends in their twenties to couples in their seventies. I found out later that this is one of two cities where every Russian tourist visit. Most of them don’t speak English, and as some of the locals here speak a bit of Russian, this is the easiest destination for them.
There was a fierce breeze whipping along the coast. But it was a warm and welcoming breeze, not the chilling Atlantic air I was used to at home. I didn’t hesitate to change and fling myself into the waves grinning with excitement. The current was strong, pulling me to my right along the coast. The waves were breaking close to shore with just enough ferocity to make it fun, but not enough to make it dangerous. I dove again and again under waves as they swept over my head and pummelled the beach. Sometimes I would dive deep and avoid the swell completely. Sometimes my timing would be wrong, and I would be thrown backwards, spun out of control, surfacing coughing out a mouthful of foam, laughing at my mistake. The big blue will never cease to amaze me. Its sheer size and beauty. Its friendliness, its warmth, and yet its utter power over me.
Sunbathing on the beach for a while, I then turned back in the direction of the city and grabbed an ice coffee before returning to my hostel for a second shower.
Arriving on the rooftop bar shortly after five in the evening, I began to look around for somewhere to charge my phone. Sitting down in a little booth at the invitation of two dark-haired men, I struck up a conversation with them both. One was Patrice, from France, the other was from Italy, but I forgot his name as he left after an hour or so to go and catch his bus to Ho Chi Minh.
At 18:00 the bar began to fill up, as the free beer started flowing freely for the next hour. I began to play beer-pong with Eduardo from Mexico and Frank from Germany, two friends who had met in Laos and decided to stick together on their travels. After a few games we struck out together to find some dinner, returning to find three jovial Swedish men had taken over the little booth at the end of the bar. I joined in the conversation as various people from all around the world came and went, introducing themselves in too many accents to remember. The three Swedish men were on paid holiday together and were staying in a fancy hotel not far off. They called themselves “flashpackers”, explaining that they liked to hit-up every hostel bar in the hope of finding the most interesting people.
The evening continued, and soon I was standing outside in the street with the three Swedish men and a Russian girl, waiting for two Israelis to come and join us. We all headed out to somewhere on the seafront that someone had said would be fun, but it turned out to be a fairly boring affair crammed full of Chinese and Russians, with a 100k entry price. Retreating into the alleyways of Nha Trang, we discovered a small bar and sat upstairs chatting until midnight struck and I turned nineteen. After a chorus of happy birthday ended in laughter, the laughing did not stop until we staggered out of the bar, grabbed some food and one of the Swedes offered to show us the view from the rooftop of their hotel.
Forty floors up, the night skyline of Nha Trang stretched out all around in the most beautiful way. The rooftop was deserted, but cold, I soon found myself climbing the stairs of the hostel and saying goodnight to Allie, the Russian girl, before crawling into my bunk to sleep.
31st January 2020
I woke up on my nineteenth birthday well rested and feeling relaxed. Grabbing my free breakfast from the roof, I headed down to the sea for a morning swim and sat for a while on a bench watching people. This is something I feel I can do almost anywhere, and it never ceases to provide amusement. Most interesting for me this time was the man who stood attending a few rows of loungers under parasols on the sand. As people walked up and down the path by the beach, he would indefatigably gesture to them to come and relax on one of his loungers. As soon as there was nobody around he would recline with his hat pulled over his eyes and seem to drop into a deep sleep, until the next pair of tourists approached and seemingly through psychic power alone, he would wake and rush up to them to begin his sales pitch.
I managed to strike up a small conversation with the lady who sold me an iced coffee from her little popup café for 15k. I somehow managed to explain that I was staying in Bac Giang district teaching English, and that I was on holiday today, and that it was my birthday. Feeling pleased that I was learning to get around the seemingly impenetrable language barrier, I returned to my hostel, checked out, and started walking down the coast leisurely.
After sampling the local delicacy of Nem Nuong, fresh spring rolls with barbecued meat, I sat for some while in the shade of a palm tree listening to music and simply enjoying myself.
Some way along the path, a Vietnamese couple pulled up and began a photoshoot for a good twenty minutes or so. I watched them subtly whenever I felt like it, smiling at such a relatable activity.
Calling a Grab-bike I bid farewell to the beautiful coastline of Nha Trang at around 15:00 and headed to the Big C superstore on the outskirts of town where my minibus was waiting. To my surprise, it seated just 9 passengers in relatively luxurious seats. Chatting mildly to a Malaysian family of four, we set off on the four-hour journey to Da Lat. The family were very friendly, and we exchanged stories and talked a little about Brexit, before the sun began to set and it was time for me to drift playlist after playlist higher and higher into the mountains.
Arriving in Da Lat later that evening, I grabbed some Pho in a little restaurant close to my hostel and retired to my bed, promising to meet Maika outside my hostel the following morning at 07.30.
It had been a fleeting visit to Nha Trang, but I looked at it as a birthday present to myself. A couple of days relaxing by the beach after a truly epic bus journey the like of which I may never experience again.
Tet Holiday – Vietnam Blog 7