Hanoi, Day 2

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The day started off on a not so great note, with our room phone ringing at 6:45am repeatedly until a half-asleep Martin reached for it. "This is your wakeup call...oh, wait, sorry. Wrong room." I wonder if this happened to some other poor person in Saigon when we never received a requested wakeup call. We grumbled, stretched and promptly fell back asleep...for almost an hour. The phone rang again. "Hello, would you like to order breakfast?" Um, what? You told us last night to call anytime between 7a-11a and tell you our free breakfast request...but clearly, that really meant that they would call us by 7:30. Hmm. Having not gone to bed until 1:30, I was pretty grumpy, never a good start to any day but life was brightened a bit when our breakfast was delivered on a tray literally to us in bed. It's a tough life. And really, if the delayed flight and early morning disturbances are the worst things on our trip, I think we're doing pretty good.

We lounged around and used the internet this morning, doing a bit of planning and finally pulled ourselves out of the hostel around 9:45am. Our first stop was the Hanoi Women's Museum, a small building dedicated to the thousands of Vietnamese women involved in the war in some way. It was fascinating to see the outfits they wore for disguise, the letters they wrote to their families while fighting, the tools they made out of bamboo and tons of pictures. We spent about an hour in there, and then headed out to find some lunch, ending up at a cafe that looked semi-Westernized yet had delicious Vietnamese food. We find ourselves here in the same predicament we were in those first couple months in China. We can't speak the language. We have no idea what's going on most of the time. Tons more people here speak English than in our area of Shenzhen, but it's still definitely intimidating to just walk up to a street vendor and try to order food, which makes it a bit harder sometimes to get authentic cuisine. We don't want to frequent all the backpacker cafes nor eat Western food the entire time we're here (although, yes, it is nice occasionally of course!).

After lunch, we managed to make our way over to the Hanoi Train Station and purchased 2 soft-sleeper tickets on the 11pm train to Hue for Saturday night. That felt like quite the success. Hue is in Central Vietnam and provides the easiest border crossing to Laos, hence our trip down there. We'll get back from our cruise around Halong Bay around 5pm Saturday, eat some dinner and head over to the train station. Perfect.

After lunch and coffee at a small cafe, we ventured over to the 'Hanoi Hilton', Hua Lo Prison Museum. It was definitely interesting AND we got to see John McCain's uniform he was wearing when his plane was shot down and he was captured by the Vietnamese. Aren't we officially cool now or something? This whole trip has been an incredible history lesson.

The rest of the evening pretty much has revolved around eating, drinking and relaxing. What more is there to vacation, really? We mailed some postcards at the post office, so those of you getting Cambodia postcards with Vietnam stamps should be very excited. Your postcard traveled to 2 countries! Speaking of things traveling, I had to laugh the other day when I realized a skirt that my sister-in-law gave me for Christmas was made in Cambodia. So it was made in Cambodia, bought by her in Virginia, traveled to Washington state with my mom who then brought it to Shenzhen, China for me whereupon I packed it for the trip here and wore it for the first time in it's homeland. Crazy. 😊

As we headed out for dinner, Martin whacked his head pretty hard in our hostel room- major bummer. Then, he tripped on the sidewalk. I think he keeps forgetting that even though we're not in China, we are still in Asia, meaning there are random holes and stuff laying on the sidewalk everywhere. In fact, Vietnam is worse in the sense that their sidewalks are actually just huge parking lots for motobikes. Oh, I have to walk on the street and dodge the hundreds of motobikes zooming past me whilst honking? Okay, cool. Then at dinner, Martin's chair made a big cracking sound and we're almost positive it broke a little. Eh, what can you do. It clearly wasn't his night.

We ended the evening doing something more local- drinking 'bia hoi', the ridiculously cheap draft beer sold at tiny street carts. You buy a glass for 3000 dong (18,000 dong=1 USD), sit down on the world's tiniest plastic stool and watch the local nightlife unfold before your eyes. It was fantastic.

We've found Hanoi to remind us a bit more of China than the other cities we've been in on this trip thus far. Students around the city wear blue and white uniforms, the weather is chilly right now, there is crazy insane traffic everywhere, the noises and smells assail you wherever you go in the city. However, one thing has been noticeably different in both Cambodia and Vietnam: NOBODY STARES AT US. Nobody points and yells 'foreigner!'. Nobody giggles at us when we don't understand their language. China, you may be a rising world power, but your people have a long way to go with adjusting to 'foreigners' being around. And hey, if Cambodia and Vietnam can serve good Western food with CHEESE, why can't you?

This trip is reminding us as well of just how much weird crap we've become used to. Oh, there are cars going every which way in an intersection and most are centimeters from touching one another and you're not wearing a seatbelt? Yeah, no flinching from us. Someone is selling caged animals on the street? People constantly come up to you and ask you to buy things? Last night, we walked past a guy just taking a pee right on the side of the street. Normal. All of it is normal. I wonder what will happen when we return to the states. Will we drive like maniacs? Will we forget it's not acceptable to urinate on the street corner? Will we be weirded out when we can drink water from the tap and cleanliness is expected everywhere? Most of all, I think I might die the first time I go to buy fresh vegetables at a store and see how much they cost in USD. Right now, I can't really imagine leaving Asia. It's a place I never really had a strong desire to visit before, nor really imagined myself coming here. Oh, how things change. Both of us hope to come back as often as possible and keep exploring this side of the world. I love the parts of Europe I've seen, but it's completely different. Asia has so much history, and the culture is SO different. I think it's sad how many people are so opposed to coming here in the first place. You're missing out, my friends. Try it...at least once. 😊

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Photos

Breakfast
There could be worse things than being woken up for breakfast in bed...

Women's Museum
The museum was small, but very interesting.

New Window Cafe
We ate here for lunch, enjoying some Vietnamese flavors.

Prison
When the French were in control, this was a prison for Vietnamese revolutionaries. During the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese used it to detain captured American pilots. John Mccain was one of them, and here are his clothes.

Protests
We tried to look for Martin's parents in this picture...

John Mccain
Some of McCain's belongings after being a prisoner here. He also made a visit in 2000.

Comments

[mama clare]

We led the pack
"All we are saying ....is give Peace a chance......" this words are so necessarily repetitive and we still have not learned our lessions from the past. So many more dying in wars today:( What an important piece of history and culture you are now walking with----thank you for spreading peace with the peoples there and learning from them in this way. It couldn't make us happier to know you are both there now, visiting this beautiful land and these lovely people who at one time our country participated in diminishng their humanity and destroying their villages. Finally we can find some peace and justice knowing you have gone as true ambassadors of love and good will. love, mamac