Day 6: Second Day in Hanoi

Thursday, April 20, 2017

          4am, awake and ready for a full day! In Hanoi, sunrise is at 5:30 and some of our scavenges required being done before sunrise, hence the 4am wake up calls. We took a cab to a flower market, and a market on the Long Bien bridge. Then we walked across the Long Bien bridge, which was built buy Gustav Eiffel. It's a little over a mile long and it was 5:15 in the morning, I was pretty tired. However, that kicked in my adrenaline and I was really awake for the majority of the day.

1 of the many temples

         We took a cab from there to the Hanoi Hilton, and while walking to the Melia (Marriott) hotel, we stopped to have a pho breakfast. The only pho place open was a very small place, and we sat on the sidewalk on kids toy furniture. It ended up being a very good meal. We got to the Melia to get casino chips, only to learn that they play with American dollars, so we got two bucks. We took a cab to a park where we learned tai chi for about 10 minutes, then we headed back to the hotel to take a little breather before we had to leave again at 8:30 to go on a boat.

Another temple

          We had to take a boat that we rented to But Thap Pagoda to bike around for less than an hour, then come back. While we were there we got to stop to look at some venders, and get jelly and ice cream. We went to see the oldest temple in Hanoi, a garden, another temple, and a controversial coffin (is Ho Chi Minh really buried there?). We had the afternoon planned out with a bunch of things to do in various areas, this was all in one area. The last stop in this area was to go to the top of a flag tower. At this point it was around 2:30 and we had been up for a good 10 1/2 hours. The cabbie that was taking us to the flag tower, had a fake meter in his cab that would increase the price at an ABSURDLY FAST rate. In Vietnamese currency that drive should've cost us 8-10 thousand, before we had even gotten there he had charged us over 280 thousand! We noticed it, and made him stop, and we got out. It was almost funny that he was trying so hard to avoid the fact that he had tried to charge us so much because we were Americans, but he got daddy fired up and daddy just totally roasted him (more teenage vernacular).

It's like I grew!!!

          Our second area was closer to the hotel THANK GOD, and our "home stretch". At this point I wasn't upset or grumpy or anything, I was just tired, and extremely hot and sticky. These last few scavenges would have been very hard for me, so I'm very grateful the first one we did was shopping!! I got to buy a shirt (which was a scavenge) at this outdoor market place called Dong Xuan. After this, I was very very hot, and I was ready to be done for the day, but we were almost done. And I wanted to do well on the leg. We went to another temple, an ancient house, and another temple with a 1,000 year old tree in the front. At the ancient house while I was melting, my dad was looking at the jewelry for my mom (always looking out for her!).

Clearly being tortured

          We had 2 scavenges left, and these were the WORST. We had to get massages and pedicures, it was torture. Just kidding ;) I had never had a massage before, so the only knowledge I had of how massages went was from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. It was an hour long, and it was definitely something. It was a little weird but it was relaxing, sort of. The pedicure was fine. We went back to the hotel to put on our swimsuits. We took a photo of the view, jumped in, got out, and went back to the room to shower. It was a fun 2 minute swim.
          We had a rice and noodle dinner (the Asian life) I am currently blogging, and we are meeting up with everyone in the lobby at 10pm to find out where we're going next. So until next time!! ;)

Daddy's View:

There is lots of research into the roots of human longevity.  A common theme across all the data is that daily activities with a focus around a life purpose makes people happier, more energized, and live longer.  This is true for all races, cultures, geographies, religions, countries, and socioeconomic strata across the world.

GSH is the embodiment of a daily focus for all of us on this trip.  24 days is long enough so that the rest of your life is chiseled away from your consciousness.  The trip is structured enough so that daily goals are achievable, but there is enough variability and unknowns to make everyone feel independent, in control of their own destiny, and engaged.  It is this pure, unadulterated, positive sense of focus and purpose that scrubs away the barnacles of daily routine, to expose the shine that's inside all of us.

For example, as you know from Sydney's post:  we rode water buffaloes.  Yesterday at 1pm - after flying in from Hong Kong - we stepped out of a hotel in a city we'd never been to before, in a country we knew nothing about, surrounded by people speaking a language we did not understand, unable to use our phones to google anything.

By 4pm we had a plan and by 6pm we had found a herd of 200 water buffalo in a deeply rural area with no paved roads or water, and we talked the owner into allowing us to MOUNT ONE and TAKE PICTURES.  We accomplished this outcome in two hours.  In Hanoi, Vietnam.  Without a phone.  Between people who did not share a single common word of language.  This is the power of daily focus on a life purpose.

That one scavenge was an absurd and sublime experience.  What is even more incredible is that 20+ people are doing equally incredible, unlikely, awe-inspiring scavenges - like finding water buffaloes in Hanoi - dozens of times a day, every day of this trip.  Sydney and I share a few on this blog - we did 37 in two days, and every single one has a story.  Get a few drinks in me when I get home and I'll tell a few more :)

Here's another one - it's NOT political, it just made me laugh incredibly hard today.  One of the recurring scavenges is that we have to solicit a joke from a cabbie in every city.  We have not found a single cabbie who speaks English in Hanoi.  We had asked like five cabbies for a joke, through hand signals (not effective).

On one of the last cab rides of the day, the cabbie asks "where from?" and we say "United States, America."  He nods and says "Dolla Chump."  We are both confused.  We tried to repeat it.  He keeps repeating it, like we should know what he's talking about.  This who's-on-first routine lasts a good 120 seconds.  Finally he says "OH-puma, yes?  Dolla Chump?  OH-puma?"

I finally get it and start laughing so hard I almost fell out of the cab.

"OH-puma" is Obama.  Dolla Chump is Donald Trump.  He starts laughing, I can't stop laughing, Sydney's laughing.  Our cabbie in Hanoi gave me the very best unintended laugh so far on this trip.  What a week.