After 3 stressful weeks in Luxemburg figuring out what do to, getting Visa´s, booking the first few nights, buying new things for the next trip and selling stuff from the last one on November 3rd I was back on the road again.

 

Major difference this time, I wont be traveling alone anymore. Fabienne is joining me for the next 6 months 🙂

 

From Luxembourg we flew to Milan in Italy, then back up to Düsseldorf in Germany to get to Hanoi with another stop in Bangkok. This was almost 30% cheaper than just starting from Düsseldorf, I don´t understand how those prices are calculated…

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we got to Hanoi on the 5th around 8pm we had to pass the Passport control which was more complicated than we thought. We had paid for the Visa online but after waiting in Line for half an hour we were told that we were in the wrong line. After switching back to a Visa appliance line which was shorter, the agent took away our passport and told us to fill out a similar form than we already filled out online. But this was still not enough. An extra 25 Dollar fee had to be paid. We did complain because we already paid online but they had our passports so we paid.

 

The Vietnamese boarder control has a strange ways to do math… 25 plus 25 is 55. We will never know for sure but I think he added the extra 5 dollar which were not on the bill as a tip for himself.

 

After an hour and a half we were still outside of the airport and got ourselves two sim cards to be able to use our phones and we changed money to be able to buy things without getting ripped of with the exchange rate.

 

The taxi ride was ok but before we got to our hostel we had to walk another 15 minutes trough downtown hanoi because there are two hostel´s that are called the exact same way an I gave the wrong address to the driver.

 

A quick shower and we were of for dinner and some beers before we went back to the hostel to get some sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Pancakes for breakfast, reminds me kind of America. But the pancakes are more like the ones we have in Luxembourg.

 

At 9 we had an appointment with a dutch couple to buy two motorbikes. They were very nice and the bikes were ok. Maybe a few minor things to fix but we paid 650 dollars for two bikes, two helmets, two set´s of knee- and elbow protection as well as rain clothes and for that price we couldn`t complain at all 🙂

 

We left the bikes inside of a small temple which was used as a motorbike parking to make some extra money because we had so many places within walking distance that we wont need the bikes until tomorrow when we´ll leave.

 

We went to one of the biggest clothes market in Hanoi an extremely crowded place with a smell of plastic, sweat and food. Around 500 different stands with all kind of clothes, fabric, shoes,… But I still did not found what I was looking for. I saw a pullover with “TOMOMY HILFIG” and a Puma lion in the background and I wanted a t-shirt with that kind of horrible wrong mistakes on it but I had no luck that day.

 

 

We walked around downtown for a few hours waiting for our friends Denise & Iveta to arrive with the bus from Sa Pa but ended up laying in our hostel for 2 hours because the heat was unbearable. We found a nice restaurant with a lot of vegetarian options close to our hostel were we wanted to have dinner.

 

The place was more fancy than most of the restaurants in this area of Hanoi. Apart from a bug in one of the plates the food was good and the owner even decided to offer us the whole dinner because of the insect. Denise was not amused at all but sometimes you have to take one for your friends.

 

To relax from dinner we got ourselves a foot massage. Lucky for me I got the only one who knew what she was doing because I was the only one enjoying the massage 🙂 After a minor disagreement about the fact that 1 hours = 60 minutes and not 45 we left with a discount and got a last beer in one of the street bars before going to bed.

 

 

 

 

We wanted to start at 8 am but ended up being on the road at 10. The traffic was not as bad as expected but still not comparable to anything we ever saw. Italians drive like angels in heaven compared to what happens here in Vietnam.

 

 

Luckily the roads were in more or less good condition and we just had to look out for other drivers and pedestrians and not for potholes. After 4 hours on the road, we decided have lunch ( bag of chips and a coke ) and to book a room for that night.

 

 

I wanted to do Hanoi – Sa Pa in one day but I did not know that motorbikes are not allowed on the highway in Vietnam an that our bikes have a top speed of about 75km/h but the fastest we can drive while driving comfortable is 60 so it would take us about 10 hours for the 400 km and it gets dark at 5pm and the lamps are horrible at night.

 

I made a mistake when I entered the destination on google maps and so we ended up in the middle of nowhere on a dead-end muddy dirt-road when it got dark.

 

After asking locals and texting the owners of the lodge we finally arrived at 7pm, had dinner and went to bed quite fast because we were so tired.

 

 

 

 

 

Breakfast consisted of pancakes again, pancakes with honey, bananas and watermelon.

 

We were driving out of the lodge at 10 am and had roughly 4 hours of driving ahead of us. The owner showed us a good road with almost no lorry traffic and beautiful landscapes to get to     Sa Pa.

 

 

The first 3 hours the roads were amazing, but the closer we got to our destination the worse they got. We ended up being on a dirt-road again where other tourists were hiking. The views were breathtaking but we wanted to arrive to relax and get some lunch, so we did not stop every 5 minutes because this view could be even a better one than the last one 🙂

 

 

The town of Sa Pa is nothing compared to the villages we saw the last few hundred km, hotels with a dozen floors are lined up to get the best view on the mountains surrounding the city. But the weather was not in our favor, it was cloudy and misty so that we did not see a lot of the scenery.

 

 

We checked in in our homestay, relaxed for an hour and headed out to see a bit of the city and get lunch.

 

 

Because we wanted to save some time and energy to get to Ha Long Bay we booked an overnight bus to get there which saves us about 600km of driving and 2 days  which we can spend on the beach now 🙂

 

All around the world prices in town are more expensive than in the rural area, but here it is getting out of hand. The cheapest beer I saw on the way to get here was 5´000 vnd and here I paid 95´000 for literally the same beer.

 

 

We quickly got back to our homestay, took a shower and went to bed to get some rest for tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

After having terrible stomacache during the whole night I finally fell asleep at 4am and because we didn’t set an alarm we both woke up at 9. And breakfast was until 9, so we decided to stay another hour in bed.

 

We drove to the city center to get Fabienne a fake North Face jacket because it was supposed to be cold where we wanted to go today.

 

 

This late breakfast replaced our lunch.

 

 

After another dirtroad experience we reached the longest cable car in the world to get from Sa Pa to Fansipan mountain. The weather was supposed to be good on top, but in the mountains one can never trust weather predictions…

 

 

This is what we got and here what we expected from what Denise and Iveta experienced last week.

 

 

After 4 hours on top of the mountain  waiting for the weather to clear up we gave up and went back down to Sa Pa to comfort ourselves with another foot massage. The third in one week 🙂