First day

Tuesday 28 February, 2006

Got woken up by my alarm at 5am. Didn’t set it correctly. Doh. Had also set the radio alarm for 7.30am so I could get up and meet Candice and Phil for breakfast but it turned out that the volume was down, so I woke to Candice’s knock on the door to collect me for breakfast. Don’t you love that!

I said I’d meet them – so jumped in the shower quickly and headed out onto the street. The first sight of Hanoi in daylight! A caucophony of sights, sounds and smells. Bikes, motorbikes, people on the footpath selling everything from fresh meat to flowers, young and old everywhere eating and drinking. Incredible. Candice and Phil had a coffee waiting for me when I arrived – yum! My first Vietnamese coffee – strong and sweet. Just what I needed.



Phil and Candice at out breakfast stall - notice the pho from breakfast in the right corner of the photo.



Some photos around the hotel's alley/street. The place we had coffee/breakfast is right at the end of all these photos.



A gorgeous little french bakery, just a few doors down from our hotel, and next door to the Polite pub - cute name eh!

Candice and Phil both had to go to work, but I went with Candice to the bank, then went back to my room to grab a few things before being picked up from the hotel at 9am by Diep from CECI (the organization handling our in-country management).

She took me to get a SIM and credit for my mobile (now with Mobiphone… cute eh) and then back to the bank around the corner from the hotel, opposite the famous Hoan Kiem lake. It was then I found out I needed to withdraw large sums from my Mastercard/Visa, so took out two million dong from the ATM instead. My purse was wedged full of 50,000d notes! The first time I’ve ever been a millionaire! J

We then went to the CECI office where I had an informal induction session and also met my language teacher, Le. I arranged times with Le for teaching all week, and then what time she was to come to the hotel in the afternoon for me first language lesson. Le isd absolutely lovely – and she studied her Masters of Linguistics in Australia as well.

It was then back to the hotel to dump my gear, and get some lunch. My first taste of Pho (pronounced “fur”) was delicious and so cheap. The big bowl of noodle soup was about $1.60. I then grabbed a few minutes accessing the internet before rushing back to the hotel to meet Hanh (CECI) to go to Vietcom Bank to set up a Vietnamese bank account.

That was an interesting exercise. People just push in over here – there is no sense of a cue and no sense that someone is being served. It was quite a classic moment that I’m in the middle of handling forms and giving my passport and someone comes right up to the window, butts in and starts asking questions. Hilarious. I’d already been warned about this, so I wasn’t surprised that it happened, just surprised that it happened at the bank.

After the bank, met Le at my hotel for my first lesson. We got about 1.5hours through the first lesson and my head started to absolutely swim. I felt I couldn’t retain more information – tired, worn out, complete information overload. So I asked her if we could stop and make up the time over the week. I’ve never felt that type of head swimming like I did then. She was extremely understanding and said she didn’t mind at all, so I headed up to my room and lay down for half an hour before Candice called to go shopping for supplies.

It was then to Bia Hoi corner with Candice for a pre-dinner drink. Bia Hoi corner is really more like four corners at a cross-road intersection – and on each corner you can sit on a tiny coloured stool on the footpath and drink big pints of Hanoi beer for around 20 cents each. It appears to be a very Vietnam ex-pat thing to do. There were back-packers and ex-pats more than anything.

Went for dinner and had my first sight of Kang Kong (watercress) greens – woo hoo! My favourite. There were a range of dishes in the little cabinet and you choose which one and plate a big plate. We had an interesting experience there as well. The woman told us they didn’t have any beer. And while we could see others drinking beer at other tables, she still said “no beer”.

However, they didn’t bring us one of our dishes, so Candice went to chase it up and they were delivering beers to another table – the lady could hardly refuse. We then got warm beer J I’m told it is not customary for Vietnamese women to drink beer, particularly without men around – so we deduced that was the reason we were denied the pleasure of cold beer with our meal.

Didn’t spoil the experience though – lots of fun! To get to our table we went up steep, tiny stairs, through the kitchen to the third floor. After working in hospitality and kitchens myself during my uni years, it all looked pretty unhygienic to me, but the food was delicious and I figured I was going to have to drop my standards.

Here's some photos of my hotel room. Last night tonight - tomorrow we move into our new home.



Quality hotel eh! Check out the two single beds put together. hehe.



Classic text on the hotel drinks list. Click on the photo to get the bigger view. Just love it.