Hanoi Day 2

As I stepped down from what is our last overnight train in Vietnam, I must say that I will not miss it. This train was one of the more frightening transports I have been on. Have I said that before? Will I say it again? I did take a few Tylenol PM just to make sure I would get some sleep. What ruined me this time was possibly figuring out why the train was rocking so wildly. The passenger car would always rock from side to side enough to make drinking water from a cup all but impossible. At times it would rock so violently that you could not stand without bouncing off the walls. My guess is that this is due to something similar that occurs to our roads. Where a dip forms it slowly gets more pronounced as the weight of more vehicles drop into it. So the rocking of these trains gets very slightly more amplified with ever car that passes. Eventually, I presume, the car will roll off the tracks. I did not want to be involved in that eventuality.

Did I mention, on our first train ride we were once again very close to being on the wrong side of the law. Patti, with her borderline psychotic level of tidiness, was throwing out our train tickets before we left the train when Tara said she wanted them for her scrapbook. Tossing tickets is all fine once you have proven to the station guards that you owned them in the first place.

This morning in Hanoi the cabby in the station kept saying what sounded like 'veh' to me and pointing to the train and to the station exit. I know the sound 'veh sin' to mean toilet and I was making these sounds 'com veh sin' which I take to mean 'no toilet'. I thought it was very nice to ask if we had gone potty, but Patti said why would he care, what is he saying? Turns out the sound 'veh' might mean something like ticket. I bet if he said it louder and more slowly I would have totally understood.

We checked back into the Camel City Hotel this morning at 6:00. The desk clerk/concierge we had worked with a few nights ago was asleep on the floor. As far as we can tell most folks in Vietnam work very hard with little rest or recreation. Our hotel man works from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am and only gets 3 days/nights off a month.

Riley was feeling a little under the weather so we relaxed for the first half of the day then set out on a self guided walking tour to see various parts of the old quarter. One thing to note here is the many banyan trees that have been fixtures in the streets for centuries. The have been built around and blend into the cityscape in their own way. Here is a beautiful one.

Here is a banyan that is taking over this street corner for treedom. Oh wait, all you can see is half a tree and Patties hat...hmm. That grey bar happened when an over zealous sales lady at a phone store was trying to get an SD Card to iPad adapter working. It did not operate in the first two we tried and then she started jamming my card into a third over my cries of 'no, no, com, com'. "Ma,am, please set the SD Card down and back away". The result, I think about 1/3 of the images on the card are gone. However, I had already uploaded 99% of them to my Google account so not all is lost, just a little quality.

Many streets in the old quarter have specializations. Such as, silks, hardware, coffee shops and bamboo for instance. All the stores for that category are in one spot. I suppose it might make finding what you are looking for easier if all the stores that might carry that are in one spot, and it seems prices would be more competitive. Here was my favorite street, even though it was south of the old town.

Navigating moped drivers is a little like passing oncoming sidewalk pedestrians. If you make eye contact then mutual manners may cause a collision. I move right as you move to inadvertently block, then left, repeat until stepping on each other. It is best to pretend that you do not see the mopedites and allow them to do what they deem is in their best interest regardless of yours. That may sound like a bad strategy but it will get you across the busy streets of Hanoi with your butt and his bike intact.

We had lunch at a restaurant today were the food was excellent (most are) and cheap (many are). We were chatting with a local man and when he left I said "See you later" in my best Vietnamese. He complemented my accent and said that Vietnamese is a very hard language to speak, to which I readily agreed. His parting warning was to be careful because slight inflections change whole meanings. To which I said, in Vietnamese, "Sorry, I don't understand, I don't speak Vietnamese." He laughed and said "Very good." In that same restaurant was a huge jar filled with snakes and birds in what I understood to be wine. He said only old men can handle it, did I want to try some? I declined. I lost the best picture due to Crazy SD Card Lady, but here you can see a few birds on top of the snakes.

Tonight we will be chillaxing as Riley needs some R&R. Tomorrow she will get more of it as we head out for an overnight on Halong Bay on a nice (luxury may be a stretch, but we will see) ship. The kids finally get to turn on the TV and in VN it seems many of the cartoons are in English with Vietnamese subtitles. Cartoons are a useful English teacher.

Until tomorrow - chào