An Olio

Odds and ends of observations today. 

First, if anyone wants the password to see photos Elaine posted on my blog, just leave your contact information in the comments section and I will send it to you.  If you are not a close friend explain how I know you – just preventing cyber perverts from seeing photos.  If you are one of Elaine’s blog friends, it is the same post that is on hers.

1.  Humidity.  It is so humid here that we are having to send our laundry out.  Rinsing things out and hanging them to dry doesn’t work unless you have three or four days to wait.  I rinsed out a onesie for Quinn two days ago and it still isn’t dry (we have even had the air conditioning on a bit during that time).  Even silky things take two days, but I am doing those anyway rather than sending them out. 

2.  Retirement.  When I went shopping with Ms. Lam two days ago we talked about America during lunch.  She is very interested in how we live in America.  When I mentioned that I am an elected official, a “politician,” she said “You mean you were.”  “No, I am now,” I replied.  She had a hard time getting her brain around that one.  “When do people retire in America,” she asked.  I gave her Social Security Eligibility 101 and told her some people retire earlier and some people continue working beyond that age.  She said in Vietnam men must retire at age 60 and women at 55.  She couldn’t get over that I still work.

3.  The shops on the other side of silk street seem to have better prices than the ones on this side.  Now I find out.  It is one of the widest and busiest streets in this area so we haven’t gone over there shopping before.  I will now.

4.  Yesterday I heard a cacophony of noise and voices outside of the hotel and opened the patio doors and looked out.  It was a stream of children about 10 years old, wearing school uniforms and walking double file, with teachers herding them along.  The line wound around the block and there must have been at least a hundred kids.  I’m guessing it was some type of field trip, but who knows.  Of course they were walking in the street since the sidewalk is covered with parked motor scooters.  And the other sound I heard?  What else – scooters beeping their horns at the kids as they crowded around them.  Unbelievable.

5.  Breakfast is free at the hotel and is good.  Yesterday we had French toast (they don’t have syrup so we had it with jam) and bacon, and Matt also had scrambled eggs and hash browns.  While we ate our waitress took Quinn and walked around with him to keep him happy.  This is the second time that has happened at breakfast, and it also happened with our waiter at Mama Rosa’s.  It’s good we were advised to expect this; it is their kindness to you so you can eat undisturbed, and is common.  In America we would fear that someone was trying to kidnap our child.

6.  The people here are so friendly.  Those who speak a little English want to talk to you so they can practice it, and we had two young women stop for a few minutes to talk while we were sitting on a bench by the lake yesterday.  Everyone comments on how fortunate the baby is to be going home with us.

7.  My computer is having motherboard issues.  Matt says he thinks it probably has a cracked transistor; we were having trouble getting it to boot up before we left home.  We are leaving it on all the time now so we don’t one day find we are offline for the duration.  If I stop blogging you will know what happened.

That’s probably enough mindless observations for one day.  It’s about time for breakfast, then I’ll force myself to go shopping again.

Protected: A Few More of Mr. Handsome

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Eeny Meeny Miney Mo

Matt finally agreed to use the mei tai carrier Katie made for me, but insisted on strapping it onto himself instead of me, and turning it around so Quinn was in front instead of on the back.  That way Matt can meet his every need and doesn’t have to worry about someone taking him out of it.  It works well that way for very protective Daddy.

We tried it out by walking to the Intemex to buy more diapers and other supplies.  It’s a straight shot from the hotel so no chance of getting lost.  Right.  Not so lucky on the way back.

The weather was beautiful, so instead of returning the way we went we walked partway around Lake Hoan Kiem.  A lovely little lake in the heart of the city, it has the scummiest green water I have ever seen.  Not algae green scummy, more like oily green scummy.  Still, it is a peaceful setting in the middle of all the traffic, with a beautiful old building on an island in the middle..

It looks all hazy because it is.  Scooter exhaust is my guess.

Oh, and the horns.  I have mentioned how everyone beeps their horns almost constantly.  Yesterday I took a cab with a horn that every time you beep it, it beeps about five or six times and sort of fades out at the end.  I have heard those horns many times since then.  So, someone makes cars with horns assuming you are always going to want to blow it incessantly.  They must have made them specifically for Hanoi.

We found a restaurant near the lake called Mama Rosa’s, advertising Italian and European food.   Matt’s eyes lit up.  We stopped for lunch and had prosciutto pizza, which actually tasted like real pizza and was very good - and way more than we needed.  We thought they were individual pizzas so ordered two.  Big mistake.  Oh well, we won’t have to go out for supper.  With breakfast free at the hotel that makes today’s food allowance go far.

From there we crossed this huge intersection with no pedestrian light; probably the most daring crossing we have done yet.  I was pretty sure I knew where we were, but I also know I have a terrible sense of direction.  Matt thought we should go a different way and we ended up on an excellent adventure, wandering for a long time, and finally took a pedicab back to the hotel.  It was serendipity, as we saw many things we would have missed otherwise.

I have mentioned before that the streets all seem to have themes.  Today we found the sunglasses street, stainless steel street, thread street (I want to go back to that one and spend a little time with all the huge spools of silk thread), brass street, doorknob street, cheap import streets (more than one of those, with typical junk from China), bamboo street, auto parts street, paint street, and I don’t remember what all else.  It was a real hoot. 

No matter where we went, there were the ubiquitous scooters, driving in the streets and parked all over the sidewalks.  We had to walk in the streets most of the time and by the time we came back to the hotel we were totally comfortable navigating among all the chaos.  The ride in the pedicab was the only scary part of it, since we weren’t in control of our own destiny and the pedicab drivers just go out into the intersections with the cars and scooters zipping in every direction.

Tomorrow it is supposed to be in the high 80s, so we may stay in and enjoy the air conditioning.  With the humidity here that may be a bit much for shopping in what I have decided is the world’s largest flea market.