Loving the crew. They Loving the crewwwwww

"@d_hodge- I wish you the best of luck continuing to meet more hostel dudes" 09/17/13

Hope we're making you proud big guy, Cause we got more hostel dude stories!

After a rough, down to the wire cross of the Vietnamese boarder (our visas were for the next day and we had to wait it out by ourselves at the boarder train station at 11:30pm hoping our train didn't leave without us) we got scammed by a cab and arrived at the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel at 5am. Since we got taken to the wrong hostel (we were supposed to be at the nicer,newer and more social hostel across town) we were able to get our own private room and bathroom (with an undeserved discount) after waiting 2 hrs in the lobby to check in. Chilling in the lobby taking advantage of the Wi-Fi, a group of 5 blonde German smokeshows with tats and piercings were waiting for their Ha Long Bay trip that day. The only reason we were at this hostel was we heard it was THE place to party in the city and they offered a crazy 2 night 3 day island and boat party in beautiful Ha Long Bay. We almost booked on the spot. Confident that each day would have the same amount of partiers and hot chicks, we held off until the next day. 

When we booked the trip the hostel trip guides totally sold us on amount of girls and size of trip. "Trust us," they said. There will be chicks skinny dipping on the regs and partying till all hours of the night. They even had to recruit more guys for the day of our trip because the ratio was so one sided. They said. We were sold on the spot. There were even 2 American girls Skyler and Kellie. Expect about 30-40. They said. We were in. 

The first night of the hostel we followed a group of British girls on the hostel pub crawl and met up at the main hostel. After a few drinks at the main hostel bar, the crew moved to down the block to a rave in the upstairs of a little funky Hanoi bar. We downed a few pitchers of Red Bull vodkas in the smoke machine filled attic, with green strobe lights and Whip-It girls. When the bar closed at 11:30 (Hanoi cops are freaking strict) this drunk party guy American bro from nawlins, Jake, who bought the first round of pitchers, was saying he new a hidden speakeasy nearby that we could all go to. "Trust me," he said. Navigating the dark Hanoi streets for about 15 minutes, drunk as hell, this dude finds a winding back alley where a vietnamese woman was ushering us in and shushing us along the way.  We went down three different pitch black alleys, down one stairwell, then another spiral staircase, and into a Prohibition-style bar where we spent the next couple hours. It was a pretty dope first night in the city. 

We had to wake up early at 7:30 the next morning, hungover as hell to meet up with the "30+" people for the booze cruise trip. Our British guide for the trip Mike, also hungover, put us in a cab to meet the rest of our group at the other hostel before our 4hr trip to the bay. When we got to the hostel to meet the group, we found that it was only a 14 person crew (a group of 4 Brit dudes, 4 Irish dudes, 2 Irish girls, a Bulgarian woman, 1 more Brit guy and the American girls were actually a really nice couple from Utah since Skyler was a guy). Not what we were expecting one bit.  Probably made a huge mistake not jumping on the trip with the german smokes. But it was what it was and we had to make the best of it. Over the course of our travels we came across the saying, 'When the broing get tough, the tough get broing'. This Ha Long Bay trip was as broey (?) as it gets and it was a freaking blast. 

We got to the junk-boat after the bus ride, put our stuff in our private rooms, then it was shotguns on arrival the second we got on the main deck. Great start. There weren't many rules on the trip but in order to get things going, there were 3 things you had to follow: 1. Every drink has to be drunk with your left hand, if you drink with your right and someone catches you, they yell 'buffalo' and no matter what, you have to chug whatever drink you had. 2. You couldn't say the word Ten or else you have to do 10 push-ups on the spot 3. You couldn't say Mine, or else 10 more push-ups. I could barely move my arms after the hundreds of push-ups done in the 3 days. 

We day-drank all day on the top of the deck, followed by drinking in kayaks on the way to a dope lagoon and crazy cave, jumped off the boat a few times, followed by all the Euro bros getting naked way too early in the day and continued to jump the 20 ft jump. 

The Four English dudes who were later perfectly summed up as, in first appearance, looking like four well groomed gay German guys, we're absolutely rediculous, but were awesome dudes. Ollie, Joe, Tom and Rob had nothing but inside jokes and crazy british sayings, were advocates of peacocking and male grooming, knew every lyric to Miley Cyrus and DJ Paulie D song and became our real tight friends along the couple days. 

That night we played a ludicrous game of Kings that had 12 decks of cards and stretched 4 tables long, involving clothes swapping, being a troll by crawling under the table, a dude having to chug a beer before a piece of toilet paper that was hanging from his ass, that was lit on fire,  reached his bare tush... and hella makeouts. By the end of it all I ended up in Sarah the irish girl's dress looking like snooki and having a Ho Chi Minh mustache drawn on my face, and Roland had chugged two pithers of a gross death cup and had licked Ollie's asscheek. Insane. 

We got an intense flip cup rivalry going with the whole boat and wagered a naked lap on the final match. Of course my team lost and after a crazy thunderstorm, we had to make the trip around the boat. After making it up the stairs behind Kellie, I didn't take any caution to the freshly slick deck. Like a drunk idiot, I busted my ass, slipping head over heels, naked, nothing but balls and thighs flying through the air, almost taking out Kellie in the process. I finished the lap like a champ though. Who knew a night with so little people would turn out as fun as it did?

In the morning, after a few more shotguns on the boat, we arrived at castaway island (basically a Robinson Crusoe type island with bamboo huts, a party bar, speedboat, and plenty of booze). We tubed though the islands all day, swam to the pontoon in the middle of the bay, rock climbed and just chilled all day. Mike even welcomed us with the great news that the inclement weather had forced the boat after us to head to the island a night early, bringing 45 new people to the island to party with. The night was just a blur of nonstop partying, Roland hooking up with the mid-30's Bulgarian, and ended with a giant skinny-dipping crew to the bay to find the "fluorescent algae". The trip was basically everything we wanted it to be  since we had such a tight-knit group of people. It worked out for the best as we already had our group before the next boat of 45 came. Pretty much the only way to sum up our time there is Drake's shitty song off his new album 'loving the crewwwww' (which was repeated time and time again) in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. We left Ha Long Bay bruised, battered, hungover, sore, with cuts and scrapes all over our bodies, but it was easily the best thing we did in 'Nam. 

After the trip we moved in with the Brit lads, who had an extra two beds in their room. Somehow found the energy to party at the hostel bar, headed to a bar down the street on the 'pub crawl' where we proceeded to get bottle service for only 8$ a guy. The bar had great 90s techno mixes, more whip-it girls, but again closed at 11. We followed the hostel crawl leaders again, but this only ended in 50 of us standing in a crowd on the hot Hanoi streets for 10 minutes, surrounded by little Vietnamese men on motorbikes, before one of them got on a motorbike and told us all to get on. They apparently knew of another bar across town. "Trust us", he said. So the lads got on their bikes, Roland and I got on ours, and we were off on a 20 minute ride to this mystery next club hidden in a backstreet on the other end of town. The club was a communist theme rave that was straight out of Waynes World (if anyone actially remembers the communitst theme bar in that movie (I have more obscure movie references in my back pocket if yall were wondering)) playing heavy dub-step. We finished the night with street noodles and a trip back through the cooling and empty Hanoi streets with the girls (sadly probably the most we saw of the city). A relaxed hangover day, basically eating all the foods we hadn't tried yet, followed. 

To finish off the trip, we were picked up at the hostel at 6pm for our sleeper bus to Laos, not in the small bus we were expecting, but just one dude on a small motorboke. I put my 50 lb bag in his lap, my hands full with my ruksak and a couple jugs of water and we were off zooming through the Hanoi streets during rushhour, my big ass on the back of his bike, blasting through red lights and driving literally on the wrong side of the road, weaving against the current of Vietnamese traffic. I had no idea where he was taking me.  No questions asked. "Trust me," he said. "I am the ticket." In two trips he dropped Roland and I on the side of the road in a random location to wait for our bus to Laos... we thought. 20 min later he was packing us like sardines with our bags in a tiny cab along with 8 other westerners. An unexpected, unairconditioned, miserable, 30 minute taxi ride later, there he was  again on the side of a dusty road next to a bus station. We blindly followed him again, where we were packed into our sleeper bus in the white people cheap seats in the way way back, green blue and red fluorescent lights glaring and vietnamese techno music thumping with a music video of naked chicks dancing at Sensation White playing on a loop on the 2 tvs. We were wholly expecting to have them fill the free seat in between us with cages of chickens along the 20-30 hour (we literally have no clue how long this will actually take) route to Vientiane. Thank God for 20 cent vietnamese Valium and Bill Simmons' podcasts.  

This whole final experience was a perfect metaphor for our time in Vietnam. We were blind sheep in unknown territory. We just closed our eyes for the week amongst all of the bright, loud and sweaty chaos of Vietnam, put our trust in others and just went along for the ride. . What a fucking wild ride it was. 

My two cents on: Hanoi- This is the loudest, most hectic city I have ever been in. The motorbikes rule the road and there's nothing you as a pedestrian can do about it. The street food was unreal (Vietnamese food is my favorite in the world) and everything was really accessible due to the size of the city. It was unbelievably cheap too, and in that sense is a backpackers dream. 

 

Favorite thing we did: Staying at the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel and having the chance to do the insane Ha Long Bay cruise

Thing I wish we did: I can't wait to explore Vietnam more, but the route we took prohibited seeing the south of the country. Everyone says Vietnam right now is what Thailand was 20 years ago, so I guess I need to explore the rest of the country in the next few years. No regrets with Hanoi though, we killed it in that city. 

Favorite thing we ate: Either a Bun Cha (charcoal grilled pork and pork patties, with noodles, spring rolls, Nuoc cham and fresh herbs) feast the first day or the Banh Cuon (rolled noodles with woodear mushrooms and pork with fried shallots)