Around The World In 80 Waves

As soon as I returned to Ha Noi I had to get changed before heading straight out to join the stag night drinks one of my surfing buddies Tom. Before I go any further I will state that the stag in this picture is not Tom, and in fact looks nothing like him, but I wanted to give you some flavour of the sort of mischief which the groom’s friends can get up to.

Tom’s brother and several of his friends from back home on the Surf Highway in New Zealand have flown in for the festivities and it isn’t long before the beer is flowing and the tone of the chat between the Kiwis and myself is heading towards the gutter.

I didn’t take any pictures of the night’s events and even if I had I wouldn’t display them here in line with the code expected from a stag do. However I can at least recount one of the nights event involving myself which at least will not incriminate anybody else.

At one stage I had perhaps taken the concept of trying to pick up women too far and a bit like the farmer you see here carrying two new born lambs, I had scooped up a diminutive local girl under each of my arms. I then proceeded to dance around the bar with them dangling down. Safe to say they were not impressed, even if I and the rest of the chaps found it very funny.

It was not long afterwards that we decided to wind up the proceedings. Most of the others opted for a taxi back but I decided I would go on a magical mystery tour to see if I could find my hotel on foot. As soon as their cab disappeared I wondered if this might be a mistake, but armed for the trek with pockets full of the beer bottles I had sensibly stocked myself with in our last venue I staggered on with the bottles clanking together.

Hanoi is normally an endless racket of moped horns, music and all kind of madness in every direction so it was quite creepy to be wondering around the place so deserted at 4am. I thought if ever there was somewhere I would get myself into more mischief than I bargained for then this was it, but managed to find my way back unscathed.

Then having managed to find my way home I was somewhat disappointed to discover the door to my hotel was chained shut when I got there, and that a message had been placed on the window saying that I should have been back before 3am.

After failing to get a response with the doorbell I could have taken the option to sleep on the doorstep until somebody woke up. However I decided correctly that kicking the door very hard and making as much noise as humanly possible might result in a more comfortable time in the land of nod. The person who let me in didn’t look too impressed but there haven’t been any repercussions since then, so I think I am allowed to continue my stay here.