A weird thing about travelling... time passes both incredibly fast and slow. Waiting for a 12 hour bus ride to end? Sloooow as molasses. But looking back on three weeks of Vietnam's gorgeous scenery, amazing food, and overly-persistent taxi drivers, it all passed in a blink.
For my last day, after rolling into Hanoi on another overnight train, shared with three Gibraltarians of all people (bonus points to anyone who already knew what to call folks from that wee rock), I had a morning of running around trying to tie up loose ends, including the near-obligatory last minute shopping spree, that ended really well.
Just poking around some of the typical tourist shops, selling literally the same selection of tacky items, I ducked down a small hallway and was completely surprised to find a unique artist boutique selling amazing lacquerware. With an old Vietnamese couple behind the counter, it was full of one of a kind masks, plates and vases. After many smiles and mutual pointing, we were lucky in their daughter came back, and with near-perfect English, quickly explained the story. Each of the pieces are created by a local artist in a very limited run. Want to reorder? Sorry – the artist doesn't keep track of the designs he made – so he just keep recreating new stuff from scratch.
With a now much heavier backpack, it was time to head to the airport... I caught a shuttle to the airport, and a last bowl of pho before jumping on the extremely comfortable flight to Singapore and a connecting one on a brand new massive A380 to Sydney. That's a big plane. Huge in fact, with two levels and about 500 people, with all the amenities including personal video screens on each seat, that allowed me to indulge with a nostalgic viewing of Grease... just to pass on the song that's been in my head ever since - “Summer lovin', had me a blast...”
No comments:
Post a Comment