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Published: September 25th 2012
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Pre-drinks before heading to the house partySeptember 25 2012
Where do I begin…
I couldn’t have imagined such a turnaround in my attitude! 2 weeks ago I was so…not me. I don’t know exactly how it happened but I am seriously having a ball out here in Hanoi. It is the oddest city I have ever encountered and adventures are abundant, not to mention I have my partner in crime, Cormac. (And Sierra when she’s in town.) The past few weeks I have been off meeting people, wandering this city, and enjoying all the peculiarities! There are many places to see in the city and it seems Saturdays are the designated sightseeing days. We keep it low key Friday evening so we are bright eyed and bushy tailed for an all day Saturday extravaganza. I have been to the Temple of Literature, the HCM Museum, the One Pillar Pagoda, the Ho Tay Water Park, loads of cafes and random cool things, the garden, Hoan Kiem, the water puppet show and Vincom Village. Really getting out there has put me in a better disposition! Then Saturday nights we spend out on the town…which usually turns into 6am Sunday morning. Sunday is sleeping/hobo
Robots
me and Astrid found robots whose heads came off... guess that means time for a robot dance party in the kids section of an arcade in the deserted mall of Vincom Village day! Anything goes…
During the week I mostly stay around the apartment working on things, preparing for Fansipan Mountain, and relaxing ‘me’ time. I occasionally meet up with some friends for dinner or random things hosted by the Australian Embassy. (PS- who knew an embassy could be so cool?!) When I took my intercultural communications course in Costa Rica, I remember there was a diagram to explain culture shock. It was like a light wave going up and down from the horizontal axis that is time. The waves on my culture shock graph from Vietnam are like Swiss Alps with extreme highs and lows. I hope to God I’m leveling out and getting closer to normal. OMG the other evening I was at the night market which was packed! Of course everyone walks into each other and the Vietnamese have no sense of personal space, but I’ve apparently gotten used to. I bumped into someone and to my surprise this person turned around and said “sorry” to me! This was shocking on a few different levels.
1. I was first taken back by the word sorry and that it was spoken by a native
where are we
Oh yea, we're still in the deserted mall... cleanest place in all of Vietnam! never seen floors so shiny. English speaker. The market is seriously packed but with all Vietnamese and very few foreigners. Besides the word sorry isn’t even in the Vietnamese vocabulary. (Well, it really is but no one ever says sorry or thank you…it’s just not their culture.)
2. I bumped into this person and they said sorry to me.
3. I was taken aback by the fact that I was taken aback by this whole little event.
Funny huh?
Even more eventful, Cormac and I found the missing piece to our 3 musketeers! Astrid =] See I already mentioned that me and Cormac were like partners in crime… and this past weekend we met Astrid. She came to us from this amazing thing called couchsurfing.com! I have a profile and have met people but I’ve never surfed or hosted so Astrid was my first. (Tear of joy… for losing my CS virginity, not being weird at all!! Hahaha) It was a complete and utter success. She showed up Friday evening and spent the weekend staying in my apartment with me. The three of us had endless hours of pure joyous adventure all weekend
hobo day
This is what happens when we're hungover and still want to do things and got on great. In fact, when it came time to drop Astrid off at the train station, it was really sad. Cormac is kinda sweet on her too! And to my surprise, today she calls me up and was saying, she doesn’t know why she left and that she is coming back this weekend!! She has about a week left of vacation from her au-pair job in Vientiane, Laos. And who knows, she might not go back, considering jobs are so abundant here! We’ll see how it goes.
If you can believe, there is something even more epic than this.
2 words.
House.
Party.
On Saturday we all went to our friends house who was throwing a party. Pretty much all of the residents of Hanoi were invited. The house is HUGE and these guys know how to throw a party. Had some friends meet up at my place before and head over all together. There were probably over 200 guests, beer pong, a roof top terrace garden and a ladder to the actual roof, 6 floors of party, a karaoke room, and 1,000
roof top
the roof terrace garden and the actual roof top! balloons. It was an interesting night to say the least. In the end, we ended up staying til probably 4:30am. The cops even came, then left and the party continued all night! It was a nice change up from heading to the bars and a sick party. Only got one thing to say:
HANOI IS TOO SMALL!
The mom of one of my students was at this ragger of a party. And the weekend before, I ran into my boss at a bar. And saw 2 of my students at the weekend market that I stumbled out of bed to wander around at. Not cool Hanoi.
All in all I would say that I am really enjoying it here and can’t wait to see what else Vietnam throws at me. I am also excited for the week off, the second week of October. I will be heading to Sapa and climbing Mt. Fansipan, the Roof of Indochina.
As always, weird things I learn:
- Apparently West Lake used to be a village in a valley that got destroyed by some natural disaster and flood, so
any body need a hat?
they set this up and take it down EVERY freakin day... now it is West Lake.. Can’t find internet based support for this (in English) but Hue says it’s true.
- Museums that are under construction/being built are not secured well! Including letting 2 foreigners sneak around the whole place without anyone noticing. Also someone living on the side of the place.
- On the way to Vincom Village (a deserted housing project and mall) there are little rivers and lakes that come off the Red River Delta. On these said little rivers and lakes, there are rickety wooden platforms built on stilts over the water, where one can hang out, order liquor and beer and fish. It’s like the street carpet place in Hai Phong but fishing. This is on the list of things to do!
- The Vietnamese are terrified of getting a tan (already knew this..) but in turn this means on the most amazing of days, the water park in deserted!!! Yay for no lines at slides and a lazy river to yourself and no noisy kids.
Tam Biet (Vietnamese for good bye), until next time!
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Theresa
non-member comment
happy for you
So glad to hear you are on the upswing now and that your couch surfer is back. Also glad to hear that all your friends from Hai Phong now are in Hanoi. Great blog sweety. As always keep safe and I will be with you soon....