Vietnam Solo Backpacking Ep3: Tam Coc, Hanoi, Ha Giang and Phu Quoc

I'm currently spending six weeks solo backpacking through Vietnam. The scenery here is just breathtaking. Starting in Saigon, I'm travelling by bus, train, boat, plane and bike, finishing up at Ha Giang in the very north. Alright, happy new year from Vietnam. This is New Year's Day in Hanoi. Just sit around and get beers for 7k, which is 23p. Top tip for doing Trang Ang is stretch the forehead. I'm getting a bus today up to Ha Giang to do the Ha Giang loop and this is the thing that everyone raves about. This is the most beautiful rope I've ever driven on I reckon. My trip began nearly four weeks ago in Saigon and I worked my way through the central highlands and up the coast to Hoi An. You can't help but immediately fall in love with this place. I had a few days in Hoi An to enjoy everything that's on offer around there, then I explored some of the historical sites around Hue before travelling up to Phong Nha. Today has been a really really fun day, one of the best days of the trip so far. I definitely wish I could have spent longer there but it was time to move on and get the night bus to my next destination. I'm trying to avoid these because the only option is the night bus to Bangkok and Ninh Binh. It's 9 o'clock now, I think I'm going to get there at 4am. Let's see if that happens guys. So it's now 7am. I can't check in until 2pm because I fully booked last night but for now I've just set up camp by the pool. It's really pretty here though, just through the clouds you can start seeing the peaks come through. But yeah, this is me for the next few hours. In the next two days, I really want to make the most of my time here because I lost out on time in Phong Nha. I've been a bit burnt out so Ninh Binh, I really want to see as much as possible. And this is one of the places I'm most looking forward to on the trip actually when I saw pictures of it I was like, I can't wait to get there. So yeah, let's get stuck in. Later that day after I checked in, I hired out some bikes with the friends I made in my dorm and we went for a little explore around. Alright we've just come for a little cycle round, thinking wouldn't it be great if we brought some beers and then this lady comes up on a boat saying do you want some beers if she read our mind. Bye bye, thank you. Bye bye. Cheers guys. Cheers. Wait, what's the chant? Here's to me, here's to you. Here's to yes we ******* do. What's that from? There's just a ton of them. That sounds like a sorority girl kind of thing. I'm not going to lie. It does, that sounds such like a sorority girl thing. That's what we did at BBH, that was the chant. Alright, okay, yeah. Here's to life. Here's to life, there we go, sweet and simple. Try it, khati lecker, khati lecker, khati lecker. Hello, xin chào. Xin chào. It's like my first beer in three days, I feel so proud. Is it? How good? It's the thing I love about Southeast Asia, as I keep saying, you can get beer everywhere. Temples, tombs, you can sit down by the road and someone will bring you beer. And look who we have. We have beer. Come on. Xin gai, xin gai. Xin gai, come on. Dip, dip. Dip chai, dip chai. Dip gai, dip chai. Handsome guy. Come on. She's very wise. I'm heading back to the hostel now, but had an awesome evening. Just rode to a random spot, and a kind lady showed up in a boat with beers. And we just hung out and chilled. Just a fun little random adventure for tomorrow when we start doing proper stuff around here. You know what I mean. Check this out. Don't drink and ride, kids. Back at the hostel, we just had a chilled evening of hanging out, so that we were fresh and ready to explore the next day. Alright, good morning from Tam Coc. Today, sign up for this little guided bike tour to the Van Long village. The girls I met yesterday that stay in my room and some guys from the UK come along as well, so that should be good fun. Just exploring a different part of the area that I wasn't planning on going to, but it should be good. We've got a good group together actually, so it shows how easily you can arrive at a place not knowing anyone, and within a couple of hours you've got a whole group of friends to spend the day with. Are you ready, Rebecca? I'm ready to go. Alright, so we've started the bike tour. We're driving abnormally slow. We're nearly reaching 20 kilometers an hour. That's how fast we're going. Oh well, it's beautiful anyway. Okay, we just stopped for a quick viewpoint. The scenery here is unbelievable. This is the guide leading us. Say hello. The scenery here is just breathtaking. I mean, you have plenty of time to take it in, because we're driving at a top speed of 20 kilometers an hour. How's the adrenaline after riding so fast? 20k per hour. Honestly, Paul Walker ain't got nothing on me. Rest in peace. Enjoying it, lads? It's the best thing ever, honestly. We're making jokes about driving slow, but we're just having a laugh. I'm so glad we've done this. It's such a beautiful bit of countryside to be driving through. First injury of the day. You fell off. I mean, but it wasn't like I wasn't driving. I was just like... Clearly. Okay. You know. We can see rice fields facing like this, like this lake or this one. Some monkeys along the road. This one is the weather changing. Monkey appearance. It's not really a rare monkey in Vietnam. Yeah. Because people hunt so much. They're like black monkeys. Or the black one, they call it a... Dengue. It's black like this. Are they fishing? Yeah. Just small fish. River fish. But it's very bad, because it's like a battery and have electricity on it. A lot of small and baby fish. Very sad. What keeps happening to your bike, mate? Bike's ******* short, mate. You keep stalling because you're going so slow. Mate, I'm stalling because I'm going so fast. We're on the main road now. In the North Vietnam, we have four seasons. The weather changes very quickly and very cold in the winter. So people here, they just have twice a year for the rice crop. The first one is from now, like January until May. The second crop is from June to September. The villages here, you see, the farm is huge. So it's a lot of work. I mean hard work for farmers. But it's community. Today I help you, tomorrow you help me. So some families help each other. So it will be easier for farmers from many generations to generations. Cool. I talk too much. No, no, no. We've parked up the bikes and we're now going to go on like an hour long boat trip through the limestone peaks here. This should be pretty cool, pretty chilled out. I'll come back now, you hear? So we're just on our relaxing boat ride for the afternoon. We're about to go to the cave. And we've been warned to duck down and not smack our heads. So hopefully this won't end in injury. It's like, hey, we're on holiday. Oh, we're going in there. Is it scary? Yeah, duck. And there's snakes. All right, just finished up the boat ride. Nice little peaceful ride around for about an hour. We're just going to hopefully take a quick route back to town. It's been a good laugh. Been a good laugh. Well, that was an interesting experience. Glad I did it. This is behind the scenes. Hello. How did you find the bike ride? No, keep talking. No, you keep talking to me. You talk to me. How did you find the bike ride? No, this is like Inception. You can't do that. That's your... This is my... This is what happens when... You do stuff. You do bad things. We're going to get some food now and get some duck. We were all starving after our long day of riding. So having some freshly roasted duck really hit the spot. Eat with your hands. I recommend duck by hand better. Oh, eat by hand. In Vietnamese, it's duck by hand. Yeah. And after this, we went back to the hostel for some drinks. You get four drinks. Carl, you're getting four drinks. Ross, you're getting four drinks. And Connor, you're getting four drinks. Cheers. Looks like you're chugging the whole thing then, bud. So we had drinks at the hostel. But now for the after party, they have a bus for a bar. It's not a bus that moves. It's a party bus, but it's a stay still and you drink upstairs. So let's go check it out. Yeah, turns out the bus bar wasn't that great. So after one drink, we called it a night. All right, good morning from Tan Coc. It's my final day here before I head to Hanoi. So I've just filled up with a nice breakfast burger before I hire out a bike. And I'm going to go explore around by myself. And the first thing I'm going to go to is the main event highlight for this region, which is the Trang An Boat Tour. I've got my ticket and leaflet. 250,000, so that's what, like $10? But I think it's a three-hour boat tour. Three hours. Feels a bit like a theme park, this entrance. Okay, so there's three different routes to choose from. You get there, you get to the front of the queue and they're like, do you want to go route one, two or three? I'm like, I don't know. So they're all about the same amount of time. So I just went for route one. The Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex not only has a catchy name, but is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This area is often referred to as Ha Long Bay on land. And the boat tour today will take us through different caves to reveal beautiful scenes as the river weaves between the jungle-covered limestone mountains. So we made our first quick stop off at the Trinh Temple, which is a place for worshipping two generals from the Dinh Dynasty. And they've got these amazing fish statues here. And they've also got like a heron standing on top of a turtle. It's pretty cool. Approaching our first cave. I need to duck. This is so cool. I'm genuinely terrified I'm going to smack my head. Or drop the camera. It's like a crazy obstacle course. She's doing an amazing job to roll around without us hitting our heads. Open up a bit here. It's so amazing just weaving through them and how she can just row you like so accurately without you smacking your head. I mean you have to duck, but it does feel a bit like a theme park ride. It feels like the start of Pirates of the Caribbean. I kept expecting to hear like, dead men tell no tales. We've made it out of the cave. We're just coming through this peaceful lagoon. And we've got another one coming up. Like each cave you go through brings you through to like another lagoon. And you sort of come out and just see it. Oh man, this is so good. This is so, so good. Wow. This place is unreal. So we've stopped at what appears to be like a cafe restaurant. Basically going through those caves is amazing, but having to sort of lean down in really awkward weird positions. It's like my back's killing. Like, top tip for doing Trang An is stretch beforehand. So there's a temple here, it's not just a cafe. Basically climbed all the way up and all the way down the other side. There's a temple through here. It's a cool walk. Really awesome path just twisting up and down the limestone rock. A Trang An boat experience is one of the best things. If not the best thing I've done in Vietnam so far. You know when you go to a place and you hope it's going to be good, but you worry it might not meet your expectations. Like this has met them and exceeded them. There's a simplicity to it. Just like drifting along slowly through such an incredible landscape. I just, I loved it. I just love, it's just pure nature. You know, there's nothing complicated about it. You're just admiring nature. I loved it. And now I'm at the Hang Nguo something. This is the famous viewpoint anyway. Of course, no attraction would be complete without its own Instagram swing. Climb up begins. Not even halfway up. The views are already getting incredible. They've got this heart-shaped thing down here. Although when you have the path behind it, it kind of looks like a giant sperm. That's where we had the beers on the first night. That little corner there. We made it to the top. Pretty high up. So Hoi An has been my favorite town so far, but in terms of landscape, this has been my favorite place. It's just been outstanding. However, it is time to move on now. But what I have had to do actually is rearrange the order of what I'm going to be doing things in because Tet Lunar is coming up, which is the Vietnamese New Year. And what happens for a few days around Vietnamese New Year is just everything shuts down. Everyone just goes back to see their families, heads from the cities out to the rural areas. And so I was planning to go from here to Cat Bar Island to see Ha Long Bay, but the boats to Cat Bar Island aren't going to be running during this few-day period, so I'm going to have to do Cat Bar Island at the end. And so you're chatting to everyone at the hostel and everyone's having to rearrange their plans because suddenly it's like, oh God, everything's going to shut down. We're not going to be able to get to the places we want to. But, you know, it's the way it goes. I'm still going to get to see everything I want to see. I'm still going to do everything I want to do, which is going to be in a slightly different order. So it's not a problem. Well, hopefully it's not. So this morning I'm heading to Hanoi. And for breakfast I've got the standard Southeast Asia travel snack, of a pack of Oreos. It was just a two-hour drive to Hanoi, which breezed past in this comfy limo van. First thing I've got to do is try and find a new camera. Now, a little bit of behind-the-scenes of filming this trip. So first of all, my gimbal stopped working. Then my action camera, DJI Osmo Action, stopped working. And now my main camera, my Sony A7S, has stopped working. This I've had for five years now, and it has been through the works. And I've had to repair it a couple of times, and I've had to spend quite a bit of money on that. When this broke yesterday, I was like, right, I'll just get to Hanoi, and, you know, buy a new one. I'll just stick it on a credit card. You know, I was hoping it would last me another year. There's a Sony shop in town. Sony. About to go spend $2,000 on a credit card. And I go to the Sony shop, and they don't have the A7S. But they had other sort of mid-range cameras there and stuff, and vlogging cameras and home video cameras. So I was like, right, I'll go away and research them, and then come back tomorrow and sort of figure out the best thing I can get just to sort of use for the rest of the trip. But then they said, oh, no, we're closing in one hour, and we'll be closed for five days because of the Tet Lunar, the New Year celebrations. So I basically had less than an hour to pick a camera to use for the rest of my trip, because I've still got two weeks to go. So I've come to a McDonald's to get on the Wi-Fi, and I took pictures of the cameras. I'm going to Google what's the most suitable one for what I need. Fuck it up. Ugh. The joys of filming your travels. Whilst they had some good sort of mid-range vlogging cameras, I didn't have enough time to properly research their pros and cons, and I wasn't going to have enough time to get the accessories for them, like a tripod or external mic. So I was like, well, what am I going to do? So then I decided to keep it simple and go with what I know and get a Sony Handycam. So this is pretty much the same thing that I filmed all of HK2MY on. So that's what I'm going to be using for the rest of my trip. And, you know, Hanoi and Hanoi Bay is the bits of Vietnam I saw on the HK2MY trip. And so, you know, I was hoping to play on the nostalgia a little bit but not go so far as to have to use, you know, the same bloody camera. So I guess for all you bloody filmmakers out there, this will be a nice little lesson on it's not the quality of the camera you use, it's your ability to tell a story. So switch into the Sony Handycam now. All right, so we're now on a Sony Handycam. Let's see how this works out. Anyway, I have just checked into my hostel. I'm at the Central Backpackers Hostel. Yeah, this is me for the next three or possibly four nights because I've just found out that the buses to Ha Giang aren't running on the day I want to leave. So I might have to stay here an extra day which then affects my plans for after the Ha Giang loop. So, you know, it's sort of cool to be here for Tet Lunar but it's kind of messing up all my plans for the trip. But, you know, that's the way it goes sometimes. You've just got to work with it and improvise. And so we'll see where this trip ends up. Anyway, I kind of fancied a beer after all of that and it was New Year's Eve. So I met up with Emmanuel who was also in town and we went to get some of the legendary beer hoi. Cheers, boys. Cheers, mate. Oh, yeah. Cheers, guys. Beer hoi. Well, we've come to Beer Hoi Junction for... Rebecca! Hey. Hello. Look who's back. From the upgrade from the... Not really. I was saying we've come to Beer Hoi Junction. If you go to Hanoi, it's the best thing ever. They've got these little stools. You just sit around and get beers for 7k which is 30 cents or 23p. It's not bad. It's decent. I think it's actually pretty good. Even though it's home brewed, it's kind of sketchy. I don't really know what's going on here. You don't know what the strength is either so sometimes it fucks you up. It's better than the free beer I got at my last hostel. Yeah, the free beer at hostels is just like watered down shit. You work at a distillery. I do. So how would you rate this? Well, I'll drink it. That's all that matters. Cheers! Health and safety example of Vietnam. We have a giant umbrella above us because it's raining and right next to it is all of the wires powering everything. Safety first. You look worried, Emmanuel. Clearly I'm not. Getting a bit hungry so we're just going to get some fried food. That's how easy Asia is. Cheap beer, fried food, done. It's good. When you're drinking at these beer hoist places and you need the toilet, they just send you down this sort of dark alleyway so it's like a drain pipe or a squatter toilet and it smells like boss. That was better. You can pay good money for a worse pint than this in London. Decent enough beer, fried food right there, good people, good times. Awful toilets, but you know. It's not all going to be perfect. You've got to put up the toilets, but you know. OK, so I wanted to show how much the round costs for everyone, but Blake's just treated everyone. Six beers each out of six of us, so that's 36. 36 beers is what it was. How much did it cost you? 168. That's like $10. $10 to buy 36 beers. Thank you, Blake! Which is amazing because it's so cheap, but this ************ is going to want to drink back when we're in a proper bar later. He's playing the long game. He's like, can I get a glass of champagne? I'll take gin and tonics. I'm on to you, Blake, I'm on to you. So this is what a tropical storm's like. We were sitting here chatting and it wasn't like it started raining harder and harder. It's like someone turned the taps on and then in the space of like a second, there's this. The thing you should look at is behind you. Watch out for the wires. Hey, hey, it's raining. Can you give me a beer? Yeah! Perfect time to change a lightbulb. The wind just changed direction, we got it all... Once the rain died down a bit, we decided to get some food. When I come to Hanoi, I don't just drink beer Hanoi, I drink beer Hanoi... bold. Then after this, we tried to find a bar to see in the New Years. The Vietnam Backpackers hostel was rammed, so we decided to check out the bar at my hostel. It's just bar crawling through. The atmosphere was way better here, plus they were playing some banging tunes to get the party going. The only problem was the balcony was packed, so we quickly tried to go somewhere else for a view of the midnight fireworks, which resulted in a complete fail. We were at the rooftop bar of our hostel, and it was so crowded. Shit, what's happening now? 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Oh, ****. Alright. The New Year for Vietnam. This is New Year's Day in Hanoi, and this might be the quietest you'll ever see in Hanoi. Because many of the locals leave town for Tet Luna, it means that for the next few days, a lot of the museums and sites, cafes, bars and shops are going to be shut. I'm going to have an explore around anyway. Have a look around the town and see what we can see. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and is the country's second largest city with a population of 8 million people, most of which cannot be seen here right now. Some of the streets of the old quarter where I'm staying are named after their original businesses dating back about 1,000 years. So I'm at the Railway Street, the famous Instagram spot. There's actually tons of different cafes and stuff along the railway here, so it'll be a cool place to hang out. I'll just get a picture. Like at any place, if you want a photo of it, just walk a little bit further away from the crowds. There's no one else there. The next place I checked out was the Halo Prison, which was one of the few things actually open in town. So the prison was created by the French at the end of the 19th century and then also was used again by them in the 1940s and 1950s when they were trying to take back Vietnam because it was a French colony. But then it was also used by the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and it became known as the Hanoi Hilton to the Americans. And John McCain was held prisoner here for quite a few years. I'm just heading to check out St. Joseph's Cathedral and you can hear some beautiful singing coming from inside. I spent another couple of hours wandering around the old quarter, including going past the hostel I stayed at 7 years ago. Then the next day, I was joined by Emmanuel and we went a bit further afield in town. We have here a wall of the illustrations for the Law of Karma, different causes and effects. So there's stuff like using social media to remind people to live a moral life brings long-lasting happiness and love for others. So very hashtag blessed. Being an alcoholic and drug user brings a dumb and foolish man. You listening, James? So when you come here and see the lake, you can get a sense of the scale of Hanoi. As a backpacker, you may just see the downtown area with all the narrow and small streets and the hectic craziness, but it's a huge city out there. Alright, so today I'm finally, finally leaving Hanoi. I've been stuck here a bit longer than I wanted to because of Tet Lunar. The word stuck might sound a bit negative because it's like, hey, you're in a foreign city. You're not stuck there. Go out and explore. But everything's shut. Everything's been shut. I'm getting a bus today up to Ha Giang to do the Ha Giang loop. This is the thing that my entire trip to Vietnam, the one thing everyone's been saying is like, are you going to do the Ha Giang loop? You must do the Ha Giang loop. So that's what I'm going to go do now. But I have decided to change my plans again because the weather's just been terrible here and apparently even worse out on Ha Long Bay. And since I have to fly home from Ho Chi Minh City anyway because I've got a return ticket from there, what I'm going to do is do the Ha Giang loop and then fly down to Phu Quoc Island and spend my last few days of my trip there. It'd be nice to see some sunshine again before I go back to miserable, rainy England in February. So it should be a nice, fun way to finish off the trip. Go do the Ha Giang loop, which is supposed to be amazing, and then go chill in the sunshine down on Phu Quoc Island. The hostel organised taxis to take everyone out to the bus station. Now, I've been feeling a little bit under the weather the last couple of days. Nothing major. But since the bus journeys have been really comfy so far on this trip, I was looking forward to having a day of just resting, watching movies and getting my energy back. However, once I got on the bus, I found I'd been given the short straw in terms of seating. So this is already the worst journey I've been on. I could sleep the bus, but we've got five of us cramped in the back. It's gone so slow. So what followed was an exhausting journey that took a lot longer than the scheduled seven hours to get up to Ha Giang. Alright, so arrived in Ha Giang last night after a terrible, terrible bus journey. That was the worst bus journey I've done on this trip by a long, long way. Yeah, here's the Ha Giang loop. Ha Giang is Vietnam's northernmost province bordering China. And the loop is a motorbiking route around the region's breathtaking mountain roads. And there's tons of different ways you can do it. Not just the road, you can drive it yourself. But everyone's been recommending to me the Jasmine Hostel right here because you can ride in a group and you have like a guide who can navigate. You're going to sort out your bike, your pads, gloves, helmet, everything, all in one easy price. So that's what I'm going to do. This guy, Son, behind this bike has a very big flag. So just follow him, OK? Whilst there might be a less adventurous way to do it, considering where I am in the trip and sort of how I'm feeling, I'm still a bit under the weather. I keep burning myself out on this trip. Yeah, I'm going to do it with a group because it means I can just relax, enjoy the journey, enjoy the scenery, and also concentrate on the filming rather than trying to ride, navigate and film. I'd hope we have a good group together, a good laugh and chat experience. All right, all kitted out, pads on, helmet on. We've had the safety briefing. That's our guide. Let's go. On our way to try and get out of Ha Giang. Lose the traffic, get up in the mountains. All right, this is what we've been driving through. We've got about 95km to drive today before we reach the village that we're staying in tonight. All right, just stopped off at a little coffee spot. It's getting colder. We're getting higher up, so it's getting a lot, lot colder. But the views are just getting better and better and better. See why people said it's a lot of fun? Because it is. The coffee shop's blasting out the 90s classic. We've got Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears playing. Perfect soundtrack to the Ha Giang loop. Hey. Were you even alive when this song came out? Huh? Were you even alive when this song came out? I probably wasn't. 19th birthday today. I guess so. I guess this is what we're going to be riding through the next few days, just heading through that way as we loop it back around. So we just stopped off at a little village for lunch. Because we were all prepaid for the tour, you get this banquet set out for you. It's pretty nice. Colin, benefits of the easy rider. Take it. So we've just stopped off at this little village. Exciting year. We've just driven through the most insanely beautiful pass. My helmet's still not working, so as long as I don't crash, I'll be fine. I think we're going to go check out a cave now. Well, that was a feral hike up. Ridiculously scenic. And now we're at this awesome little cave. The camera is steaming up in here. It's so hot. It's like a freaking sauna in there. Beautiful, but so hot, especially around all the layers. I can't get over how just epic the landscapes are around here. It's unreal. This is the most beautiful road I've ever driven on, I reckon. Certainly the most beautiful road I've ever biked on. The scale of it is just insane. So we started out down there. We're on this pass all the way up here. We're going to keep going up over there, over the top and down the other side. I'm lucky because Travis here has sought me out with his GoPro footage since mine's broken. So now the other side of the valley. The only question everyone's asking is, though, despite the views being amazing, the only question everyone's asking is is there going to be a hot shower tonight? I don't think there will be. We're homestaying. Day one complete. Made it to the homestay. Let's see what the accommodation's like for the night. The room's nice and cosy. We're all sleeping together in this one giant dorm. Well, there's a couple of dorms. There's going to be food, a campfire, beers if you want it, but I'm staying off it tonight. I'm going to have a pretty chill night at the homestay here tonight, see if I can get myself a bit better, feel a bit better for tomorrow. So in the couple of days leading up to the Ha Giang loop, I've been feeling a bit under the weather, just a bit worn out. So basically what had happened was I'd kind of given myself sort of mild tonsillitis. And of course the main thing you need to do to get over tonsillitis is just rest. But I started the loop thinking, oh, you know, I'll be all right once I'm on the road. I'll be feeling better and enjoying myself. But, you know, those roads are tiring to drive on because you're winding up through the mountains and there's trucks and there's traffic and stuff. I was just feeling terrible. I was feeling exhausted and like you know, my mouth was hurting from the tonsillitis. So it like hurt to eat, it hurt to talk and I just wasn't enjoying it. So in the morning I had a choice. It's like I can keep going with the loop, but only kind of half-assed enjoying it. In fact, not really enjoying it because I'm feeling ill and not being able to socialise. And then because I keep going it means I won't actually get better. I won't be able to rest up. And that means I'll go to Foucault and then just be ill for that. So I'll just waste the last two weeks of my trip. And because I'd already booked it up, I had a choice between being ill for the Ha Tsiang and being ill for Foucault, or quitting Ha Tsiang, getting better, and then going to Foucault and enjoying that. So I came to the decision, it's like right, I'm going to quit doing the loop. I'm going to get out of this and go and rest up. So, from where we were the first night, I got a bus back to Ha Giang. So this is somewhere we're going to get our bikes. I think I've been breaking my own rules on this trip. I think I've been, you know, because it's my first backpacking trip in like a year and a half I've really wanted to sort of try to see and do as much as possible and it's just been go, go, go, go, go. So I've been ignoring my own rules and I think that's just what's burnt me out and it's always caught up to me. And I'm getting older, so I can't hack it as easily as I used to. On that first day, once we started driving and I saw just how epic the mountains were I was like, I want to be able to actually properly enjoy this and properly experience the loop. Like, not just enjoy the drive, but enjoy the social scene and enjoy the entire experience. And I can only do it half-assed now because I'm not that well. So I came to the decision, I'm basically going to Quest for Everest it. I'm going to do what we did on the Quest for Everest trip where Chris got ill, so we had to leave the tour and then came back and did the Everest Base Camp trek a year and a half later. So I'm going to come back in a year's time but in more like April, May time when it's sunny and warm and all the views will be there, won't be covered in fog and cloud and rain and maybe I'll make a two-week northern Vietnam trip out of it. And some of the people in the group were going, it's so sad that you're going to miss out on this, it's so sad that you've got to leave. And I was like, it's fine. I'm very, very fortunate that I get to travel a lot and not every trip is going to go to plan. It was good to me as well, the guys at Jasmine Hostel, I sort of got back there and told them what happened and they refunded half the trip which I didn't expect at all. I was just like, that money's gone, it's a write-off. But no, I guess that was really good of them. Got to Hà Giang, I just had two nights there and I literally just did nothing. I just sat and watched movies in this private room. Then I got the bus down to Hanoi airport today and I'm in this hotel room and I've just been doing nothing, just relaxing. And it's worked, I'm nearly better. I'm nearly back to 100%. The hotel had great reviews on bookie.com but I got to the room and this is sort of the book of all the things to do, like your restaurant menu and everything. It's empty. So I went down to the reception and I was like, yeah, have you got another copy of this? Because mine's empty. He went, oh no, we're so new, we haven't actually printed out all the information yet. Basically for this evening, I just went to the shop and got myself a pot noodle. Tomorrow, I'll find a food cock and just have a holiday at the end of my holiday. There'll be partying, there'll be relaxing, there'll be beautiful beaches and it'll be a different end to the trip than what I planned but it sort of turned out to be the right end to the trip for what I want and how I'm feeling right now. I gave myself a couple of nights to get settled on the island during which time I made friends with a group of Croatians at the hostel and we hired out some bikes to go explore the island. Alright, we've parked up the cable car. It's very tempting just to push one of these bikes and let them all domino all the way down. Have I left my key? I have left my key. Step one with parking, remember your key. So about to go on the longest cable car in the world which is a claim I've heard a couple of times already on this trip and these are huge, fit up to 30 people in these bad boys. It's got some pace to it. Endless, endless fishing boats down here. And we've got the old town just here. Wow! Look at the size of this pilot now. This is huge. This is ridiculous. So it turns out the cable car at Barnar Hills is the world's longest non-stop single cable car with a length of 5km whilst this is the longest 3-way cable car in the world at 8km. But whatever, the views were just incredible as we soared over one island to another eventually arriving at Pineapple Island where we'll be spending the afternoon. Oh, there's a landing. Hello! Well that was amazing. That was such an epic journey. It goes so fast. Yeah, it was amazing. Definitely if you went to Kukok it's cable car. It's just amazing. Loved it, loved it, loved it. To the beach! So we're going to set up camp here for the afternoon just relax on this beautiful, beautiful beach. It is like a resorty beach but I don't care. I'm so, so glad I came to Kukok Island at the end of this trip. Just the beach and I'm out here. Alright, we have ourselves a little water park. Flatable obstacle course which is a lot harder than it looks actually. See if we can get across here. Oh, you made it look way too easy. Just a little bit more and you've done it. 3, 2, 1, go! So ladies and gentlemen this is not how you do that. This is not how you do that. We got the cable car back to the main island and our fun day out was topped off with a gorgeous sunset view. Then after freshening up at the hostel we went out for some beers in town. Cheers guys! So I've been in Vietnam for over 5 weeks now and I've finally given in and bought a banana shirt. I've seen so many people with it but my new Croatian family all convinced me to get one. I paid top dollar as well. I think I paid way more than I probably should have done but whatever, as long as I can fit in it's all that matters. I didn't get the pants though because it looks like you're wearing pyjamas if you wear the whole set. I feel ridiculous wearing this shirt but then Paddy from the Budgeteers wears this stuff all the time. Voluntarily. I guess if it works for him it could work for me. We're going to head down to the Cheeky Traveller English Pub and then to the Oxen Beach Club for the night. The next day we'd booked ourselves onto a boat tour to take us around different islands beaches and snorkelling spots. It's nice, easy, relaxing fun. It's going to be an awesome day. First name of the first island. The first island has a delightful name of Fingernail Island. Doesn't that make you just go like If I'm looking at the pictures I think we'll just be chilling in paradise for the day. That's the plan. So we're not going to Fingernail Island which is fine. It sounds like a horrible place. We're going to go snorkelling in two places and then chill on one island. Just finished up snorkelling point one. It's a lot better than I thought it was going to be. This is the life. Sitting here with a beer. This is our on board feast. We're just going to camp here for the afternoon. We've got one hour to chill on this beautiful beach. Gorgeous. White sand, turquoise water, palm trees. That's just pointless. Everyone here is just living their best life. I love a good boat tour. It's one of my favourite kind of holiday things to do. Just the simplicity of it. Cruising around, going swimming, music playing, drinking some beers, hanging out with your mates. Yeah, love it. My new Croatian family left Fukuok the day before I did but there were still plenty more friends to make for the final night of my Vietnam trip. Alright. It's the last night of the trip and we're at Joe's Beach Bar which is amazing but they started having a live band and a DJ next door. You've got conflicting music so we bought rum and coke and just came to the rocks here and just chilled out. So we've got Polly and Maddy here from Essex just engaging with so many different cultures out here. It's like really expanding myself. But we've come to the rocks for sunset. Perfect last night of the trip. Cheers guys. Cheers. She got the whole bottle. Take the girl out of Essex. So there's two things that people are going to say when they watch this film. The first is oh my god when you got ill I bet that was coronavirus and it's like no. Remember all those ways you could get ill before coronavirus? They're still possible now. And didn't have any of those symptoms and it's happened to me a couple of times before on trips where I burnt myself out and I just had to give myself a couple of days rest and get better. I just hadn't learnt from my mistakes. And the second thing people are going to say is now that we've been locked down and you can't travel I bet you regret not finishing the Ha Trang loop and it's like nope. Don't regret it one bit. And in fact because we have been locked down I'm so glad that the last week of travelling that I had for a long time wasn't spent just battling through trying to finish something just for the sake of it even though I was ill and not enjoying it. So it was 100% the right decision and I enjoyed every single second that I was on Phu Quoc. I really soaked that up and just loved having that holiday at the end of the holiday. I mean I stayed at an awesome hostel, made a great group of friends I loved just chilling on the beach some days and relaxing. The cable car on the boat tour was awesome and I made friends with the guys who ran the Cheeky Traveller English pub and I even got to do like a mini set there one night which was so much fun. And so all it means is that my plans for redoing the loop have been put back a year because my Borneo tour from this April got postponed till April 2021. So I'll now go back to Vietnam April May 2022 and I'm thinking of doing it as a tour so you guys can come along as well if you want and we'll fly into Hanoi, go up to Sa Pa and do some trekking, then do the Ha Giang loop, then go to Cao Bang to see those amazing waterfalls on the Chinese border and then finish it up with a cruise around Ha Long Bay when the sun should be shining and the weather should be really warm. So that'll be April May 2022 which is a way off so once those plans are more formalised I'll let you guys know about it. But one of the things this whole lockdown mess and losing the ability to travel has done is that it's been a nice healthy reminder of just what a privilege it is to actually be able to travel. I mean if you think about it, by the sheer dumb luck of when and where I was born I get to travel to a country as beautiful as Vietnam where there's so much to experience and enjoy and it's cheap. It's so cheap to travel there and that really is a privilege so I just can't wait to go travelling again and experience everything from the bigger stuff like the natural wonders and exploring new cultures and making friends to just like the smaller things like having street food or even, I remember when I was editing this and I was doing the Hoi An stuff and I just messaged Danny going oh mate, what I would give to be back at that Irish pub. I'd be sitting there with a nice cold full pint of beer Cheers! And we could do whatever we wanted that night we could go get some food, we could go explore make some new friends, go to some bars whatever we wanted. As you can see looks perfect. And so the silver lining for this whole lockdown thing we're going through is that when we can travel again we're just going to save you every moment that bit more and have a new found appreciation for what a privilege travelling really is. Of course there's some like sometimes in our life not very nice, bad luck and all that but just come to the museum and we see that we're super lucky people super lucky, we don't need to live under the tunnel even one day. The fresh air that's enough for our life sometimes wifi also good