Hanoi Day One

We landed this evening and successfully collected our one checked bag. Then it was off to the visa line which was taking a while until they flashed Patti's passport picture up on a monitor and began calling her by name. Uh oh, that had us wondering what was happening. Turned out is was some kind of fast path to the front of the line and an expedited processing.

Getting through passport control was quick for the girls but mine took about 10 times as long. He kept looking around at his monitors, looking at me, then looking around the area. I sensed that maybe his computer was not responding or something. Finally I started waving little toddle-lo hand gestures to Riley. Then suddenly, I think he got tired of waiting and just decided to stamp me through.

As we were driving in to Hanoi from the airport, all the buildings were dark and they appeared to be abandoned. It was 11:30 on a Friday night and you would think that a few people would be up. Tara said there was 8 Karaoke Bars and only 2 traffic lights. As we neared our hotel in Old Town Hanoi the lights started picking up and we found that the Karaoke Bars ruled the night.

On the roads in China the horns blared ceaselessly. Last night was much quieter as the option for signaling to traffic that you were coming up to pass was a near constant flashing of the car lights.

Finding plugs for the various charges is always a challenge when traveling until this year when I figured it all out.  I plugged in this mother of all chargers (5 amps of charging power altogether) we heard a little pop and out went the lights :-). After a little conversation at the desk I went with what was apparently the new guy to the circuit panel and he was guessing which one to flip. It looked pretty obvious to me. When he went for want looked like the main, I pointed him to a much smaller, but tripped one. That did the trick.

This room had a standard door lock so I decided to use the device pictured below. This effectively creates a lock from the inside. Even if the standard door lock is not set, you still cannot open the door. We discovered that it works really, really well. So well that we could not get out of the room. I was feeling a bit anxious after trying to free us from the room for 5 minutes. I knew what was happening, the lock bolt was not fully retracting, not good, we were going to have to call for help and then try to explain what was going on. No way was that going to go well. Patti and I put our hands in the knob and prayed, two try's later and it opened. That was not how I wanted to start the day.

We were concerned about waking the neighbors as we awoke early and started showering etc. However, there is some sort of public address system that started blaring with a voices at about 6:45am and did not stop all day. I figured out why it was so loud, it was right off our little balcony.  When I inquired what they were saying I was told that it was kind of like a newspaper, one you could not escape from hearing.

Tara and I dined on the nectar of Pocari Sweat.

OK, off for the day now to see what we can see.