Having Your Ass Kicked, Over And Over Again

Ok, so the past few days have been quite rough and I'm pretty damn tired, so I'll make this short - ish.

Joining the armada


I made my first big mistake during my last day in Hanoi, I relied on Google Maps. Bottom line: it resulted in me going to the wrong bus station and being forced to get myself on one of the motorbike taxi's (xe om, if I'm not mistaken). Racing your way through the capital on one of these babies is kind of like attacking the Death Star with a swarm of X-wings who really don't like eachother and are all trying to get there first.

Oh look, more foreigners!

Then I had to wait five hours to get on the bus. The busride was four hours, had two passengers getting sick, saw a toppled truck next to the road and I got overcharged for being a tourist that doesn't understand Vietnamese. My bad, I guess.









Ah, the great outdoors!

Ban Lac village

When there is no power you just go all Martin Sheen.

Eventually I ended up in a village called Ban Lac. It's kind of a tourist trap in disguise, as you can book 'cheap' tours to this place for about 70 dollars for two days.  I spent about 5 getting there and 30 staying here for three. There I roamed along ricefields, saw somewhat awkward traditional dancing, experienced a power outage in a tropical thunderstorm, slept above the kitchen (in a hut, with broken wooden panels) rented a bike and ended up on a motorcycle thanks to two persuasive Dutch guys, who turned out to be great tutors as well. I kind of, sort of did burn myself on the exhaust pipe, although I really was trying very hard not to. In the end it was one of the most spectacular things I've ever done and the fact that I could do it for free made it even more enjoyable. Riding a motorcycle in this kind of scenery is a unique experience and I'll never, ever forget it. The three of us  rode up to a little place with a great view over the valley and Mai Chau village.

I met some people who are in the region for an Esperanto event in Hanoi. Two of them were Belgian and one of them has 50 hats. This is of no import whatsoever.

Pictured: mountains, ricefields and Mai Chau village

There are some perks to being a lone backpacker in these regions. One of them is that you sometimes get to climb over 1000 stairs with a guide to get to a cave, but at least you don't have to pay anything for it.

The Cave

The Journey To Ninh Binh

Next stop: Ninh Binh. This small city would be the beginning of my journey south. Because the people I was staying with couldn't get me on a bus to Ninh Binh in time, they offered me a ride back to Hanoi, so I could take a bus there. Putting things in perspective: The drive Mai Chau to Hanoi is four hours, the one from Hanoi to Ninh Binh at least three, provided there even was a bus from Hanoi at that time of day. We left Ban Lac at around three in the afternoon, so things weren't looking up for me. Even if I found a bus to Ninh Binh in Hanoi it would still mean that I would get there pretty late in the evening. So the tourguide offered to drop me of in a junction in the middle of nowhere, telling me that there was this one guy  who would flag down the right bus for me or make the trip to Hanoi and hope for the best there. I ended up agreeing to the junction and 30 minutes later I was on a bus to Ninh Binh. Sort of.

The trip on the first bus lasted four hours. The roads were practically non existent and flooded. We did manage to load aboard two brand new Honda motorcycles at some point, along with huge pieces of bamboo that were tied on to the roof. Here I, yet again, had my ass handed to me as the moneycollector had me paying almost 8 euros before he let me continue. Somewhere throughout the ride I developed a fever and was feeling quite woozy at some point. 

You know when you're a long way from home when people look at you as if they've never seen a foreigner before, or when naked kids are playing in a stream (instantly reminding me of that awful picture from the Vietnam war that has a naked girl running away from a village levelled by napalm), or when all you see for four hours are mountains, rice paddies, one street villages and cows. 

As the bus progressed, it became more and more empty. Then at last (it was dusk by now), there were just two passengers left. Then the bus stopped and I was asked to get out, or well, pulled out. The other passenger took me by the hand and offered me some tea. It was in a dark room someplace with a dog sniffing around.  Then the moneycollector showed up again, yelling 'NINBIN!', took my backpack and dragged it out to the road. There he flagged another bus and he pushed me on it. The younger fellow, the second passenger, got in as well and uttered: 'ninbin!'.

The second bus was pandemonium. The road here was decent, but the busdriver drove as if he was going for warp 9. Honking and jeering left and right he speeded us to Ninh Binh in about an hour. The younger fellow asked to be dropped off at some point and left. Five minutes later they nudged me off the bus. There I was greeted by the local pushy taxi club, I picked out one of them, gave him an adress for a hotel and got on with it. 

The thing is, is that there is no way of knowing where you are in a city or a village, so you're left to the kindness of a guy who races people around for money. You can bet your ass is that he'll take advantage of you in any way he can. So, I got overcharged again and ended up in a hotel that looked kind of shabby on the outside, but isn't bad on the inside. The guy that runs the place is really nice and the price is still acceptable. 

Last night I had more fever, woke up a couple of times bathing in sweat, but today all is well. Or better, the fever is gone at least. I took the day to pick up some much needed Vietnamese as hardly anyone here speaks any English,  update the blog and wear off the reality check that hit me over the head yesterday.

I wanted adventure, I sure as hell got adventure.  

(spellchecks will follow, again)