So we're here in Hanoi! After sleeping for a few hours, I found myself awake at 4:00 AM or--my usual wake up time in Chicago. Of course, in Chicago right now it is 4:00 PM. I'm sitting here in a pair of Hong Ngoc hotel slippers and my Hong Ngoc terry robe, writing on the internet. So far, so good.
The photo (we're having trouble with photos, give us some time) shows us with the entourage. Three families of the five who will be in Hanoi with us traveled on the same flight from Chicago. During our first conversation with Lisa in O'Hare, she commented on how light Peggy and I seemed to have packed. We didn't think so at all--two 50 lb/22 kilo bags to check, a 25-lb/11 kilo roller carry-on, and then each of us with a personal bag (mine was heavy). But when we got to Hanoi and saw what they brought, we understood. To be fair, Marci's group is four--two kids and her mother. Still, as we were waiting with World Child's Martin, who met us at the airport, he said the taxi arranged by the hotel would carry 16 people. He did a doubletake, I think, when he saw all the luggage.
Of course it was fine, in the end. Somehow the taxi-driver managed to fit it all into his van. We don't have a picture of that.
Martin is as nice and already as helpful as advertised by the other families who have met him previously. He said he recognized me when we walked out of the customs area--and then he also remembered Peggy's face, from our applications. He remembered that I was an English teacher--and we reminded him that Peggy is, too. He asked what we thought of his English. It is good, we told him, and Peggy said, "And it is way better than our Vietnamese."
What else should we tell you? Korean Air, by the way, was great. The 747 flight was staffed by a group of maybe as many as 12 flight attendants--tall and slim, attractive, impeccably dressed in uniforms that included scarfs ribbons in their identically arranged hair, perfectly mannered and helpful. For fourteen hours they zoomed up and down the aisles--two good meals, coffee, tea, juice and water trays (lots of juice and water trays).
I didn't even read. The small screen on the back of the seat in front of us carried a selection of thirty or so movies. I watched three: first, the crazy Robin Williams political movie "Man of the Year," then a kind of depressing relationships movie with Zach Braff called "The Last Kiss,"and then a nutty thriller with Denzel Washington "Deja Vu." None of the movies were very good but they passed the fourteen hours. I slept some, too. I also listened to some music from the airline collection, including the Strokes and the Flaming Lips, both of which I liked a lot. Oh and Peggy and I played our travel Scrabble--I won but it was really, really close and came down to the last word.
The only hiccup of the trip came in the Seoul airport when we set ourselves up at gate 23 to wait for the 6:55 PM boarding call for flight 683 to Hanoi. We settled in at about 6:15 or so for the wait. I feel asleep as Peggy expressed concern about where the other families were waiting. I woke up at 7:00 or so, with Peggy a little bit more worried. The line for the gate was really long as they called for boarding at gate 23. I told her we should wait another minute until the line got shorter, but something didn't seem right. Peggy walked up to the gate and came back with the information that the flight boarding at gate 23 did not seem to be flight 683. Uh, oh. We loaded up our things and the gate attendants at gate 22 took a look at our boarding passes. "Gate 24," they told us. Uh-oh. It was 7:10 and as we hurried toward the gate we heard, "Final boarding call for flight 683." We started running. Of course we made the flight and even had a few minutes to get settled before it pushed away. It was not even really a close call.
It's 5:00 AM or so, and now even Peggy is awake. Martin comes by at 8:00 tonight to take us to the train to Sapa. Peggy is having some second thoughts. She's worried that another night of sleep travel will mess us up. But it is supposed to be an amazing place, and we're going.
We don't have much else planned for today, but I have suggested to Peggy that maybe we could take a run around the lake this morning!
We got to O'Hare very early, of course, and had almost three hours to kill there--with no coffee available once we passed through airport security. We met a woman on our flight from Ottawa, Canada, who is travelling from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi for her holiday. She's booked on the same flight home with us. She sat with us for a little while at the Welly's cafe in Seoul during our three hour layover, where I drank an Erdiner Weisbier out of a large glass and Peggy couldn't finish her small but potent bottle of Korean green tea, which is a lot different than the Sobe, Arizona, Lipton, or Snapple green teas we get at home. We were worried when we first got to the cafe because we didn't have Korean money. I had my credit card out when I realized that prices were listed in dollars everywhere, and you can just pay with good old American money for anything you want in the Incheon Seoul airport. Our other impress there: It is a giant mall, with designer goods in duty free shops up and down the airport halls. And they are big airport halls.
We have a longer layover of 5 hours on the return, and we looked into some of our options, including the travelers lounge where you can rent a room for six hours for $60 bucks or so. We'll see how things are when we get there. One thing we do know: There won't be any Weisbier at the Welly's on the return.
That brings us to Hanoi. The drive in the luggage-packed taxi van was about an hour from the airport. It was dark at 11:00 PM when we were driving, but near the airport the landscape seemed to be developing as a buisness/industrial kind of area. We saw a big Canon plant, a brewery, and some other factory and warehouse buildings under construction. There was a lot of road construction. The taxi driver drove slowly and carefully, it seemed. Closer to Hanoi and once in the city we were struck with how old the basic buildings and other infrastructure seemed to be. But it also seems very alive, even late on Saturday night. We drove by a cyclo scooter with a giant load on the back. "Flowers for the flower market," Martin told us, and later we drove by the flower market. It reminded me of pictures of old Maxwell Street--a street of plastic and canvas tents and huts with lights glowing and small movements of people. The streets got smaller and smaller as we entered the center of the city and the old quarter.
The Hong Ngoc is just another store front type building, somewhat taller perhaps, on a small street. We wouldn't even have noticed it if the van hadn't stopped. They had staff waiting for us when we arrived. We had a key and two young men brought our luggage up. I gave them each a dollar, and Peggy thought they were laughing as we closed the door. I don't know if it wasn't enough, if a single dollar seemed silly, if we should have given them dong, or if we weren't supposed to tip them at all? Somehow they got our room number on the tags of the luggage for the others, and they came by twice more trying to deliver more luggage. They were nice and friendly each time, so maybe I did okay with them...
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