Betrayal

It had been in the family 25 years and already travelled the world once. It's been mine for 5 years or so yet I threw it away in a Hanoi gutter. The beaten up, sardine stained, Karrimor rucksack didn't deserve what happened to it.


The end came when Tom decided a replacement was needed for his rucksack, which has a lot less history and causes a lot more pain to carry. A trip to the market uncovered a genuine Deuter bag for which Tom negotiated a price of 300,000 Dong (just under 10 pounds). His only concern was that it wasn't big enough, to which my response was that if that were the case I'd have it. So I'd already betrayed the Karrimor.


As it transpired Tom's bag was excellent and after some deliberation I took a trip down to the market and got one for myself. Emotional as it was to let go of the old rucksack there was nothing else to be done, I had to leave it in the hotel room. The cleaning staff decided the gutter would be a better place. It wasn't there when we returned to the hotel a few hours later, I can only hope it found a good home.


As it turned out the rucksack I originally purchased isn't the one I have now. The first one was a bit damaged and dug into the hips badly, causing me much regret about my decision. I returned to the market after the Sapa trip hoping to swap the bag for a little extra Dong, or if that wasn't acceptable just buying a new one. Due to the wonder of language barriers I was able to negotiate a straight swap for an undamaged one.


Other than that we didn't get up to much in Hanoi, lots of walking around, eating, drinking fruit shakes and adjusting to the Vietnam way of things. Crossing the road isn't as difficult as I'd thought it might be, just walk slowly and the many motorbikes will go round you. It only gets tricky when there are cars.


Before heading south we took a two day trip to Halong Bay. We were a bit underwhelmed by it to be honest. Nice as it looked (although we didn't have great weather) it was overpriced, the food was average and there wasn't much to do. Kayaking was ok but the promised swimming never materialised and neither did we want it to seeing how polluted the waters were.


There are some features on my camera that I've rediscovered in the boredom of cruising round the bay. If you're not a fan of colour manipulated photos look away now. I got a little bit carried away, I'm over it now though you'll see more of it in the Hoi An blog when I get round to writing it (I'm running about two blogs behind reality, hoping to get back on track in Saigon).


Something strange has happened to my appetite. I've started to develop food moods when it's too long between meals and when I finish my food I'm looking around to see what I might be able to pick up from other peoples. Which is exactly the behavour regularly seen from Tom. We must be quite unpleasant to be around at times.

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