Everyone seems to be out, from a tiny wizened old lady I saw who must have been at least 85 years old I think if not older to loads of little children, too.

This paints a picture of my first night in Hanoi. Pictures can’t convey how busy this place is though. Traffic comes flying round corners at you every which way, honking wildly. Hundreds of motorbikes, with 2, 3 or even 4 people crammed onto them weave around pedestrians and cars like shuttles on a loom. And there are loads of cars too, all merrily honking away. The traffic lights must be purely for decoration, I think. No one pays attention to them.

At one point, I was stuck trying to cross a really not very wide road along with a young British couple. All three of us were being typically apologetic and cautious, until we all simultaneously realised it was getting us nowhere, so we just stepped out into the traffic hoping it would stop for us. This seems to be the way it’s done here. The young lady grinned and giggled at me as we made it across, and I saluted them saying, “Teamwork!” Travelling is full of these momentary little challenges. Every time I manage to step up to one, it feels like a massive achievement! It’s lovely to experience moments of camaraderie with fellow travellers, too.

The pavements everywhere are ramshackle and broken, or made up of tiles slippery with rain. Everywhere, there are people sitting on tiny children’s plastic chairs outside cafés, homes and market stalls, eating dinner with chopsticks. Between all those people and the motorbikes stacked along the pavement, there’s really nowhere to walk. Just progressing through the streets seems to involve taking your life in your own hands!

Once I reached the night market it was a relief as they’d cordoned off some of the road, to stop the traffic. But even then sometimes an enterprising motorcyclist would appear from a side street and come hurtling through! The market was incredibly long and still going strong at 10pm in spite of the rain. A lot of the shops were still open too. I would’ve taken photos of the market but I thought I’d probably either get run over or slip or trip up or something!

At one point I noticed this temple peeking out opposite a load of market stalls:

I bought myself a baked sweet potato piping hot from one of the stools. Filling comfort food in this strange place that’s quite unlike any place I’ve ever been before.

Then I wandered back to the hotel via a different route that was less frantic and had wider pavements, and to my delight, stumbled across this series of street art on the arches under what I think must be a city centre railway or tram line:

One last traveller’s triumph I had this evening was getting from the airport to the hotel. The hotel had sent me an email offering to book me a transfer for $18USD. I managed to walk onto an express city centre shuttle bus and pay the equivalent of $1.50 instead. Well, not quite that little as I had to change some money at the airport as none of the cash points were working, so they gave me a less good exchange rate. So let’s call it $1.80. To give you an idea, that was 35000 Vietnamese Dong for a 45 minute journey.

Baggage ach! So much baggage! 😕

My flight was delayed by an hour. I must have decided to make my way to the boarding gate just as they marked it open. I’m not sure how this happened but I was the first one on the plane for the first time in my life!

I was in a kind of dazed stupor I’m going to call the “Changi airport chill out factor” due to the gentle jazz, smooth, quiet efficiency, prevalent greenery, lovely air conditioning and comfortable furnishings of Singapore’s extraordinary airport. My inexperience with domestic flights shows. I marvel at the ease and simplicity of it all. (Although Singapore is a different country from Vietnam, this 3 hour flight definitely has the laid back feel of a domestic one).

Despite Shiv’s excellent help with reducing my baggage contents, it was still over 2kg more than it should’ve been (9kg instead of 7kg), so I asked the check in desk lady “What can I do?” Another moment of vulnerability faced, owned and acted upon. (It’s all good practice for me!) The cost of putting my bag in the hold was only £20. I wished I’d just booked it in in the first place.

I have one more flight on this part of my trip but my attempts to navigate the booking systems of Air Asia to change my baggage allowance have been futile. I’ll just hope I can pay at the airport again as I did this time.

This is one of the things I’ll not miss about flying. Though once my backpack was checked in I did feel remarkably free and easy with just my shoulder bag. This was how I’d imagined it would be!

Baggage. We carry so much of it these days. One is not immune from accumulating ridiculous amounts of material stuff just because one is a vicar. Being conscious of the huge gaping vortex of consumerism waiting to suck us all in and spit us out is a good first step to living more simply, but it’s not enough. I think the only thing to do is to really try to practise not accruing stuff. I have to say, although I still brought too much stuff, it has been quite releasing to live with fewer clothes and possessions around me.

I like this cartoon by Michael Leunig that we have on our loo wall at home:

I notice this flight is far from full. They’ve probably got room for 50 bags the size of mine in the lockers and another 50 in the seats. (I’m wondering whether there’s enough people on board to stop us from flying off into the ether! Maybe other people voted with their feet when the flight was delayed by an hour? Or maybe this is normal for VietJet? Of which, worryingly, Shiv and Jamie had never heard. I think I might be travelling on the Vietnamese equivalent of Aeroflot!) But anyway, that’s beside the point. Just because you can fit so much stuff into your bag doesn’t mean you need to cram it in to the hilt. And yet we do, don’t we? Hmmm.