A real adventure ...

Oh Jesus, for others it may be normal, but for me it was already a crazy adventure today. I spent the whole afternoon in Hanoi with a Vietnamese student who wanted to be called Steve for simplicity's sake ... his real name is Huon Somehow ... the city between the rivers, as I learned 😏. He showed me churches, traditional houses, a Buddhist temple, etc. All for free.

The only condition: I pay for the food. However, one must know that Vietnamese people seem to be good eaters 😀😀😀 ... but it was absolutely okay because it was cheap and extremely delicious. Without him, I probably wouldn't have ended up in the hidden street kitchens. What exactly did I eat? No idea, I let him order for me. Lots of vegetables with fish or meat and delicious dipping sauces.

So far, so good. Then he wanted to show me the Long Bien Bridge, an old looooooong railway bridge with a view over the Red River. To have a better view and some thrill, as he explained to me later 😩, we walked along the tracks. As far as the darkness allowed, we could or "had to" look down in between. And that to me, a confirmed fear of heights. Because there was nothing to the right and left of the narrow 1.5m wide track. Absolutely nothing. Empty space. Phew.

By the time I realized it, it was already too late and so I had to bravely walk about 500 meters. The worst part was when we had to leave the tracks again via a narrow bridge to get to the parallel, SAFE 😳 motorbike lane. After I had climbed over the railing and was back on the safe side, I asked him why there were no more trains running here. After all, we could only use narrow bridges on the bridge to avoid any oncoming trains. He looked skeptical, thought about it, and said only: "Why shouldn't trains run here?" That was exactly the moment when I could have killed him.

Well, it's over. And if you're not afraid of heights, it might even be okay. But for me, it was very crazy and I have absolutely no desire to repeat it.... phew 😳😳😳.