Guten Morgen Vietnam!

Already been in Vietnam for two weeks and already experienced so much. So much that there was no time for new entries.

On 07.03. I arrived in Hanoi in the evening. As luck would have it, there were a Swiss and a German sitting next to me on the plane from Bangkok. Company for the evening and for the first Vietnamese beer was secured. By the way, the first meal was very authentic - Pho (a type of noodle soup) at a street stall, on mini stools in the middle of the sidewalk. It tasted good - in between, we were startled because someone had to drive their moped into the driveway.

The next day I used to reorganize myself, check my finances and plan my route a bit. After a month of traveling, it was necessary. Besides, it was raining, so a day in the hostel was quite pleasant.

In the evening, I met Lisa (D) and we got along suuuper well - with a shared dinner and a few beers, the new friendship was founded. The next day we explored Hanoi together, although the city was rather insignificant. We both didn't like the city very much and just enjoyed each other's company. Some people we met thought we had known each other for a long time and were traveling together. Unfortunately, the next morning it was time to say goodbye again - I headed to Sapa and Lisa to Halong Bay. But she lives in Munich, which is not far from home. So a reunion is not excluded.

Through a Dutch travel agency in Hanoi, I booked a two-day trekking tour in the Sapa region (north). With a group of a total of 9 people and a local mountain guide from one of the many minority tribes who live here, we started after a long bus ride. The landscape was beautiful and I enjoyed the hikes through bamboo forests, rice terraces, and mountain villages. We spent the night between the two hikes (first day 12km, second day 17km) in a homestay. These are simple houses of local families where you can stay in shared rooms and usually enjoy a family dinner (a shared dinner with all guests and the family of the house). Homestays are a very common form of accommodation here in Vietnam. By the way, that's where I also learned how to prepare Hanoi spring rolls mmmmh...

Since our mountain guide is from the region herself, we learned a lot about the different tribes. For example, there are the black and green Hmong, the red Dao, and other tribes in the region. The tribes differ especially in clothing (hence 'black', 'green', and 'red') and language. Although all the tribes live in the nearby countryside, they all speak a different language, and these languages are so different that they cannot understand each other. That's why all children learn Vietnamese in school so that there is a common communication basis. Many also speak very good English (which cannot be said of the rest of the country...), as the region is visited by many tourists. It was really fascinating to learn about their very traditional life in the mountain villages, and our trekking guide was happy to answer all our questions. By the way, she guides nearly every day through the region - in the off-season, 4-5 days a week, and in the high season, 7 days a week!

Since I hadn't had enough of the north yet, I wanted to explore the Ha Giang region in the following days, which has not been developed by tourists yet. For this, I booked a bus from Sapa to Ha Giang and had to spend another night in the city of Sapa in a hostel to take the bus in the morning. I didn't like the city at all. It was noisy, a lot of tourists (even Vietnamese people go on vacation here), and the hostel where I stayed was really dirty and horrible... Luckily, I was only there for one night.