Back in Hanoi

Originally when we left Cat Ba we had discussed heading straight from the bus station in Hanoi to the train station and taking the 12 hour train to Phong Nha Cave. But when the bus arrived in Hanoi we needed drinks. Many of them. Made of very strong liquor. There would be absolutly no more public transportation that day.

The thing about the Asian bus is that you buy your ticket and you board the bus - which is fabulous. But if the bus is not 100% completely full, the bus will drive around town and pick up people until it is full. And each of the people it picks up are never going to the final destination, so then they all get dropped off along the way. So when we boarded the bus from Hai Phong and it was close to empty we spent 45 minutes driving around, never getting out of first gear, picking people up. And then along the way we dropped them all off, and sometimes picked up more people.

The other thing about Asian driving is that honking is very important and very loud. Nobody looks in their mirrors as it's assumed that if someone is behind you they will honk to let you know. And if they want to pass, they will honk to let you know they want to pass. And then you can honk back to let them know it's safe to pass.

So after six hours of honking, lots of time in first gear, and tons of traffic, we were in no shape to do anything but have a drink. We were both lucky to have made it off the bus with our eyeballs intact.

After I took a moment outside the bus station, we got in a taxi and took it back to our Hanoi hotel. Just as we were picking up our bags out of the taxi, I looked at Doug.

"I don't have our passports," I told him. He looked back at me. We both took a moment.

In order to check into any hotel in Vietnam you have to have your passport. In fact, you give it to the hotel and they keep it until you check out. And when I checked out of Cat Ba, I had forgotten to ask for them back. This was bad. Very very bad.

Since we were right in front of the hotel, we decided to go in and see what we could do.

And they were fabulous! No problem, they told us. We could stay. They even had our room from before available. We were back in 203!

Miraculously, Doug pulled out the business card from the hotel we stayed at in Cat Ba Town. They would call the hotel in the morning and talk to them. It was possible for them to send our passports back on the bus - which meant one of us wouldn't have to go back for them.

Very relieved and very much in need of a drink - we headed to the bar.

I will not go into the details of the next four days, but I will simply say it took a few days for our passports to make it on the bus. And those days were very very trying. We did our best to take it in stride and keep our sprits up.

Of all cities to be stuck in, Hanoi is one of the best. It had stopped raining and was a little cool, which made it very pleasant to be outside. We went for numerous walks around the lake, back to our friend the beer corner, and we discovered a great Jazz club at the end of the block. But really we just wanted to go somewhere new.

We decided to forget Phong Nha Cave as we read that it could be closed in October and November due to rain and there has been a lot of rain in Vietnam. This allowed us to head straight to Hue, in Central Vietnam - which is a one hour plane ride instead of a 12 hour bus ride.