To catch the flight to Hanoi at 12:00 PM in Munich, our day started extremely early. Malte left Ulm at 5:00 AM, while Leon set off from Dresden at 3:00 AM. Malte chose to take the Deutsche Bahn from Ulm to Munich, more on that later, but you can already guess what’s coming. Leon found the perfect BlaBlaCar ride at 4:00 AM to travel from Dresden to Munich. The departure was delayed by a whopping 3 minutes. The car turned out to be a company vehicle of a BMW employee, almost new with pleasant conversations. Arriving in Munich as planned at 8:00 AM, Leon could quickly hop onto the S-Bahn and arrive at the airport relaxed. Well, the train had an 8-minute delay, but we have learned to cope with that by now.
Malte’s experience with the Deutsche Bahn started with disillusionment. After stressing to arrive at the station on time, he was first met with disappointment. Already 30 minutes delayed – reason: late personnel. The delay increased to 45 minutes while he was freezing on the platform. The crowning twist of fate was when another ICE train to Munich arrived and departed across the platform. Of course, there was no information for the waiting passengers with the same destination. The journey to Munich was quiet, and it could have ended relatively well; one usually plans a bit of buffer time, knowing what to expect. Naturally, the planned S-Bahn was missed, and while the next one was also already delayed by 10 minutes, it didn’t matter anymore. Two stops before Munich Airport, the announcement in the train came, “this trip ends here, the connection is canceled due to delays.” Malte had to reassure Leon, who had already been waiting at the airport for almost half an hour, for the third time. Finally, Malte managed to catch the next, also delayed, S-Bahn to Leon, who was already waiting at check-in.
Though there was still no stress in the air, one of us already had sweat beads forming on his forehead alongside visible frustration lines. We repacked our luggage and briefly worried that we might have some overweight baggage. Fortunately, everything fit. After check-in, we strolled through the duty-free area, snagging some free magazines from Lufthansa – which we obviously planned to study extensively during the flight – and then made our way to the gate with relatively few detours. There, we were met by a group of run-of-the-mill German tourists. We were embarrassed! Fortunately, they were set to bid us farewell in Beijing.
The first flight actually started off quite promising. The stewards and stewardesses from Air China were extremely friendly. Upon request, we were moved to exit row seats and seemed to be among the first to get served food. So, many signs pointed to a very pleasant flight. However, it soon turned out that there unfortunately was no whiskey to go with the cola. All they could offer was Chinese beer. First downer… Oh well!
Leon had made a To-Do list with organizational tasks he wanted to tackle during the flight. So, Malte and Leon immediately got to… proving who was better at chess. After a few long and exhausting games, both of them gradually dozed off. The semi-conscious periods of dozing caused by dry air, noise, and somewhat low temperature were only interrupted by surprisingly good airplane food and more or less half-hearted chess games. Oh, and the magazines… Nice try.
After nine hours on the flight, we disembarked well-fed but totally exhausted with headaches in Beijing, where we waited for our connecting flight on benches for four hours, trying to catch some sleep. On the way to the gate, we passed an emergency pharmacy. Fearing that we might miss our flight to Hanoi due to illness (after all, we were in China) or any other reasons from a visit to an emergency pharmacy, we reluctantly walked past, still plagued by headaches. It looked closed anyway.
Arriving at the gate in the farthest corner of the airport, we briefly considered stopping by the pharmacy again. Now it was open, and, lo and behold, they had ibuprofen! Our salvation.
Doped up – meaning without headaches – we boarded the flight to Vietnam. It was a much newer airplane, fully occupied, with significantly better air quality. We didn’t even think about chess. Leon had already pushed his list into the farthest corner of his mind. Finally, sleep!
We arrived in Hanoi, where it was 30 degrees and at least 95% humidity. Ever since “Grab” became the app for all e-commerce activities in Vietnam a few years ago, it has become super convenient for tourists to get from A to B without being ripped off, despite any language barriers. So, we took a Grab taxi into downtown Hanoi, to the shores of Westlake.
There is the apartment of Haiyen’s family, Malte’s girlfriend, where we will stay for the time we spend in Vietnam.
We quickly settled in and took a nap. After an hour or so, hunger drove us back out of the house. The aim was to eat pho soup at Malte’s favorite place. Unfortunately, the place was already closed. So, we moved on and got “Banh Mi.” Not a bad substitute!
After that, we just walked up and down the main street a bit, indulging in the smells, went into Circle K (the Vietnamese 7-Eleven), and treated ourselves to some coconuts and a Café Sữa Đá for a few euros at a nearby intersection. We watched the hustle and bustle, saw the day turn into night, and Leon got his first hint of how Hanoi might work.
Part of how Hanoi operates is that the day really starts with the setting sun. So, Leon and Malte spontaneously went to a hair salon because the next day, they were heading to India for a wedding! Malte had chosen the ultimate perfectionist during his last stay in Vietnam. It took quite a while for the hairstyles to be finished. The hair salon is in a small hut right on a busy road, where the traffic increased with rush hour. It’s hard to comprehend how anything moves forward with so much traffic! In a Western country, there would definitely be a standstill with such traffic volume.
After two masterpieces of hairstyles were completed, we called for two mopeds with Grab towards the Old Town. There, we finally got to eat the long-awaited pho. And since we didn’t want to go back right away, we wandered a bit through the Old Town. Leon even let himself be tempted to have a dessert. Street food here is truly top-notch. It’s going to be interesting to see how long our stomachs handle it!
On the way back, coincidentally, we ended up together on the same moped through the still really dense traffic. This time, we didn’t call it officially through Grab, resulting in the driver wanting to charge us about four times as much as usual. He got double the fare, but that was all we could do.
After probably less than 4 hours of restful sleep the night before, we finally collapsed into bed, only to realize that jet lag still had us firmly in its grip. Of course! Otherwise, it would have been too easy. So we lay awake for several hours and finally fell asleep for good around 5 or 6 in the morning.
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