I’d just said my farewells to Matt; he was leaving for the airport and London. I was alone, again, but my parents would be arriving in a week.
Having a laptop and no plans was like giving heroin to a junkie. I’d been cold turkey from technology for months now, getting by with my Nokia phone (now in ownership of a Vietnamese taxi driver) and the odd internet cafe. You may criticise me - I’m in Vietnam, surely LIFE is more important, more interesting and more exciting than the glow of an LCD screen - but I spent an entire day in digital bliss; I played video games, I wrote some code, I updated my blog, I uploaded photos and I watched a movie.
I started looking into where there is to go. I’d heard a lot about Sapa, a town in the north bracketed by mountains and flowing with rice fields and farms. I spoke with some people from the hostel and I’d been recommended a different place called Mai Chau. Mai Chau was a lot closer, hardly any tourists and a great way to relax for a few days with a local Vietnamese family, so I left with a small over-night bag for three days into the Vietnamese countryside.
The bus left early morning, around 6am, and took us about 5 hours into the countryside west of Hanoi. We met our local family and went for a bike ride around the village on garish single-speeds with the two guys we could only remember as Mr D and Mr T. We went to local weavers and visited small shops.
We were cooked some of the most incredible food I’d eaten in the whole of Vietnam and all the produce was sourced from the village (mostly themselves or their neighbours). After dinner we sat around with the family drinking homemade rice wine and yelling “ONE HUNDRED PERCENT” every time we took a sip, and then shaking hands with everyone: #likealocal!
The next day, slightly hungover, we ventured out on a 150km round trip to a remote village in the hills. I travelled pillion by motorbike - a trusty Honda Win 100 - and saw some breathtaking scenery.
The journey took us to a bamboo processing facility and chopstick factory (we even got some freebies we used for lunch), we took winding gravel paths and dirt roads past farms, villages and waterfalls as well.
We ate food with the locals in the village, played guitar and drums with them, drank beers, and fell asleep on the wooden floor in the warm sunshine - oh and we fist bumped a monkey (kinda feel sad for how it was treated though).
We climbed and explored our way through a vast cave; having rested and recuperated from the long ride with a few beers, food and a nap.
Waking up the next day the owners of the house we were staying in wheeled a scooter out for me. It was my turn today, we were heading out to some waterfalls and a lake and I was to be driving my own scooter.
Have you ever ridden one before? No, well it’s not that different from a car really? Oh, you don’t drive or have a license? Let me just show you how it works. This is go, this is stop, this is change gear. Go down to the end of the road, if you don’t fall off, you’re good to go!
The sheer physical freedom of Asia is amazing. Riding the bike was so much fun and has been one of the highlights of my trips. I don’t think I’d ever dream of riding anywhere close to a city in Vietnam, but in the countryside it was exhilarating.
Today was a day off, arriving at the lake we took a boat out on the water and put our feet up - it was back to Hanoi in the afternoon so we were enjoying the peace while we had it.
