Hanoi, Vietnam, by Day

The next part of my journey to get to Naila involved finding my way 3hrs up the road with a van service that Naila had arranged. That seems easy, right? She had already done all the work. All I had to do was cross the 12 lanes again, find the Dragon Airport Hotel, find the van driver, and get comfy for 3 hours. What could go wrong?

I didn't meet anyone who spoke English until I got to Naila. (Spoiler alert - I did find her.) I don't expect most people in other parts of the world to speak English. I bring it up because this was a continuation of me being totally unprepared for my journey. I was a disaster of phone screens. Every time I had a question or someone asked me where I was going, I had to open Google translate (note to self - practise next time), open Gmail to find my confirmation, open Google maps when they didn't know the names in English, open WhatsApp to find Naila's transation and instructions and by then I had forgotten the first thing. Ugh. I probably did that routine about 12 times along this journey and got worse at juggling it all the more times I did it 🤯.

No van but a guy picked me up at hotel in a little sports car. He pointed to his emailed confirmation with my name so I got in, ready to sit beside a dude with whom I could not converse for the next 3 hours. I encouraged him to play his music and his Spotify playlist included everything we'd hear on a slow music station. Interesting! He knew how to say "I love Mariah Carey" in English.

Dirving through the city was a riot!! There's this symphony of organized chaos amongst the cars, trucks, scooters (sooooooo many scooters), motorcycles, cyclists, and pedestrians. Some of the scooters carry 2 people, dogs, or huge loads of produce. Everyone shares the roads with about 10cm between the next person, using lane markers sometimes and traffic lights as suggestions. Everyone goes everwhere and cuts in front of everyone. Sometimes someone just does a u-turn adn drives the wrong way up the lane. The cars speak some kind of unknown to me language of honking and tooting. I assume the long honks mean something different than the short toots. Somehow it works. Strangely, it was not scary.

and kind of dumped me here to get a van. Hope it's the right one!Read more