How to life an unfulfilling life

Day 85 - Hanoi

The bus back to Hanoi deposits me at 3AM and I stagger, dead-eyed, into bed. When was the last time I got eight hours sleep? Not for a while. But I've had four days of indisputable joy. Looking upon monuments to the meaning of life and swaying on tightropes where there was only forward, no turning back. To ride for hours along sheer drops and over unmade roads was surely beyond me. Until it wasn't, until I did. One of the best things I have ever done.

It seems like a worthy trade even though my brain in its deprivation pulls low speed turns like an over-cautious Thai driver (but only on turns mind). One of the problems with dorms...one of the several problems with dorms is that sleeping in requires the hibernation ability of a bear or an industrial quantity of alcohol. Lights flick on, ladders creak, people chat and zips move endlessly back and forth, I wake not entirely refreshed. Back in the city I feel that welcome anonymity after four days of enjoyable but relentless socialising. But the car horns are jarring and the heat is oppressive and in this stressed state of mind I decide to go and buy a laptop to replace the one so cruelly deprived of me three months earlier by unlucky idiocy. I find a shop on what appears to be Hanoi's equivalent of Tottenham Court Road and they have the one that I want. What follows is a convoluted process that involves me taking a piece of paper from one room to another room and swapping it for a different piece of paper that is then taken to the next room. After traversing 17 rooms (3) I make it to the payment room. On tenterhooks as they swipe my card I am relieved when it's not instantly blocked. Withdrawing 29,836,154 dong from an ATM might have been challenging. No-one should hold that many dongs in their hand. Flushed with success and lightened of money I return to my favourite bia hoi spot. In a low plastic chair I let the horns and bustle coalesce into a white noise that begins to sooth. The awesome stimulation of Ha Giang and this simple street corner bar both rank amongst my favourite experiences so far.

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The Duke

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