Hello from Hanoi
Here’s a copy of my group email update from a couple weeks ago.
CK
Hello Prague People,
Here’s a quick rundown on the Vietnam experience so
far. Sorry it’s only one of those lame group emails,
but it seems to be the best way for me to stay in
touch with people, and I am thinking about all of you!
Days here: 7
Hours awake from San Francisco to here: 36
Days that mysteriously disappeared during flight: 1
Population of Hanoi: 5,000,000
Motorbikes in Hanoi: 4,000,000
Motorbikes on road at any given time: 3,000,000 (the
others are all parked on the sidewalks, forcing you to
walk out in the streets)
Helmets seen in Hanoi so far: 1
Number of times the driver honked the horn from the
airport to the center: 500 (10 honks per minute x 50
minutes).
Near-miss, potential accidents witnessed: astronomical
Accidents witnessed: 0
Temples/pagodas visited: 8, all very beautiful and
peaceful, with thousands more throughout the country
Dead communist corpses visited: 1 (apparently visiting
Uncle Ho’s mausoleum is automatically added to every
city tour, whether requested or not).
Friendly people: almost everyone
Hard-sell, aggressive street vendors: 50%, but they
smile, and eventually leave us alone. For some reason
they take Tom’s no much more firmly than mine.
Vietnamese words learned so far: 5 (please, thank you,
good morning, beer, icecream)
New (to me) fruit types eaten: 4
Types of rain that can fall in any given day: 5 (see
Forrest Gump for an excellent description of this).
People wearing conical hats: everywhere, not just in
movies or posters.
Number of times forced to wear conical hat for cliche
tourist photo by won’t-take-no-for-answer-street
vendor: 1
Beautiful women in traditional dress: dozens. I plan
to get one of these beautiful long dress/slacks
outfits made.
Number of job offers so far: 0. Apparently things
move slower in that regard than we were expecting. But
we are hoping for something with a university, and/or
on the coast, and we have ruled out HCMCity or daycare
jobs completely, which does narrow the field.
I hope the above doesn’t come off as a negative
impression–it certainly isn’t meant to be. It’s our
first time in Asia and the sights and sounds are very
foreign, but we are enjoying the new experience and
trying to make the most of this time as tourists while
we can.
Running low on battery power in laptop and brain, so
can’t think of other things to add right now.
I’ll write again once we get settled somewhere. In
the meantime, I hope all is well with all of you.
Take care and keep in touch,
Colleen
higgiro39