SO HANOI-ING.

Twenty-eight hours on a bus from Laos to the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. We're all crammed in; I've got Wolverene toes snuggled one side and K-Fed circa 2007 to 2010, aka the eating-Britney's money years, the other side. Stop touching me I'm not a Big Mac. At my feet I have a woman either being violently sick or spitting a cascade of flem into her fabric bag she handily has with her for this purpose. Perhaps she is going to make something out of it later; soup anyone? What the Pho...

TRANQUIL

We get refugeed off the bus at the Laos-Vietnam border, also the convienient location of Moth Universe. Either walk through this amusement park of nightmares, 'Where we have an Ostrich(sized moth) that can fly!' or stand amongst the never-ending games of Hock & Spit that the Vietnamese love to play. I choose sliding about in spit, I will always choose sliding about in spit as MOTHS WILL FLY IN MY EARS AND I WILL HAVE TO RIP MY FACE OFF TO GET THEM OUT. This exact horror happened to my Uncle in South Africa. Well it didn't, but it could have. Get me the fuck back on that bus. I miss Wolverene and K-Fat.

Turns out Hanoi's nightlife, if you can find it, is a delight to indulge in. We found ourselves sneaking down an alley, through someone's garden and up a tiny staircase to a club called... umm... Fray? Fresh? Farce? Fuck knows. They let us play exactly the songs we wanted, until the police took offence to Cragga's enhancement massacre of The Marvelettes 'Please Mr. Postman' and closed it down. As we were sneaking away down a side street a giant wooden door opens in a wall and a young, rather dolled up, Vietnamese woman ushers us me and the two guys I was with into what we presumed was her home. There were questionable panting and grunting noises coming from upstairs, either someone is playing tennis up there or..

'Guys are we in a whorehouse?' This Pretty Woman rushed about getting us drinks, and, in a testement to the Vietnamese people's hospitality, she then made us soup (looks like we really were in a BROTHel pahahahahaa ha). Tila Tequila (the only slutty Vietnamese person I could think of) later ushered us back out to the street with full bellies and fuzzy minds and the evening was spent whizzing about on strangers' mopeds, helmet and care free, looking for somewhere, anywhere, that was open and/or would sell us alcohol. Our knights on white mopeds long since having abandoned us, we ended up wandering the streets desolate until we discovered (hidden under my jumper, tucked in my shorts) a bottle of delicious snake wine. If you've ever been to Bangkok you will have inhaled that unique smell permeating from every gutter, around every corner and down every alley; that smell of egg and sewage mixed with something undefinable.. perhaps Pad-Thai. Well that smell is exactly how this wine tastes. I'm not sure if it was the taste, the strength of the preservative or the snake juice but something in that bottle made BFF lose her mind more than any amount of alcohol has in her entire life. She got her Dollface on (our name for her glassy eyed, 'no one's home' alter-ego) and kept running into the road; Jungians would say that in her terror she had reverted to a childlike state, I'd say she was being a dick. We got her to cafe that was just opening for brekkie and as soon as ice cream touch her lips she was placated, that was until she spotted Ciabattz's croissant, thought it was the snake and The Fear returned. Everyone headed home yet I, typically distracted by pretty boys, ended up lost alone for four hours in the most chaotic city I've ever set foot in. Hanoi-ing, particularly being totally spesh when it comes to crossing roads and high on Baileys. After fours hours of wretched weeping despair, three wise women guided me home, where the baby BFF, after too much holy wine, was waiting swaddled in a duvet and ready to be worshipped.

SNAKE WINE???!! SCORE(PION)



We booked a tour up to Halong Bay in North Vietnam and were buzzin for it, thinking we'd booked the infamous Castaway Tour; two nights deserted and drinking on our own private island. Instead it was bed by 10 O'Clock and How to Roll a Spring Roll, also known as How to Lose Your Food to the Staff When They Take it Away to Cook it. We did get to visit a cave which was cool, kinda like being in a Ryan McGinley photograph, except with hundreds of people also crammed into it, running about, screaming and kicking at bits of it.

GUESS WHICH ONE'S RYAN'S...

After awaking from the haze of Vietnam we realised we no longer had time to go to Cambodia. #Oops we've missed out a whole country. Guess I read The Killing Fields for nothing. Oh well another few nights out and any information retained from the book will be long gone, washed away on a tide of tequila... Massacre? What massacre?