Friday afternoon we said goodbye to rainy Seattle, and drove north to Vancouver, BC. We are now proud owners of Nexus/Global Entry cards, which allow us to skip the lines both ways at the Canadian border and skip customs & immigration arriving at airports in either Canada or the US. Also gets you into the priority x-ray line at Canadian airports. Worth every single last penny (all 5,000 of them, or $50 for 5 years). We spent Friday evening with friends Markus, Marie, and Tomas in Vancouver and had a lovely time. I'm going to be quite sad when the boys leave in a month.
Saturday we got to have a nice breakfast, and then our flight left midday. Due to a giant group of Japanese schoolchildren, we got moved up to a bulkhead seat for our 10 hour flight to Tokyo and had acres of room to stretch out in. Japan Airlines also had pretty decent food, free beer, wine and saki, free snacks whenever you wanted to grab them, and the nicest, most attentive flight attendants I've ever experienced. Hooray for a good flight over! After a quick layover in Tokyo and another 6 hour flight to Hanoi, we arrived in the late evening and headed straight to bed!
We spent a total of about a day and a half in Hanoi, and found it a good introduction to SE Asia. There was nothing particularly special about the city but it had enough to keep us busy for the time we were there, the coffee and cafes were great, and it allowed us time to adjust without having an agenda.
Vietnam is different. Where to even begin? Am I just used to traveling in South & Central America where I speak their language? There was so little functional English! We got by just fine, we did a lot of pointing, got a lot of things that were not quite what we were looking for, and had a lot of times where we just had to let an issue drop. Thats' not really a complaint (because hey, I don't speak Vietnamese either!), just an observation.
Scooters, scooters everywhere. Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, HCMC) has 10 million people, and 7 million scooters. The other places we visited we not that large but I'm sure the ratios were similar, if not more weighted towards scooters. A guide we had one day told us 'Vietnam actually does have rules. pause. People just don't follow them.'
Does it matter that the light it red? No. Does it matter that this is a one way street, and I'm going the wrong way? No. Does it matter that this is a sidewalk? No. Does it matter that I have 30 ft long PVC pipe and 15 chickens strapped to my scooter? No. My parents were in Vietnam a month ago and did a really good post on instructions for crossing the street. It actually kind of defies logic, but is exactly the right procedure. You can read it here. I'll do some more observations as we go on, but there's a start.
Here's a photo tour of our time there.
We started the morning with a stroll around the lake
and a visit to a Pagoda.
We visited the 'Hanoi Hilton', home to many POW's during the war, including McCain
Had our first Vietnamese meal
Saw the temple of literature (~1000 yr old university)
Saw Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum (sort of a let down in true communist style)
and just generally meandered
Sorry if this wasn't a terribly exciting one but fear not, next up is Ha Long Bay!
Saturday we got to have a nice breakfast, and then our flight left midday. Due to a giant group of Japanese schoolchildren, we got moved up to a bulkhead seat for our 10 hour flight to Tokyo and had acres of room to stretch out in. Japan Airlines also had pretty decent food, free beer, wine and saki, free snacks whenever you wanted to grab them, and the nicest, most attentive flight attendants I've ever experienced. Hooray for a good flight over! After a quick layover in Tokyo and another 6 hour flight to Hanoi, we arrived in the late evening and headed straight to bed!
We spent a total of about a day and a half in Hanoi, and found it a good introduction to SE Asia. There was nothing particularly special about the city but it had enough to keep us busy for the time we were there, the coffee and cafes were great, and it allowed us time to adjust without having an agenda.
Vietnam is different. Where to even begin? Am I just used to traveling in South & Central America where I speak their language? There was so little functional English! We got by just fine, we did a lot of pointing, got a lot of things that were not quite what we were looking for, and had a lot of times where we just had to let an issue drop. Thats' not really a complaint (because hey, I don't speak Vietnamese either!), just an observation.
propaganda
Scooters, scooters everywhere. Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, HCMC) has 10 million people, and 7 million scooters. The other places we visited we not that large but I'm sure the ratios were similar, if not more weighted towards scooters. A guide we had one day told us 'Vietnam actually does have rules. pause. People just don't follow them.'
Does it matter that the light it red? No. Does it matter that this is a one way street, and I'm going the wrong way? No. Does it matter that this is a sidewalk? No. Does it matter that I have 30 ft long PVC pipe and 15 chickens strapped to my scooter? No. My parents were in Vietnam a month ago and did a really good post on instructions for crossing the street. It actually kind of defies logic, but is exactly the right procedure. You can read it here. I'll do some more observations as we go on, but there's a start.
Here's a photo tour of our time there.
We started the morning with a stroll around the lake
and a visit to a Pagoda.
oreos for an offering? We saw it all over the country...
They say that no two streets in Hanoi meet at a 90 degree angle
We visited the 'Hanoi Hilton', home to many POW's during the war, including McCain
It was a prison for Vietnamese during the French occupation
guillotine in the background
McCains flight suit
Had our first Vietnamese meal
Saw the temple of literature (~1000 yr old university)
bonsai tree
Saw Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum (sort of a let down in true communist style)
and just generally meandered
Sorry if this wasn't a terribly exciting one but fear not, next up is Ha Long Bay!
