Am I a Jerk if I Don’t Like Hanoi?

So I committed the ultimate travel sin. I admitted that I didn’t like a place. You’re not really supposed to do that. Especially not when it’s a place that everyone else seems to like. At the worst, you say something diplomatic like:

“Oh, it was an experience. I’m glad I did it.”

Even if it was a crappy experience. Even if you’re not glad at all. If you aren’t allowed to say it, then you certainly aren’t allowed to write it.

A lot of travel writing is of the flowery variety, a botanical garden of prose where everything turns up smelling of roses. But sometimes reading through rose-tinted glasses can leave you confused when you show up somewhere and it isn’t at all what you’d imagined.

It doesn’t match the description and you feel like that’s somehow your fault. I am a bad person for not seeing what it is that everyone else sees? Am I ungrateful? Am I a jerk?

Or is the writer in the wrong for false advertising? For injecting the fruit with excess water to make it seem far plumper, juicier, and more delicious than it really is.

So, I’m not going to lie, I didn’t love Hanoi. I’d read a lot about it as this wonderful, vibrant, magical place and I just didn’t see it. To me, it was just another grey, grotty, South East Asian city, where I spent 70% of my time trying to avoid getting run over.

I met up with a friend to catch up over black glutinous rice with yogurt (OK, to be fair, Vietnamese food is a winner) and she was shocked when I told her this. She couldn’t stop telling me how wonderful Hanoi was, she clearly saw something that I didn’t see.

We then hit it off with two girls over drinks at beer corner. It was fun, chatting and laughing at the stories of all our near-death experiences. Questioning why all the middle-aged men here like to roll up their t-shirts into crop tops with their beer bellies hanging out whilst rubbing them as if pregnant. Debating who is just in a jazzy, matching two-piece and who is just out in their pyjamas. The girl serving us is wearing a fuzzy two-piece that is baby pink with teddy bears on it. Call me crazy, I’m calling pyjamas on that one!

We circled back to my opinion of Hanoi, one agreed with me and the other didn’t. We got into a debate. It was like the four of us were talking about two completely different cities. It made me think that if you were thinking of coming here, you might change your mind just depending on which one of us you spoke to at the hostel bar.

As I think back on my travels, I’ve overheard people talking about somewhere as if it was the best place in the world, then they say the name of it and I think “God really?! That place is the worst!” And of course vice versa, hearing people trash talking somewhere that I absolutely loved.

This was a good reminder to always take other people’s opinions with a pinch of salt, because, just stating the obvious here, everyone has a different opinion. If you’d had spoken to me you might have skipped Hanoi and it might have been a great shame because you might have liked it, even if I didn’t.

I guess you just have to check these things out for yourself because we won’t all come to the same conclusion. And I need to remind myself that that’s OK. It’s allowed. I’m not a jerk just because I disagree with Lonely Planet.

We don’t all need to like the same things and the same places. Life would be pretty damn boring if we did.

Thank you for reading! Hearts and tips are always welcome and your support is very much appreciated.

This story was originally published on Medium

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