Seems Like We've Just Begun When Suddenly We're Through

I've never been very good with saying "goodbye", it's always been something which I have found particularly painful.

I'd consider myself to be quite an emotional person (especially for a boy) and although I've had to do it plenty of times, saying goodbye doesn't ever seem to get any easier. 

On this trip I've had to say 'Selamat Jalan' on several occasions as well as 'Lā k̀xn', 'Lea' and 'Palaam Na' and today it was time to not only bid Vietnam 'Tam Biet' but also a traditional 'Ta-ra' to my my mum whose stay was also coming to an end tonight.
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Hanoi had treated my mum and I well since arriving on Saturday, but this morning we were up early to eat our last breakfast in the Old Quarter of the Vietnamese capital as our return flight to Ho Chi Minh City was set for around lunchtime.

It was looking pretty grim as we sat in the breakfast area this morning, and once we'd gone back to our room and finished off our packing we came down to the reception to order a taxi to discover that it had actually begun tipping it down with rain - looks like we picked the right day to leave.
As mentioned yesterday we experienced some rain whilst in Hanoi, but nothing like the type that was pelting it down from the skies as we headed back to Noi Bai at about 10am.

The journey back to the airport was much quicker (and cheaper) than it had been when we arrived in Hanoi, although the airport itself was much busier. The departure lounge of the domestic terminal had a few shops and restaurants but they were all very cookie cutter and generic, my mum took a brief look to see if she could get a cup of tea from somewhere but was out of luck.

Our flight boarded at about 11.30am - it makes me laugh here how literally the second the clock ticks onto the time it says we'll be boarding on our ticket the natives start queuing up like what they have read is gospel and is completely stuck to by the airlines!
We had to get a short bus ride to our plane, but they only sent one bus for all the passengers so a third of the people were stuck standing and waiting whilst the impatient people tried to squeeze themselves into impossibly small spaces - I think often in airports that people forget that the term 'allocated seat' means that they don't have to worry whether or not they're going to get somewhere to sit down. In fairness, I have seen the way these people cram themselves into buses and trains so it's no wonder they're desperate to make sure that they're one of the first people onto the plane.

Predictably I spent most of the flight checking to make sure the insides of my eyelids were OK, although I did wake up a couple of times.
It looked for a while as though the terrible weather from Hanoi had followed us south as we came through some thick clouds. The plane rocked from side-to-side and when we landed, the plane hit the ground with a bit of a bump so I was quite glad to be able to get two feet back on the ground once we disembarked.

Our bags were unloaded pretty quickly so we headed outside to catch the bus back into the city. We were considering walking back to the international terminal which is where I got the bus from when I arrived, and also where we rode it to on Saturday so thought it might be a good idea to go there to be safe, but after about five minutes it showed up and we took the now familiar journey back to the bus station opposite the market.

For a bit of variety I decided to book a different hotel for my final night in Vietnam, although I quite enjoyed the one we'd stay in originally so it was a bit of a gamble. This new hotel is actually very close to the market and only about five minutes to where I was staying before so it doesn't make a real amount of difference. What was good was that now we actually had a map of the city and therefore my mum didn't have to suffer through the igmany of a motorbike ride to take us to the correct destination.

We eventually found it down a main street where there are several shops and hotels and then decided to set out and get some food as neither of us had eaten any breakfast.
It felt extremely strange to be familiar with the streets we were walking on so soon after arriving. I'm used to not having a clue where I'm going after arriving at a hotel, but Ho Chi Minh felt like a fairly comfortable place, even though we had to get used to the crazy amount of motorbikes on the road again.

Heading back to the Bitexco Tower where we knew there was somewhere we could grab a quick bite to eat. On the way there I'd suggested walking through the market one last time as I was still looking to by a traditional conical hat and my mum was still after a bag. Picking up both for a cheap price from two of the many stalls in the market we were about ready to sit down having fought out way through people for half an hour. Since the made our bumpy landing in Ho Chi Minh City the sun had been shining and it couldn't have been more opposite to how weather conditions had been when we left Hanoi this morning.

Whilst there I also managed to snap this great picture of the market:

We sat for a while before taking a look at the map and deciding to squeeze one more piece of exploration in before we'd have to start thinking about dinner and heading back to the hotel.
I'd grabbed a map from the hotel which was the same as the one we'd been using on our original stay here, and we'd picked down a couple of streets we'd not been down before, one which led to a pagoda which I'd seen mentioned on Trip Advisor as quite a good but simple thing to see in the city.
We decided to make that our final act of the trip to Vietnam and began wondering off in that direction to see if the pagoda was actually open, and see if it was where it said it was on the map.

We walked past the Tao Dam Park which I'd first visited on Wednesday and then continued past the street where our hotel used to be. Not that it isn't always, but the traffic was particularly heavy running across the main road and we had to dodge out of the way a couple of times as mopeds mounted the curb in order to cut the corner or just simply get ahead of the vehicles in front of them:

Turning right and then left we walked down a fairly quiet street which had a couple of restaurants on it before we eventually reached the pagoda which was behind a locked gate but appeared to still be in working order.
It was lit up very brightly with lights around the outside and looked exceptionally pretty (as most things do here in the dark):

Satisfied that we'd completed that little mission we decided to head off and get some dinner despite only having eaten lunch not that long ago - it's amazing how the heat takes it out of you. Returning to the Diamond Plaza Mall where we'd eaten on the first night we grabbed a meal of chicken and rice before navigating our way past the cathedral and the palace one more time and allowing me to take this picture which reminds me that Vietnam is totally different to how I'd expected it to be:

Coming back to my room, my mum re-packed her bag for the 800th time to make sure that everything was sorted. I gave here some stuff (like the tripod to go with my camera, my rubbish laptop, broken hard drive and bag of mementos) to fit into her suitcase as she kept telling me that she had 15kgs to spare so hopefully she's still under the weight limit as she returns to England.

We managed to flag down a taxi on the road near our hotel (the airport bus stops at 6pm) and said our goodbyes. My mum doesn't fly until 1am tonight, but she didn't want to leave it too late to get there as I think the taxi fee goes up after 10pm.

It was sad to see her go as I really have enjoyed having some company on the trip to Vietnam. I think it is the kind of place that I would have enjoyed generally, but having my mum here definitely improved the experience. It broke up the inner monologue in my head and gave me an opportunity to share some things with someone I'm very close with which is always good. I hope she enjoyed the experience as much as I did and has plenty of memories (and photographs) to take back from what can only be described as an extremely unique Easter holiday.

As for me, I'm sad to be leaving Vietnam behind, but I am ready for the next challenge which lies along the way. I feel like having spent a week here in two cities I've had a really good opportunity to appreciate both, and although I haven't had chance to visit any of the places on the eastern coast of Vietnam which are supposed to be nice I think I have certainly picked up a different impression of the country to what I thought before I got here.
Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City both have unique personalities and have been two of the most immersive places I have been so far. To say it isn't the capital there is so much going on in Ho Chi Minh City it's hard not to put that at the top of any itinerary when travelling here (in my humble opinion anyway).
That's not to take anything away from Hanoi which certainly has plenty of open spaces and some great sight like the two pagodas we saw and also the Ho Chi Mihn Mausoleum.

Essentially my point is, Vietnam is a trip that everyone should make, and I think once you're here I think you too will have difficulty saying goodbye.

Goodbye Song
Bear in the Big Blue House (2000)