Hanoi, Vietnam Part 1

Hi all-

This is going to be a long one so I will not try to tackle it all in one entry.

On the plane to Hanoi, we had ordered food. The chicken hot dog things were pretty good as was the sandwich. The chicken foccacia (sp?) was not really edible. The fried rice, which happened to be mine, was a surprise. It had some sort of satay on top (maybe chicken?) and then little crunchies on the side. I looked at it for a couple of minutes and decided not to have the satay. I looked closer at the crunchies. They were either the tiniest whole fish or something like a flash fried meal worm. I didn't eat any of it, but Chuck finished all of it and said it was fairly good. We slept the rest of the way.

On arrival, something funny happened, but I forgot what it was. I'll ask Kathryn to fill in that part. We cleared immigration and were really on our way then ... hmmmm....our hotel is in the middle of the city and there is a duck quacking outside of my window right now....anyway, we got into the arrival hall and looked for our ride. There were a lot of people with signs waiting, but none was ours so we went outside and got a cab. Our cab driver didn't really know where he was going, didn't speak a lick of English, seemed to be injured somehow on his shoulder and was very angry.

We drove a little ways outside the airport and Chuck and I both thought oh my ... maybe we've gotten in over our heads with this choice. It was insane. Motorcycles everywhere, no real traffic rules, vendor stalls along the side of the road selling all sorts of stuff and just general poverty everywhere. Our angry/injured cab driver got us close and then made about 4 circles until he could find it. At one point he was hitting the steering wheel. Then he turned up the vietnamese music super loud. It was really a bit overwhelming ... I was glad we had agreed on a flat rate at the airport.

OK - so we get to the hotel and the people here are so nice. They speak fairly good english and immediately show us inside and give us some lemonade. We debate on the lemonade. Finally, we drink the lemonade, but buy Cori a bottle of water and put the crystal light I had brought from home in it. We didn't want to take any chances with her belly.

Wow, I've only gotten us here and to the hotel and am going to leave you hanging. There is so much to tell that it is hard to get everything in. Everywhere you look there is something to see, smell, hear, etc...

goodnight for now

Kristen