Hanoi, Vietnam

I'm drinking a bottle of coke at a rooftop cafe in Hanoi. There are stylish young Vietnamese, some foreigners, and free wifi. And Korean pop songs. Always Korean pop songs. Forever. And American Idol late night re-runs. We watch that every night. Sometimes we miss the good old States and need a dose of these things. Like cheesy teen flicks. Yum! Macdonald's! JK!

I've been out in the Halong Bay for the last few days which was incredibly beautiful. Alice and I went kayaking and went to some caves. The food was not so ideal (seafood dinner = cheapass frozen fish cakes) and I got sick but I am not complaining. I drank a Hanoi beer and I kind of passed out at night (traveling exhausts me sometimes) so I don't really know if sleeping on the boat was any different but waking up to a breathtaking view was amazing.

Today we walked around some new parts of Hanoi and got insanely lost but still managed to see Ho Chi Minh's dead body at the Mausoleum. We got lost again and found the Temple of Literature as well as a number of other really neat temples. Some parts of town has no foreigners and no one spoke English (I had to pee so baaaad!!!). It took so long to convince one Vietnamese lady to please let me use the restroom. She just stared at us really suspiciously and shook her head. A nice man helped convince her that we were harmless. We didn't mean to be suspicious-looking foreigners!! I need to learn how to say toilet in different languages. Seriously.

It's funny because Alice and I stand out so much here in very different ways. I'm starting to get sick of all the "Konichiwa" and "Hello" but I am sure that won't stop especially when we're in Northeast Thailand.

I leave for Bangkok early tomorrow morning. We'll go to training together and part ways for homestay and teaching. I'm excited to get settled as I need a bit more stability in my life. It's nice to have Alice with me. Finally, someone to laugh with whenver the Numa Numa song comes on at a cafe. I don't know what it is about Asia and the Numa Numa song. They love it.

I really like Vietnam. I'm going to miss it. Hopefully I'll return. The food here is so good. People are nice enough. I am stoked about Thailand! I posted a lot of photos on facebook and I'm uploading some videos now. I miss everyone especially a lot today!



Oh hey and there are actually photos of me now, thanks to Alice! They are http://picasaweb.google.com/alice.mcelhinney/Hanoi so you can check them out. :)