Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Monday, June 1, 2015
What we are NOT experiencing....
While we are obviously having an awesome time and having an experience of a lifetime, we are missing out on some things. Today we heard our little ultimate frisbee project that Rob Marshall and I started a few years ago (and that Abby and Robin are a part of), came full circle. Our Norseman senior team are the City Champs! Fan-tastic! I'm so proud of the team! We've been playing frisbee a few times in Asia and I think the team have inspired us to play more. Congrats to the whole team!
Day 21: Walking the streets of Hanoi
We had a nice little breakfast at our hotel this morning (though the kids realized too late that they could also order crepes and pancakes - it was a topic of frequent discussion today!). The plan was to exchange some money then walk the streets in the morning.
Exchanging money was interesting - the hotel recommended we do it at a jewellery store (any one would do) on a nearby street for the best rate. They were right - we exchanged a bunch of US dollars for a fistful of Dong (insert laughter here) at a rate greater than the current international exchange rate. That demand must be either speculative or show that dollars can do more than local currency for jewelry shops...
The French quarter is pretty cool (though extremely hot and humid!) - streets and streets of small shops offering everything you could think of. I love how specialized the shops are: styrofoam shops, wallpaper shops, metal cage shops, spice shops, prayer flag shops, fruit shops - and on and on. We are getting stares, but from mostly friendly faces. I think it's a combination of the girls (you don't see too many western kids here) and the Gaijinzilla (a term Steve and Kristing coined in Japan combining the word for foreigner and Godzilla!), though it could just be Beth (they don't often see such attractive, totally not sweaty backpacking Deloitte executives here.... :-)).
We made our way to 2 markets today. The first was a local market that had mostly used clothes - it wa da bit bizarre. The next was the popular "Dong Xuan" market near the top of the night market street. Don Xuan was pretty cool, though very hot and if you went around the outside of the interior market, it was pretty tight quarters. This market pretty much had every clothing item and type of fabric you could possibly buy, as well as the usual tourist trinkets.
What fascinated me was the outside alleyways surrounding the markets - everywhere you'd look there were little "restaurants" set up - that is, 8 little chairs about 30cm tall, a low table with a bunch of plates of food and toppings, a single person behind the table doing prep/serving/cooking and maybe a sign and tarp above. On one hand you would be thinking "I'd never eat at that place!" but on the other it would be drawing you in... At least I felt that way!
We eventually made it to a small local restaurant near our hotel for lunch - it was yummy. Based on the meals so far, we are quickly remembering that eating local is the way to go.
The kids and Beth are becoming expert road crossers. You basically just project confidence, step into traffic and move smoothly across. When you're in the middle of the road, you feel a bit like Noah parting the scooter sea - it's quite magical... Lol. I took a short video that doesn't really give you the full feel of the roads but it's a start:
The afternoon mission was to cool down, so we took an expensive cab (55,000 DONG!... Oh wait, that's $3....) down to a little more modern area and we took in Tomorrowland (pretty good!). Beth played the role of our friend Probir during the movie by catching a few zees....
Unfortunately there was a Starbucks outside the movie theater.... But it was across a huge, busy road. Would we brave the crossing, or tuck tails and cab it home??? We dug into our lifetime of experiences playing Crossy Road (kids) and Frogger (parents) and made a beeline for Starbucks.... Hmmm good.
A short walk later, we stumbled across a huge park that bordered a pretty large lake with 2 islands. Interestingly we had to pay to get in...25 cents each - weird. It seemed like a very locally focused park. There were people doing exercises, boys playing hackey sack with a soccer ball, roller skaters and the ever present market set up. The oddest thing was that throughout the park were derelict, tiny rides - it was almost like Center island in Toronto had moved here, the closed up 25 years ago. We felt a combination of amusement and creepiness. It almost felt like reflection of where communism got Russia...
We have an adventure planned tomorrow, and we are looking forward to getting near the water the day after. I'm loving the service and attitude of the staff at our hotel and most other places of business and I'm liking Hanoi so far.
Starbucks Review: Hanoi, Vietnam
Here are our ratings for Northern Vietnam:
Service: 5/5
Cleanliness: 5/5
Selection: 4.5/5
Food/Drink Quality: 5/5
Ambiance: 4/5
Overall Rating: 4:5/5
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Culture shock
We are not in Kansas anymore.
This place is crazy town and I'm not 25.
Had my first little freak out last night and needed to reach out to my brother Brian for a pep talk which he gave me, and it's helped. That said I haven't gone outside yet today to do it all over again. I keep reminding myself that I've done this before, AND my 72 year old father did this last year with ease. The biggest issue is the sweltering heat and humidity as it makes everyone (me) more irritable and less able to go with the flow. I'm sure it's worse in the cities and was bad in Hong king but we had more frequent areas of air conditioning and there were actually predictable traffic rules!
We are staying on backpacker row amongst many travellers in their twenties and a few older ones too. Have not seen any other kids yet. Hotel is nice, clean and the family room is spacious. Great area if you can actually cross the street...
Freak out part two came when we were supposed to cross the street...of course I remember my brother and Dad describing this, but until you are faced with actually having to make it to the other side, it doesn't seem real. Being a Mom now with my kids in tow is a very different experience. Craig crossed and then had to come back to get us as we had been too scared to follow him. You are supposed to just walk slowly and confidently but I wasn't confident that the kids wouldn't make any sudden movements! Anyway, we made it and did a few more street crossings and I think we're starting to get the hang of it. Abby asked at one point, "don't they have lights and lines on the streets?" Nope. Appears they do not.
The monsoon didn't help things in terms of stress, BUT it did take a number of degrees off the heat and allowed us to have some relief even if we were wearing plastic bags.
It's culture shock. Japan and Hong Kong were fancy and easy. This is the real start of the adventure portion of this backpacking trip.
The positive was that Abby picked up a little mirror at the night market for a fraction of the Hong Kong market prices and she was happy. Robin has already bought her first pair of elephant baggy backpacker pants and noted that those, a tank top and Birkenstocks are really trendy! Trendy in SE Asia I might add, not sure you'd wear that in Etobicoke!
Today is a new day and after a good sleep and an email from my pro traveller brother, I am ready to face the heat. I mean day.
Day 20: Welcome to Hanoi!
We had a great morning today... Woke up and got packed just in time to skype into a Norseman clan party - it was great to see everybody! We strolled around between our hotel and Causeway Bay and grabbed some breakfast - we learned that we could spend a lot less on good food after our Foodie tour yesterday (though grabbing Starbucks after kind of made that a moot point!).
We cabbed it to Hong Kong airport - the place is amazing. After a short 2 hour flight, we were landing in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. I felt like our real Southeast Asia trip was about to begin. We won't see another big modern 1st world city until Singapore in a month. We met our driver (prearranged with the hotel) and puttered off to the City. I say puttered because (you were right Papa) they drive extremely slowly, even on the highway (about 50 km/h). As we got closer to the capital, we noticed the mopeds and scooters and bikes beginning to mass. It's a very cool organized chaos that I will have to capture on video to to it justice.
Our hotel is in backpacker alley - it seems like a good area and the room is huge and clean. Our receptionist, Bella, gave us a warm introduction and gave us all a welcome drink... Kind of nice! Things seemed pretty cheap off the bat when we gave her our laundry which she weighed and pronounced that it would be $6 to clean. We headed out for Pho on her recommendation and landed at a spot where we all had vegetarian pho - quite good.
Sunday is the day for the night market in Hanoi. Getting there was..... Interesting. You really have to trust the local way of crossing the road - just start walking, slowly, in a direct line and make sure you don't make unpredictable moves - kind of like riding in a peloton! Beth and Abby were pretty unnerved at first, but they seemed to get the hang of it.
The night market was actually fantastic - something for everyone and way more interesting than the markets in Hong Kong. Unfortunately the reason we suddenly started getting cooler breezes to relieve the heat on the streets was that a short monsoon storm was blowing in. Within 20 minutes of getting to the market, we were huddled under a tarp trying to figure out what to do. Beth saw a woman selling rain ponchos so we paid the outrageous price of 40,000 Vietnamese Dong for 4, quite a ripoff but we were desperate... Wait... No.... That's only $2.40 Canadian.... Total!
We made it back to the hotel (the streets were almost dry by that time), and now we are all catching up on our iPads! My initial impressions of Hanoi: chaotic scooter craziness, beautiful night scene around the lake, super friendly people, backpackers aplenty, memories of SE Asia circa 1997!
We cabbed it to Hong Kong airport - the place is amazing. After a short 2 hour flight, we were landing in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. I felt like our real Southeast Asia trip was about to begin. We won't see another big modern 1st world city until Singapore in a month. We met our driver (prearranged with the hotel) and puttered off to the City. I say puttered because (you were right Papa) they drive extremely slowly, even on the highway (about 50 km/h). As we got closer to the capital, we noticed the mopeds and scooters and bikes beginning to mass. It's a very cool organized chaos that I will have to capture on video to to it justice.
Our hotel is in backpacker alley - it seems like a good area and the room is huge and clean. Our receptionist, Bella, gave us a warm introduction and gave us all a welcome drink... Kind of nice! Things seemed pretty cheap off the bat when we gave her our laundry which she weighed and pronounced that it would be $6 to clean. We headed out for Pho on her recommendation and landed at a spot where we all had vegetarian pho - quite good.
Sunday is the day for the night market in Hanoi. Getting there was..... Interesting. You really have to trust the local way of crossing the road - just start walking, slowly, in a direct line and make sure you don't make unpredictable moves - kind of like riding in a peloton! Beth and Abby were pretty unnerved at first, but they seemed to get the hang of it.
The night market was actually fantastic - something for everyone and way more interesting than the markets in Hong Kong. Unfortunately the reason we suddenly started getting cooler breezes to relieve the heat on the streets was that a short monsoon storm was blowing in. Within 20 minutes of getting to the market, we were huddled under a tarp trying to figure out what to do. Beth saw a woman selling rain ponchos so we paid the outrageous price of 40,000 Vietnamese Dong for 4, quite a ripoff but we were desperate... Wait... No.... That's only $2.40 Canadian.... Total!
We made it back to the hotel (the streets were almost dry by that time), and now we are all catching up on our iPads! My initial impressions of Hanoi: chaotic scooter craziness, beautiful night scene around the lake, super friendly people, backpackers aplenty, memories of SE Asia circa 1997!
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