Glück gehabt

Hanoi? Unfortunately not our favorite city. After 13 hours of jet lag, we first visited the Hoan Kiem Lake and temple, where a turtle is worshipped. Really crazy or rather "turtle crazy" - haha😄. It was really beautiful! Afterwards, we treated ourselves to a pho soup, a typical Vietnamese dish (rice noodles and meat, cooked for a long time), a cola and a coffee for 4 euros. Then we wanted to use the hostel's WiFi to organize the next day. We decided to travel to Ha Giang in the north tomorrow. However, there is only one bus going there, which according to the internet must be booked in advance. So at around 5 o'clock, we went to the bus station, which according to Google maps was a 43-minute walk away - the stupidest action ever. Firstly, it was during rush hour and the traffic was as bad as never before. It took me 15 minutes to cross a small street. Secondly, it got dark very quickly, but I only had a short shirt on and since we had to walk over a bridge, the malaria risk increased even more because of the water. Third and fourth at the same time because it was so bad: the bridge. A 2.5 km long bridge through Hanoi. It was narrow, the mopeds honked at you all the time, and the tiles you walked on were partly loose. We were really scared that it would break. And there were hardly any Vietnamese crossing the bridge on the pedestrian path, which definitely didn't make it better. The bridge seemed endless. When we finally reached the other side, an hour had already passed and there was no sign of the bus station. So we kept walking, through neighborhoods where I wished we had taken a taxi, which we promptly decided to do on the way back. Finally, we reached the station at around 7 pm, only to find out that hardly anyone speaks English and understands what we want. When someone was called to interpret for us, he first told us that we can only buy the tickets tomorrow. Great. After that, we were surrounded by taxi drivers, none of whom understood what we were saying, until a young girl helped us and translated. Finally, we arrived back at the hostel around 8 pm. A really stressful day, but also very exciting.