I was met at the airport by three men, who were all thinner than me and shorter than me, and none of them appeared to speak much English. As they bundled me into the back of an un-marked car, it suddenly occurred to me that this whole thing may have been a scam, and I was maybe about to get sold as a slave to some hill tribe in the middle of South East Asia.
Luckily, this didn’t happen. Instead, I did fear for my life as we travelled at about 100km per hour along the highway, which had lanes, the same as in England, but no-one seemed to use them, and while I’m pretty sure all the cars were fitted with brakes, no-one seemed to use these either.
Unlike most travellers to Vietnam, I didn’t arrive in the centre of one of the large cities, where there are back-packers and ex-pats everywhere to reassure you that you are not the only idiot travelling alone, instead I arrived about 10km outside of Hanoi city, and I was the only white person in the street. Everybody stared.
The house was a pleasant surprise. I don’t know what I was expecting, (a squat, a stick house, a tumble down shed) but it seemed very like a normal house. It had five floors, with a kitchen and a living room on the bottom floor, and two bedrooms and a bathroom on each other floor, with a laundry room and balcony on the top floor.
The bathroom surprised me the most, it had a bath and a shower, and a sink. I had been expecting a squat toilet outside in a shed somewhere and although there would be many of these to come, the majority of houses in the big cities have proper flushing toilets- although I’m told that the sewage system has somewhat to be desired.
I met my house mates, who were all other teachers from Western countries, and they showed me (or should I say escorted me) to a local cafe for a drink. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting this to be such an ordeal. When we stepped outside the noise was deafening. There were school kids running around, people shouting from shop windows, and horns. Hundreds and hundreds of bike horns. In England you beep your horn when you’re really angry, because you believe someone else on the road to be driving like a lunatic. Here, everyone seemed to be driving like a lunatic, and no-one seemed to care, but everyone seemed to be beeping their horns, just because they could! More on the traffic later…
Eventually we made it for a coffee down a little side street, where the hum and buzz of the streets outside seemed to suddenly silence, and the area was surrounded by hanging leaves and pot plants. I ordered an orange juice, which was actually a real fresh orange recently squeezed and the others ordered coffee. However, it didn’t come hot with milk like I was used to, instead it came with ice, condensed milk and a filter. I would later learn its name, “Cafe Sua Da”, a delicacy in Vietnam.
That evening, I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know whether it was the excitement of being in this new and crazy place, or that the locals next door owned a Karaoke bar which went on until 1am, with many regulars singing very badly to songs I didn’t know, in a language which I couldn’t speak.
