Today, I am in Suvarnabhumi international airport in Thailand, on my way from Vietnam to Berlin. (**OK, so I started writing this a really long time ago clearly. just work with it.**). Although I'm SERIOUSLY going to miss all that is the 'real' Vietnam (and Mr. Cong, of course) I'm overflowing with excitement and anticipation to start my quarter abroad in Berlin. But while conical hats, pho and motorbikes still run rampant in my mind, let's reminisce about my final (and arguably best) days in Vietnam. We begin with Hanoi.
On our second full day in this capitol city, we started the morning off with a meeting with two representatives from the Trade Remedies Division of Government at the Ministry of Trade. Because I wouldn't understand economics if my life depended on it, what's important to know about this is that I MET TWO REAL LIVE COMMUNISTS. like party members. like live, breathe and die for red. kind of weird if you think about it. Anyways, we then continued our day with a cyclo ride around the old quarter of Hanoi, a place of tiny but BUSTLING streets with store after store after store selling anything you could possibly imagine for exorbitantly low prices. That afternoon was the visit to the Hanoi Fine Arts Museum the Hoa Lo Prison used both during the French Colonial period AND where John McCain was held during the Vietnam War. THEN we had seminar for two hours. Needless to say, I was exhausted. But definitely not tired enough for a Hanoi rendezvous with nicky j, owen, blake and ben. It was like Mao's Red Lounge knew we were coming, because the drink special was Long Island Iced Teas for 35, 000 VND. According to today's exchange rate that is exactly $1.93. Suck on that Illusions. After a few more rounds and few trips to the toilet (hey nick) we decided to go to Hoan Kiem--on foot and sans map, naturally. Somehow, after wandering around DEAD quiet streets (everything literally shuts down at like 8 besides bars), we arrived at the beautiful lake, took some great FB status shots and found taxi's home
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But of course the night didn't end there. Upon returning to my hotel room, I realized that everyone from the program had left the bar, except for Oliver. Though Oliver is probably one of the biggest guys I know, completely competent at handling himself AND training to be in the US military, I decided it would be a good idea to stay up all night (literally) worrying about him and creating multiple scenarios of his night, all ending with him never ever coming back. I even called the bar and said, "ummm I have a question? is there an American wearing a black shirt in your bar right now?". Maybe the long islands had worked their wonder, or maybe I'm going to be the best mom ever. But what you need to know is that not only was Oliver completely fine, he returned to the hotel merely 15 minutes after I did, and quote "had the best night ever".
Needless to say that when our trip to Halong Bay (including the 3+ hour bus ride) was postponed because of, you guessed it, another typhoon, my body went into fatigue 911 mode. To be honest, the rest of that day was kind of a blur, minus our interesting shopping excursion to Nguyen Huu Huan street. What looked like cute shops from afar, turned out to be shop after shop of bootleg designer anything. From Dolce & Gaddana to Channel to women trying to sell blatantly fake gucci bags for $1,000, nothing was purchased. Sleep that night never felt so good. MLIA
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