Bill arrives in Hanoi

I arrived last night in Vietnam ~11 PM. All my luggage showed up. A win!

There was a mix up with my hotel reservations, so I am staying at an older local hotel by the train tracks, with an interesting smell which is hard to describe, but if bottled would not sell well. It has a little different ambiance from the Sunway with its web site and fancy pictures. This to will pass.

I slept a little on the 13 hour flight from Chicago to Tokyo. During the flight I fired up Rosseta stone and learned how to read “elephant, airplane and car” in Vietnamese. Good conversation starters. I slept most of the flight between Tokyo and Hanoi (hopefully I wasn’t snoring too loud). The 2nd flight was full of Japanese business men. Linda always says I shouldn’t speak about this, but most of them seemed very thirsty. While I was awake, the flight attendants were running with a couple of bottles in each hand.

Even though it was late, driving into the city was interesting. The motorbikes don’t have lights that work on the back so I didn’t see most of them until the last minute. Some of them are piled high with goods. The drivers must have incredible balance and I am impressed with their stacking ability. They can get 10 pounds into a 2 pound bag.

My driver, Huong (said in a very deep voice) and everyone else driving seems to honk at every corner, when they go to pass, or if they have not honked in the last 90 seconds. He can say “elephant, airplane and car” in English, so we had a wonderful conversation during the drive in.

It is now 6 AM and a bit noisy outside as Hanoi is now wide awake with the train and the horns.

The adventure begins.

I have today off and begin work tomorrow. Today, I try to figure out how a few things work here.

.....and later.......

I must be staying way, away from the tourist area. I saw 1 other non-Asian on my 2 hour walk. They were across the street and gave a big smile and wave.

A few people have showed interest in the old white guy roaming around. A few have tried to talk, a struggle to say the least. Every pedal-cab yells and waves at me. I have no idea where to ask them to take me and how I would ever find my way back.

I stopped at 10 banks, 9 would not exchange $s for Dong. Not sure what that means. I had to sign 4 different forms to change $100 to 1.5 million Dong. That may have been purely for their amusement.

The interest rate is roughly 1% for every month you leave your money in the banks in this part of town:
· 1% for 1 month
· Up to 36% for 36 months.

Inflation appears to have raised its ugly head here. It is hard to find a price on anything.

I know I should not generalize, but it looks like everyone works over here. People are welding on the sidewalk, mixing cement in a hole, cutting up and cooking food, carrying those 2 big weaved pans on a long stick over their shoulder.

Very noisy, very crowded, fairly dirty.

I cross the street in front of the occasional car or bus. The scooters are like mosquitoes. I know I will be hit by many before I leave.

There are 2 to 8 little places to eat on every block. They use the little step stools for seats.

Maybe I am missing something, but not a whole lot of folks smoke. One guy had a huge pipe made of bamboo fired up with an interesting smell.

Beer seems to be included in the breakfast of champions in this part of town.