Making Hanoi Home

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The past few weeks have been a bit of a whirl wind. We went from preparing 2010; looking a lot like another season at Ski Rider in June, and then settling in Brisbane for us to get stuck into Uni life from October onwards - to now; moving into a Hotel in Hanoi’s Old Quarter that we’ll manage together, and are now looking at being in Vietnam long term.

It all happened really quickly; the Vietnamese Business Owner (Mr Kien) of The Drift, where Luke was working in the Kitchen, asked me one day if I’d be interested in running his new Hotel. I was in a rush to get to school when he asked me but was able to have a little think about it on the way to school, and before I could even start to get my head around it Luke called me to say Mr Kien has asked if we’d both be interested in Managing and we’d live there at the Hotel and run everything together. We decided to check it out a bit before we got too excited, so we met with Kien at his house, and had a chat about wages and our roles exactly, it seemed to be a good deal and a good challenge for us to take on together. So we moved in on New Year’s Eve. It’s been a bit of a mission since then.

The Hotel was previously ‘Camellia Hotel’, now that Kien has bought it with his Business partners, it is now ‘Hanoi Rendezvous Hotel’. It’s been open and shut on and off since we moved in due to renovations, this has completely worked in our favor as we’ve needed this whole time to get our heads around everything, create the website, create accounts on travel websites, learn the tours we’ll be selling, and get to know the staff, booking system, create a menu, and Luke spent a good couple of days learning how to use illustrator, and created our business cards, which is now being made into our Hotel Sign - we’re very proud about this.

Even though we’re only managing it, bringing it to life from the very beginning is making it feel so much like our own thing. We have an understanding where Kien organizes all of the Vietnamese side and looks after that, and we do all of the Western things. We’re having a lot of fun with it.

Luke had decided that he didn’t want to work in the kitchen at The Drift before we’d even been offered to work in the Hotel, so he finished up around New Years Day - he still goes in to help out if they’re having a staff meeting though. I’m still teaching at Summer School, my regular 20 classes per week, and my private class 3 afternoons per week. It’s a lot for me at the moment, but it will quiet down in a month or two when the Hotel is up and running (I hope).

The first two weeks we were in the hotel, we were being woken up by jackhammers pulling apart the bathrooms above us at 6:30am, and not having silence again until 10:30 at night. That was a bit hard to get used to, and we’ve only just got our bathroom back this week, which is so lovely. We were going to Hanoi Boutique Hotel (one of Kien’s other Hotel’s) for showers, and taking our laundry there to be washed also. We’ve had only two little hiccups with that so far - one with some washing that didn’t come back, miraculously appeared days later, and one of Luke’s black shirts with some white print on the front came back with a number 5 penned on the front. He was a bit upset.

We get woken up most mornings by Kien knocking on our door, he takes us for breakfast - either Vietnamese Traditional Breakfast of Pho Bo (beef noodle soup), or we go to good restaurants to try out their western dishes for ‘work’ - to see if we should put them on our menu. He invites us over for dinner, where we sit on the floor in his kitchen, around a hot pot (Lau) to share with his business partners and friends. When he takes us anywhere, we both jump on the back of his ‘family’ motorbike, it’s like the family 4WD of motorbikes.

Kien is a pretty respected man around town, he grew up in the country, and came to Hanoi when he was 15 with not a lot, he’s built himself up from being a Cyclo Driver (living on the streets), then saved up and bought a Moto, so he became a Xe Om Driver (Moto Taxi), and he was the first person in Hanoi to open a Hotel that wasn’t part of a home. He’s got a great sense of humor, and through working as a Cyclo Driver and Xe Om, he has learnt to speak English.

The other staff in the Hotel are great too, Khoa who is our Security Guard. Luke and I have stumbled home a few times from a few drinks too many, shimmied through the doors that are ‘locked’ with a bike lock, and tip toed past him asleep on his fold out bed in the lobby. He’s a real gentleman - 26 with a wife and a 4yr old daughter, and Luke’s new little apprentice now we’ve found out he’s quiet the guitarist. There’s also Hao, he’s the IT man, we usually end our night with Hao having a green tea that we’re both slowly getting more and more used to - so much that Luke only screws his face up a little after each mouth full. We have lunch with Khoa, Hao, and the girls - Chef / Cook Diep, she can’t speak a lot of English, but she seems really funny and likes having a laugh, our cleaners, Van and Ha are both very sweet, and Phong comes in some days, our accountant.

Our meal time together is a bit interesting. Such a huge language barrier. We spend the first couple of minutes saying what each dish is in Vietnamese and English, there’s a lot of smiling and nodding, and then we kind of part ways - Luke and I talk, and they all talk together. Luke’s tried asking a few times ‘how was your day’ - but then we always spend the next 10 minutes explaining ‘day’ ‘good day’ ‘?’ ‘you’ - we do thumbs up and an exaggerated smile for ‘good’ and point at them for ‘you’ and do like a point down for ‘today’; watch out if we ever play charades in the future, we’d be unbeatable. The plan is for me to teach the staff English, but with everything so busy right now, I don’t think that will get underway for at least another week.

Our meals are lovely though, we are really spoilt. We eat traditional Vietnamese style for lunch and dinner - Luke and I always sleep through their breakfast. Lunch and dinner we all sit around the table together, with a chair designated to the rice cooker. We each get a little bowl filled with rice, and then on the table are plates with veggies and meat. Usually there’s a pork dish, and morning glory, or cabbage, sometimes we have chicken, or fish also, and there’s a big bowl on the table with soup in it - it’s really good eating. We’re normally working right up till lunch, and then go straight back to work (move to the table with our computers on it) after lunch - where we’re usually spoilt with a mango each, cut and peeled. If we even stand up to take our plate / bowl into the kitchen, everyone jumps up and says ‘no, no, no - I do for you’. Luke loves to do it just for fun now.

I had this awesome idea at the start to buy a bird that I could teach to speak, I thought it would be fun for guests to walk into their hotel and be greeted by a talking parrot or something, however, I’m not really sure if that’s the right thing to get myself into - apparently they don’t speak for at least 6mths, and they live for like 20yrs!

I also have this other idea to decorate all of the tables in the restaurant (5 big ones) with mosaic. The Vietnamese flag on one, and some kind of green rice field idea on another with some, or one conical hat. Not realizing just how long it would take me to do this, my idea has been put on hold till I actually have a full week spare to teach myself the art of mosaics.

Our official opening day is Monday 24th, we’ve already got one booking for that day, and we have some for early Feb, and September. It’s all a bit real now we’re getting bookings, we didn’t really know what to do when the emails started coming - it was a bit of a shock to start with. The LCD’s were delivered yesterday - currently 19 of them piled up in our room. We get couches for the restaurant tomorrow, hopefully the sign will come by Saturday, Luke’s doing the menu today, and we’re yet to go painting shopping - for the guest rooms and the lobby area. So everything’s moving along just smoothly for the big day - smashing the champa’s bottle, Luke cutting the red ribbon out the front, I’m sure you’ll catch it on the 6o’clock news in Australia.

So check out our website (yep, here’s the plug) and email us [e-mail] - we’d love to have some visitors, and Vietnam really is an awesome place. 😊

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Photos

The Business Card
Luke's very handy work

The Lobby
The wall on the left will have all tour information on it, and we're having big lounges in the restaurant...

Our bathroom
during renovations

The Lobby
This has all changed now - we'll put new pics up soon

Our Bathroom
We now have a big glass door for the shower

Comments

[Steve and Maja]

Big things are happening!
Hi guys, really great log, nice to hear about what Hanois Newest Entrepreneurs have been upto over the las few weeks. It sounds quality, we think you two'll be the perfect hosts, not sure about the talking bird though haha! Good luck for Monday, hope you enjoy your first day, we're sure it'll be a success! Love Steve and Maja x