Day 5: First Day in Hanoi!

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

          The third leg has started! We had an 8:30am flight to Hanoi, Vietnam, and now we're here! It was a short 2 hour flight, and we are staying at the 2 year old Apricot hotel, (which also has VERY SPARKLY chandeliers!!!). These hotels we have been staying at are LIT!!!! (that means awesome and super cool for the adults who don't fully understand teenage vernacular). We had about an hour to chill, and then we met up in the lobby to close the HK leg and start the Hanoi leg. Team Ying got 3rd!!!!!! I'm super happy, even though it's not 1st, we sweat our BUTTS off and now we have a pretty good idea of what it would take to win. We are going to try hard, but also focus a lot on enjoying ourselves.

SPARKLY CHANDALIERS!!

          We got our scavenges list, and we have until 10pm the next day. We are pending 36 hours in Hanoi, and then it's of to some other country somewhere in the world! Based on our experiences in HK, we knew the first things we had to do were, get cash, find maps and travel guide books (IN ENGLISH), and find a place WITH AC to plan out what we were going to do for the next 2 days. Within an hour of starting, we had cash, books/maps, and we were sitting in a little cafe planning. Planning went pretty well, (mainly because I got ice cream) and we got a lot of stuff figured out. By this time it was like 2pm, so we had to start scavenging.

Daddy correctly riding an animal

          The first thing we did was Taxi cab roulette, which basically meant we had to get in a taxi and our taxi driver had to pick a restaurant to drop us off at, (which was hard to convey with the language barrier). But we ate at Vietnamese Cuisine, which was actually very good. After that we were able to catch a cab to a Trip Advisor we saw near our hotel. We were lucky enough to get help from a very nice lady there named Yen. We were there for about 1 1/2 hours planning, scheduling, and figuring out where things were. We decided that the first thing we would do was go ride a water buffalo, because that what people do when they go to Hanoi. It took us a while to convey to Yen that we couldn't just look at them like very other normal person, nope. We had to SIT on them.

Daddy INCORRECTLY riding an animal 

Me INTERNALLY FREAKING OUT

         We were able to go to the countryside, (45 mins away) and we spent a good hour-1 1/2 hours looking for the water buffalos. While we were looking, we found some other animals we were able to mount, (which is a scavenge, we're not freaks yet). We found sheep, goats, and dogs. We eventually find a huge herd of water buffalo (300) and the herder there said we could sit on one. He found us a really big and old water buffalo and my dad and I both got a chance to sit on it, take a picture, then internally flip out about the situation.
          We finished this around 7pm, and it was like I had a sugar crash, without the sugar. When we actually saw and sat on the water buffalo I was super hyped and freaking out. And within 3 minutes of being in the car, I was out. I fell asleep, and was in and out of it for the next 1 1/2 hours. During those 1 1/2 hours, we spent the whole time looking for 1 specific restaurant to try 1 specific food. After we FINALLY found it, we went straight back to the hotel, showered, and by 9:30 we were both VERY MUCH asleep. We have to be up at 4am the next day so. Until next time!! ;)

Dad's View:

You know when you really take the time to suck on a piece of butterscotch candy?  You can feel the buttery texture, you can feel the crevices of the candy on your tongue, the syrupy-ness of your saliva as it builds up in your mouth, you suck on it and it gives resistance, maybe some gaps that lose suction.  You really learn that piece of candy, and it tastes better b/c you're spending that time and focusing on it.

That's what it feels like we do with locations on this trip.  Except that someone hands us a new piece of candy every couple of days and we have no idea what it is.  Then we need to work really hard at sucking on every part of that candy - you can't bite it, only sucking on it - for two solid days.  After that much work, you really appreciate the flavors of that candy.

Leaving Hong Kong, I thought of two things:

First, when I was 14, my dad said something in his broken English to his entitled know-it-all son: "In America, you kids have too much choice!"  The intent was that hey, limitations are *good* for people - it's reality forcing you to be your best and make the best of things.  I of course got furious and horrified that he was impugning the great American approach of have everything you want.

Anyway, the GSH is fantastic specifically b/c it ELIMINATES almost all your choices.  The only choices you have are which of the 70 items are we going to try to do?  Out of the infinite permutations and possibilities in wherever... pick from these 70.  That would seem so.... limiting.  Yet it is exactly the opposite - it is freeing and expands your sensations to get to 11 on each of the ones you tackle, and the city as a whole.

Second, a lot of the fun of this trip is sharing experiences with the random assortment of people on the trip with you, in the moment and immediately after the moment.  The pain/pleasure milieu that arises from trying hard on this trip... is uncommon, if not unique.  And the people who self-select themselves to re-arrange their long-term life schedules to take time off, pay a serious chunk of change, and get through the personality screening of bill and pamela... are also incredibly uncommon, if not unique.

You put those things together, and it's really just... life-affirming.  Everyone's sweating and getting frustrated and being elated and being uncomfortable and laughing and trying crazy things... and they're doing it for the right reasons.  You get those types of people together on a bus, on a plane, waiting in line, at breakfast, in the lobby, running into each other out on the streets... it's such a special thing to be able to share this with a group of like-minded total strangers.

Lastly, yes, we did have an active first day in Hanoi, Vietnam.  I am now looking at Sydney's post, and understand her hysterical cackling.  I will comment on the first day in Hanoi in the next post.