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Vietnam, Summer of '99: Hanoi

Ben van den Anker
2006-05-02 01:20:38

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a bad, bad night I left my hotel for the bus strip to Halong bay. I didn't realize that there was a market in front of the hotel, at three o'clock in the night people would start putting their stalls up for the next day.

To my surprise there was a Dutch guy in the bus, traveling with his girlfriend. She looked oriental, and it appeared later that she was his Japanese girlfriend. I was talking in Dutch to him, assuming that she was Dutch too. When I asked her something in English she reacted "Sorry, I don't speak Dutch!" and looked the other way immediately. And the quarrelling between the two of them started, I felt a bit uncomfortable with it.

He had been working in Japan for two years now; with no perspective he gave up his job and accepted a job in his native Aruba, a former Dutch colony. They wanted to travel three months and then he'd leave for Aruba, she'd stay in Japan. It would be the end of their relationship. She knew, he knew.. It didn't look like they were having a good time together knowing this.

When the minibus drops us in front of the hotel, she starts to argue again, "You two take a room and give me one room for myself!" He fiercely jumps into that discussion. I'm glad I travel alone after seeing this lovely couple fighting their way through Vietnam! We will meet at a restaurant for lunch. It's drizzling, the town looks a bit deserted, the views are spectacular.

In the restaurant Manami asks something kindly to me, I see they buried the war pipe, for the rest of the days we have a lot of fun, I even learned to introduce myself in Japanese. The boat trip was not that amazing as I expected, it seems just a short tourist trail. The visit at a cave, accompanied by loads of tourist with camera's bungling from their necks didn't add much to the atmosphere. The dinner was in the "mama Hanh style", delicious seafood and too much too eat it all.

I told ...