Changing Beds

Travelling for eight months last year, I slept in more beds than I had in the twenty-five leading up to that point. So when I decided to visit Vietnam for ten days in early 2024, I knew I needed to visit only two, maybe three, places and therefore only move accommodation once, maybe twice, during my trip.

It was never going to be that simple.

When I arrived at my hostel in Da Lat I wondered where everyone was. The slow, local bus had dropped me off in the centre of town, and after lunch I walked straight out of the centre to where I was staying. A little bit out of the centre. A little more out. A touch further off of the main road. Down a side road. Around a laneway. The hostel was a bit far from everything. It was still walkable, but more than I wanted to walk every time I needed to get somewhere for the next three or four days. Also, besides a family of Russians, there was no one around.

It was unfortunate that I had the realisation that I had booked the wrong place to stay in Da Lat only five minutes after payment for a three night stay. The other issue was that the place was... actually quite nice. The room I had was large with a comfortable bed, much softer than the wooden board-like mattress I had slept on in the previous two nights. So on my first night in Da Lat I went to sleep in a bed I booked for three nights but wasn't sure if I would stay for that long.

Before I had gotten out of bed the next morning I had booked the subsequent two nights at a hostel closer to the centre of town. Dorm beds were all that was available at the new hostel, which was fine. I was getting used to the private room situation in Vietnam but then again I had spent eight months in the previous year almost entirely in dormitories. It was a minimal price to pay in order to obtain some level of socialisation.

After spending the day tiring myself out physically — walking around the lake in the centre of the city, visiting the old train station and eating at the central market —  I went back to the hostel I had spent my first night in. I considered checking out early but, then again, there was nothing wrong with the place and the owner had been so helpful in recommending places to go to on the day I arrived. I also still had paid for the room for two more nights, I might as well keep it. So, in what was probably the snobbiest act in the history of backpacking, I moved to a dorm room whilst still maintaining a private queen room across town just in case staying in shared accommodation became 'a bit too much'. Like that would ever happen.

I quietly left with my bag from the first hostel without the owner noticing and arrived at the second hostel. Within minutes of arriving I was chatting with a backpacker I had met in Ho Chi Minh City and an hour later I was sitting around a big table having dinner on the rooftop of the hostel with a group of around thirty people. I managed to get to sleep at around eleven, a reasonable hour. So on my second night in Da Lat I went to sleep in a dorm bed I expected to sleep in on my second and third nights and not the queen bed I had originally booked for my first, second and third nights.

The vomiting started at about three in the morning. With a room and bed right next to the main bathroom, the sound of an English girl's bad decisions was reverberating through my eardrums. She was comforted by a friend next to her who seemed to hold down her Vodka Red Bulls a lot better. The door to my dorm was also glass which meant that my entire room was lit up. This way I could not only hear but also see the unfolding events in a performance of real-life shadow puppetry.

It took me an hour to get back to sleep. I slept uncomfortably for most of the night as others wandered in and out of the dorm and its opposing bathroom. Across town, a quiet queen room, which had cost double the price of the enduring experience of the vomit theatre, was sitting unoccupied and quiet.

By the third night I decided I didn't need to stay in a dorm if I was paying for another room. I still made use of the hostel's social atmosphere and spent the day with people I met along the way. But, after an evening at the night markets I split from the group and surreptitiously made my way back to the first hostel I had stayed at. So on my third night in Da Lat I went to sleep in the bed I had slept in on my first night, but not my second, and left the bed I had slept the second night in unoccupied.

After three nights in Da Lat I knew I didn't want to leave the city but I knew I needed to sort out my accommodation. So, early in the morning, I checked out of the first hostel and headed back to the second hostel because breakfast was included only at the second hostel and not the first. No one noticed when I ordered breakfast that I hadn't slept there the night before.

On the previous day I, along with someone I met at the second hostel, had taken a cable car ride to Tuyen Lam lake. There was a place to stay right on the lake which I had read about but I thought was too hard to reach by myself. But it turned out to be very easy to get to. The person I was with wanted to stay there for a few nights so I tagged along, just to be polite. When I got there I realised how placid and pretty and serene the lake was. I wanted to stay at the Lakehouse. I could stay there on my fourth and fifth nights, after I'd finished my tenancy at my first two accommodations.

The problem was that the Lakehouse was booked out on my fourth night. So I could either stay an extra night at one of the two places I had already stayed at or move somewhere else for a night before spending my fifth night at the Lakehouse. Given the different problems with the first two places, I decided, in my pursuit to support the diverse accommodation options in southern Vietnam, to move to a third hostel for the night. Later reports from people who stayed at my second hostel showed that this proved to be the right decision. By nine o'clock that night, there was already vomit on the stairs in the hostel that wasn't supposed to be a party hostel. At least my English friend had made it to the toilet two nights earlier.

Before moving to the third hostel that day, I climbed Lang Biang mountain, a few kilometres north of the centre of Da Lat. Despite the dry season, it rained heavily on the way down, soaking myself and the group I was with. The higher altitude meant that the mountain had its own microclimate so it didn't rain at all in central Da Lat or even at the bottom of the mountain. So, after getting back to my second hostel, I grabbed my bag and moved around the corner to a new hostel. Checking in, the man appeared confused as to why I looked like a child who had fallen into a toilet bowl. Reluctantly, he still gave me the key to the room. So on my fourth night in Da Lat I went to sleep in a small private room in my third hostel, around the corner from the hostel I had spent my second but not my third night in.

The next day I moved to the Lakehouse, my fourth hostel. A taxi ride of less than twenty minutes transported me to a lake that felt a thousand miles away from the city centre when, in fact, it was barely three miles away. I was finally relaxed. I moved into my small bungalow at the lake's edge titled 'Lonely House.' It was basic, with a mosquito net draped over the double bed in the evenings. But it had the lake on the doorstep of the small wooden building. I was relaxed. I could change into a pair of thongs and rest in a hammock for the rest of the afternoon.

Dammit. It seemed like my constant moving had caught up with me. I had forgotten my thongs at the third hostel. The main town wasn't that far away, but I didn't want to go back there, I was in a quiet oasis away from the city. I debated going back into town now or later or maybe even just leaving the shoes. I later realised that Grab, the southeast Asian rideshare-and-everything-else app, had a delivery option. So instead of heading back into town myself, a man on a motorbike went to my third hostel, picked up the shoes and delivered them to me at the Lakehouse, right as the sun was setting.

Later that night I returned to my little bungalow, slipped my thongs off and got under my mosquito net. So on my fifth and final night in Da Lat I went to sleep in the Lakehouse to the sound of the waves lapping at the lake's edge.