“Where are you from?” A frequently asked question with a simple answer, you might assume. “From Germany”, Big Jonas, whom I was traveling with the last couple of days, answered. “From the Sunflower Hotel”, I replied at the same time. Right in that moment I realized the astonishing amount of possible answers to the question about HOME. We were jetting around the beautiful Cat Ba Island and it appeared we would have to go back HOME to the hotel soon from where the next day we would have to return back HOME to our boatel which was anchoring in front of the harbor. One day later we would cruise back HOME to the main land of Vietnam from where apparently I would fly back to Bangkok, my current HOME, far away from HOME in Germany. I guess I’ll have to call a few more places HOME until I’ll be ready to reduce the amount of possible answers to that question to only one. Apart from this I had an awesome time in the North of Vietnam so far. Hanoi with its dazzling traffic-light-less old town spreads a really special charm. I could have walked for days across the night market street between the Ho Tay Lake next to the impressive ho chi minh mausoleum and the beautiful Hoan Kiem Lake where hundreds of couples have their marriage photos shot around the water puppetry theater. While observing such a puppetry show the feeling emerges that the Vietnamese are even crazier than the Thais. I mean I dig the culture and the metaphors, but when you see four naked baby water puppets being smashed into the water over and over again, you kind of ask yourself what’s wrong with these people. The show program titled this scene “the fishing”… After the funny little show it was time for some action. So we went out for some clubbing, which is quite an adventure in this town. The police shuts down all the venues at midnight and patrols through the streets, so the pub owners have to run their parties behind closed curtains. From time to time they ring the silent alarm “Police outside!” and everybody goes silent for a minute. Before getting out you also have to wait for the streets to be clear. Quite adventurous…The next morning we decided to do a Ha Long Bay cruise including the whole activity package…So we did kayaking, fishing, tracking, biking and caving, drank snake booze from the Island Locals, visited a pearl farm and had cooking classes on our boatel (Boat-Hotel). The crew was a well-mixed bunch stairing Cohen from Mexico, Edyta from Poland, Korian, Jorga and Sara Marie from Holland, Ki from Korea, Minji and SemiYoon from China, Mark from Ireland, Tim and Dee from the UK, Flo from Paris, Amy from the US, Big Jonas from Stuttgart and me from the sunflower hotel. The arrival at the boatel was quite a funny story. A bus took us to the peer, where a transfer boat awaited to take us to the bay, where all kinds of bigger boats were anchoring in peace. “Look at that boat! I guess that would have been ours if we had booked the cheaper alternative.” Just before Dee was able to finish that sentence the captain swung the steering wheel and steered us right towards the “cheap alternative” which from that moment was ought to be our boatels name. Once we got on board the cheap alternative turned out to be really nice and comforting. That moment when you open your room door and you feel like you could just walk out there on the slick surface of the peaceful water that unfolds directly in front of your feed is something that burns into your memory. It’s a petty that I have to leave the Ha Long Bay Islands, our boatel and Hanoi soon, but who is going to take care of South Vietnam if I don’t? �
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