“Vietnam. It grabs you and doesn’t let you go. Once you love it, you love it forever.”
Anthony Bourdain
BACKPACKER / NIGHTLIFE IN HANOI
(I WROTE THIS POST DURING MY TIME IN VIETNAM)
I hear my alarm clock go off… 6am. You know what that means. – time to hit the snooze bar! Yeah, that only lasts about, what, 10 minutes? So it goes off again! I hit the snooze again. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep for another 2 to 24 hours.
But I have to wake up. As soon as I do though, I immediately feel my head pounding and my mouth is dry as the Burning Man desert. I look around my room and see empty food containers and clothes every where. My best friend Shaun is passed out next to me. I look at my phone and see 10 missed calls from the driver who decided to come 30 mins early to pick us up to go on our luxury cruise to Halong Bay with Paradise Cruises.
I wake Shaun up and we scramble like fighter pilots. I throw random things in my suitcase, vaguely hoping they’ll actually come in handy on a cruise. I’m barely able to process words thanks to an otherworldly hangover from a night of debauchery. And lots of eating, apparently. But for now, we need to get to Halong Bay where we’ll cruise the seas for two days.
But this blog’s not about the cruise. It’s about the hangover and the acquisition of the hangover.
During my trip to Asia, I’ve been laying pretty low from a party perspective because I wanted to take a break from partying. Okay, not really, but I didn’t want to look like the “Ugly American Lush who comes 12,000 miles to take advantage of cheap alcoholic drinks.” But the booze out here is really cheap! And I’m on vacation, so don’t judge! And I’m with my best friend. All this adds up to one night of insanity. Or two. And Hanoi has a reputation as a popular place for backpackers who like to party (or those who pretend to be backpackers like me).
It all begins with an all you can eat sushi buffet, which kinda sounded yuck since I’m a bit of a sushi snob (Nobu or nothing). But “sushi” means “sake” – even at a sushi buffet. And nothing is better than hot sake.
Shaun and I meet up with a big group from Remote Year. We start ordering sake and one thing leads to another. We end up at a private room at a Karaoke club that is all tricked out. We order a bottle of vodka and pound some beers. I rarely drink beer. And I even rarelier mix it with vodka. That’s the kind of night it’s turning into. The kind of night where I say things like “rarelier.”
We are singing, dancing to all of my favorite 90’s songs and then we decide to head to Old Quarter. Ironically we end up at a bar called Hangover, and the place is completely empty. I hear a balloon tank go off and see a lonely stripper pole in the back. Shaun and I b-line to the bar and grab ourselves a vodka soda.
The music was good house music.. but no one is there so we start to leave. One of the workers says, “Don’t leave now. Just wait until after 11pm. That’s when everyone shows up.” “Who’s everyone?” I ask. He laughs and says, “All the drunken backpackers.”
He was right. At about 11:15pm, a group of about 40 people come bulldozing in, most already completely shit faced wearing flip flops and t-shirts.
My friend Shaun and I grab a giant balloon and do what the natives do – inhale… whaaapp whaaap whaaaap. Apparently, this is a big thing in Hanoi. The balloon tank is quickly a popular target for the horde of backpackers.
One guy takes his hit, then instantly falls on the floor. As people rush to help him, he quickly pops back up and goes to hit on some uninterested girls.
Backpackers are getting lit, and the music is bumping. House and Hip Hop. Two of my favorites.
The place felt like a college party with people going completely insane. One girl was sitting on a table thrusting the air – while quite possibly being blacked out. The guys loved it.
Shaun and I continue to do one balloon hits while dancing our asses off, making friends with anyone who dances next to us.
I see one girl inhale a balloon for one minute straight. I yell at her to stop. She looks at me, piercing through my soul, and then face plants on the ground. One of the natives helps her up, looks at me with no emotion and says. “Happens all the time.”
As the club lights turn on, everyone exits the club, yelling ready to keep partying. Shaun and I walk down the street looking for food. I see a restaurant that looks like a storage unit with one of those huge doors that rolls up. It’s half way down. All I can see are feet and legs moving. I duck down and see that there is a full illegal bar going on. We duck under and enter – and see a lot of the same people from the Hangover! One of the security guys recognizes me, summons me to the poor, and without speaking a lick of English, pours me a whiskey shot. The international language of cheap alcohol.
At this point, I’m way too hungry to keep partying and our Paradise Cruises driver is arriving in four hours. We end up going to a café called Xofa. It was packed with people sleeping so we get it to go. At least, I think we do because we ended up with a lot of Xofa containers in our room the next morning. Which reminds me – I gotta go catch a cruise!
If you read the Nightlife section of this blog post from The Partying Traveler you can see what the clubs look like on the outside in the Old Quarter and read more about the crazy shenanigans that go on in Hanoi.
