Back in Hanoi & Enjoying our last days

In the early afternoon of the 28th we took our pre-booked limousine bus to Hanoi, which was impressively comfortable and made the two-hour journey fly by—though the bus driver cruelly waited until just 15 minutes before arrival to switch on the massage seats, denying us the full luxury experience we clearly deserved.

Back in Hanoi we met up with Ny, Annika and Nils at Ny’s aunt’s café to enjoy some for coffee and buying beans to take home before heading back to Ny’s apartment and staging a spontaneous fashion show featuring everything we had made in Hoi An. Dinner that evening was some surprisingly delicious pizza, which felt slightly wrong in Vietnam.

The following morning started far too early, as Ny had booked the girls in at the hairdresser for a perm for Annika and permanent straightening for me. After a very serious and professional hair analysis, Annika’s hair was sadly declared unsuitable for the treatment, so she got a fabulous new haircut and some extremely posh hair pampering instead. Before anything else, however, we were subjected to the most intense hair wash imaginable and were honestly surprised that we still had hair left afterwards. Next, four highly efficient hands applied keratin to my head before putting me in what looked suspiciously like a microwave. Thirty minutes later my hair was apparently fully “cooked". What followed was a thorough blow-drying and straightening session to flatten my hair as much as humanely possible.The whole process took less time than expected, though the keratin steam burned my eyes, explaining my very convincing “I’m having a great time” facial expression in the video (not uploaded yet).

Freshly beautified, we met up with the boys and spent the afternoon wandering around Hanoi, alternating between coffee and beer, before meeting Ny’s grandparents and uncle’s family for a delicious goodbye hot pot dinner.

The next morning it was time to say goodbye to Annika and Nils as they left early to catch their flight back to Berlin. After going back to sleep for a couple of much-needed hours, we had our favourite brunch (bun cha) and coffee, then went to the piercer to change my piercing and get a new one for Ny. I also bought new running shoes (full of optimism), we walked around the lake for a bit, enjoyed a deeply romantic swan boat ride, and finished our last evening in Hanoi with some excellent steak.Read more