SPONTANIOUS STREET PARTY // ABOUT GOODBYES

I have a plane ticket to Europe in eight days and no clue wheather or not I should use it.

A lot has happened with me the last couple of days. I've gone through so many emotions I've stopped hold on tightly in all the turns and just started let life throw me in whatever direction it pleases.

...Okay so that's not really true. I tried like a mad man to take the wheel again but it is hard when there are so much dragging me into different paths.

I've said goodbye to two of the nicest guys I've ever met. I didn't realize before then the road gives and the road takes. I thought I'd found some kind of paradise without any consekvenses.
Oh how young I was only days ago.
I'm currently in a state of trying to accept that life is like this at times. You win some and yes, you also lose some.
This text is so overflowing with clicheés now I think I filled the quota for a lifetime.

WHEN LIFE IS COTTON CANDY COLORED

We sing too loud from the public showers, too loud and completely out of tone.
We run around in our underwear, make childish sexual jokes and throw chips at each other.
We are ten and have our own treetop house, we are fourteen and sleeping in bunkbeds in the summercamp. We are Swedish camp, devided two and two in the daytime, we make time fly like kites in the sky.

WHY K-POP WASN'T ENOUGH

Life is food. Food is life.
Seriously, I kind of knew this prior to Vietnam, or I thought I did.

Then, silantro entered. Coriander. Lemon grass. Banh Mi. Pho Bo. Fresh spring rolls. Che. Anything dipped in fish sause.

Ca Phe Den. Ca Phe Saigon. Ca Phe Trung. Ca Phe Sua.

These magic words are 'Open Sesame' to a world of never-seen-before flavour experiences.

But unfortunately, talking more about food would require some kind of pictures to keep you from finding a better blog to read, and I have just been way to eager to eat the lovelies in front of me to give in to the Instagram generation-way of thinking.

So instead this post will be about... Well, you'll just have to scroll on to find out.

SLEEPLESS IN HUE

They hate us. We can feel it as they Tetris  around the backpacks to make room for our huge suitcases. We fidget in false embarrassment, because after all we are Swedish and we are raised never to make a fuzz, but really, no annoyed faces could ever make us go back to backpacks.  We've both tried the backbound traveling already and do not miss the odeur that bag could produce after a few weeks, nor the impossibility to keep a structure or find that specific piece of clothing. 

Hue has been a sleepy stopover, although I still have a hard time falling asleep sometimes. 

After rushing Hanoi, we've slowed down to recaps and find some kind of second wind. 

THE STORY ABOUT THE VISA, THE ANGRY MAN AND THE SECRET PLACE

Oh, the aliveness of Ha Noi. It strucks me with surprise every time, every day. There are scooters honking and cars driving and women in hats selling fruit and dogs sleeping on the dusty pavements. And yet, with all this aliveness, I find my inner calm here.
"It's weird." I told Claudia yesterday as she licked on her forth ice cream for the day, "that I've only been here once and yet, somehow I feel at home. Ha Noi is home in a strange way I can't explain."

We talked about nyckelböcker the other day, a Swedish word meaning books that is really written about a real person but the names has been changed, but the direct translation is "keybook". A famous podcaster had got it all wrong and thought it meant books that really captures the essence of ones soul, and now, he described in one episode, he felt like he missed the word that he once used as "keybook", as he had applied "key-" to many other things that he thought described him perfectly.

Ha Noi might be the keycity for me.
It's so vivid, so alive, it's talkative and cheerful but yet, there is this island-vibe slowing down our steps and makes us stop and smell the flowers (slash, the smell of loveliness from the endless amazing food stalls).

Yes, the pace is slow but the options eternal. The other night we were out partying and bumped in to... well, probably everyone who was out partying in the whole city, but mostly we hung out with these two guys from London, one of which had already stayed in Ha Noi for 10 days and had no plans on leaving. I totally related. Claudia keeps asking when I want to leave the city, of course, but I have no answer.

DAY TRIP TO NINH BINH PROVINCE

WHAT:
A daytrip to Ninh Binh Province, where we got to see the ancient capital Hoa Lu, and Tam Coc area, AKA "Halong Bay on land".

TEMPLE OF LITERATURE

Being embarassingly uninterested in history but about the opposite amount interested in culture, we  decided to take a stroll down Hàng Gai street from our usually morning walk around Hoan Kiem to se Hanoi's Temple of Literature.

Often more estetically oriented when it comes to picking sights to see, we weren't disapointed with this one. This was once Vietnam's first national university, built in 1070. Nowadays, it is still used to celebrate doctorates as a place for graduates to go and take their pictures for the big day, something we had the fortune to witness.

PICTURES: Hồ Hoàn Kiếm

Today's visit to Hoan Kiem Lake and the Ngoc Son Temple.

Once in a while some of us doesn't have the energy to write, and when that someone is in possession of a lot of pictures from said activity, one doesn't really have to. 

TALES OF ASIA: Handeling the chaos that is Ha Noi

ON THE 6TH OF APRIL, WE ARRIVED IN VIETNAM.

It was way too soon to say goodbye to Kuala Lumpur, but when you are stupid and listen to people telling you not to spend a week there, you get what you deserve, I guess.


At first glance (on Wikitravel), Hanoi was frightening. The storys there about taxidrivers taking you to the wrong place and threatening to beat you up were endless, and standing outside the airport with little to no knowledge about the country, we started to wonder what the frick we had gotten ourselves in to.