Goodbye Hanoi, Hello Danang

Last night was not the best ... the power went out at about 2am and Kathryn's room got quite warm so they didn't sleep well. She decided we should be up too so she came down early and woke us up.

We spent our last day in Hanoi seeing the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (which we didn't see, more in a minute), The "Hanoi Hilton" (POW prison), a buddhist temple and the temple of literature. We went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum first as it's only open in the morning. You have to wear long pants and cover your shoulders in order to go inside so we decided I would wait outside with Cori and let everyone else go in. I didn't really have an interest in seeing a body lying in state anyway ... For whatever reason, Chuck did not zip on the bottom poriton of his pants before we left. He sat in the front seat of the cab and proceeded to zip them on. The cab driver kept trying to sneak a peak at what he was doing and thought it was quite funny. We arrived and hiked over there. Cori and I shopped on the street while they walked the rest of the way. I bought baby Sydney a little present and Cori some more stuff because that's just what she needs. We finished shopping and went to our meeting spot just when everyone else was walking up. Ho Chi Minh cannot be viewed on Fridays. Boy Chuck was not happy. He was really looking forward to that. He and Chase both wanted a bust of Ho Chi Minh so we went back to the same vendor I had bought from and they bought some busts. Then Chuck was hot ... he decided to zip off his pants in the street. It drew an onlooker following with everyone pointing and laughing. We went back to the american restaurant for lunch that day.

We then went back to the hotel to shower and change for our flight. Wow - I'm glad we did because we just started sweating again in the cab. The cabs here have air conditioning, but most won't turn it all the way up. We can't figure out why, but I swear I almost got my hand slapped once for doing it. On the way to the airport, we had to take two separate cabs...no earthly idea why because we paid a flat rate that our hotel arranged, but I do know that we had another person riding silently with us in the very back of the cab ... very strange.

We went through security at the airport and Chuck's pipe that he bought was cuse for concern so they had to open it and look at it. Then the kids were hungry so we explored our food options. There was one food vendor in the airport that served hot dogs on a stick, nasty fried rice, instant noodles or a sandwich with mayonaise from a jar that must have been 3-4 years old. We went with hot dogs on a stick. We then found out our flight was delayed for "mechnical competency issues" ... then another delay for a change of aircraft. That meant we got some free fried rice from the food vendor. I talked them out of a couple of sweet rolls (didn't know what they were , but they turned out to be good). Kathryn basically forced them to give her the noodles and they were very unhappy about that. We boarded our aircraft by walking out the door, getting on a bus, riding acrosse the tarmac and then walking up either the front or back stairs. Strangley, there was a flight attendant's seat at the exit row kinda positioned like a hall monitor. Very odd ...

The boy in the seat behind Cori was so bad. He was stanidng up on take off, etc. He was peaking through the seat with us and I looked at him very meanly and loudly said SIT. He sat and then for the rest of the flight if I looked back there he climbed onto his mother. Kathryn also helped give bad looks.

Now, this flight was supposed to be 1 hour and it started good with freshing up wipes and bottles of water. Then things started going south ... first, it was a little bumpy - no big deal. Then we almost landed ... seriously, we went down very low very fast and then straight back up into the air. We then banked for a little while. It was a little scary and we talked aout how we were glad mom wasn't there. We seemed to circle for awhile and someone threw up. Then we landed.

Finally, finally to danang - watch out beach here we come ... we even booked a nice resort on the beach!

more to come

Kristen


We got to the airport in plenty of time