I'm in Vietnam!

Well everyone, I made it. There's so much to write about, yet I don't want to overwhelm you, so I'll try to stick with the cliff notes. The tree on the left is a ficus, its styled like a giant bonsai, well I guess it is, technically since bonsai literally means, tree in a pot. It's common here to style trees and hedges like that. You don't see just boxy type hedges, they have style. So anyway, I left on the 20th at 7:30am, and spent something like 27 hours traveling to the other side of the earth. It was crazy, the flight from Chicago to Hong Kong felt so long! I'd try to sleep, wake up, look at the clock and realize I had only dozed for like 20 minutes and still had 13 hours to go. My seat mate didn't speak any English and slept quite deeply. I felt bad waking him to go to the bathroom, he didn't get up ONCE! I had to use the restroom 3 times and felt like a little kid bothering him, but sheesh, 3 times in 15 hours isn't that bad when you think about it. So anyway, went to Hong Kong and stayed there like 4 hours. I tried to sleep in the airport but that lasted about 10 minutes before this entire Vietnamese family DESCENDED complete with yelling across the lobby at each other. I counted 17 in total with all the children. Grr, I was quite grumpy about that, tried the dirty looks, but they didn't seem to register. So I moved down a bit, and then the rest of the family showed up, so I gave up and juggled for them. They ended up being very sweet people, and a couple of the kids spoke very good English. I was called Amazing for my juggling, they all applauded, even people that weren't in the family, that's a new one, and now I can go home happy.



A plane at the Hong Kong airport.

On the plane from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City I sat next to two native Vietnamese guys that were both living in the states and visiting family. One spoke much better English than the other, his name is Phan, and he actually has married a girl here in Vietnam, and had a baby with her. The crazy part is he's having trouble getting her and the baby over to the states, so since 2006 he visits his wife twice a year for about a month at a time. Isn't that nuts! He said his wife is clear to go to the states now, but they have to get the son sorted out next, and then he can bring his family home to Pennsylvania. He ended up sticking with me in the airport and making sure I got through customs and got my bag ok, he was afraid it would be lost and he wanted to help me with the language just in case. Talk about a nice person. I got to meet his family outside, just before I found the guy picking me up. Phan gave me his phone number and told me to call him if I got into any trouble, he'd come help me out. He also might come visit me in Hue, he said he's always wanted to go there, I told him to come to the school for the blind and ask for me and I'd show him around the city :-) I hope he shows up.

The drive to the hotel was crazy! The traffic is incredible here, like as in, amazing. Its no longer any wonder to me why in places like New York you have so many foreign people driving the taxis. They must be the best folks for the job, because if traffic was like it was last night in a city in the US, you'd have total grid lock from car accidents. These people are martial artists on a scooter or mini van. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that New York City probably seems like a school zone in suburbia to a lot of people from other countries. I'll try to get a better traffic pic later, but you of course have the video below which will give you an even better idea.





The room is nice and tiny, but very clean, and has wireless Internet. The people running the place are very kind. Not much to say about the place, its tiny and nice, with a very uncomfortable computer chair, this thing is tortuous. I went out walking this morning after finally going to bed at around 3:30am, waking up at 8 or something. Not too bad, really. I found this nice little place where they made a ham, cheese, and mushroom omelet plus essentially a papaya, banana, and something else, fruit smoothie for a little over 3 dollars. Pretty cheap breakfast, and I have a suspicion it was probably kind of expensive for here, I'll let ya know once I learn the ropes better. The traditional breakfast would have been a chicken with rice, more like what I would think of us lunch. I wanted to try it, but I thought I'd stay safe, as I don't need uncomfortable stomach issues when I plan to be flying and traveling.


Here's the room from standing in the bathroom.


Everywhere you walk you get bothered by people wanting to sell you stuff, its pretty annoying, but they usually leave me be after I say no thanks. There's a bunch of little old ladies carrying stuff all over the place, and the skills the people have with balancing things on scooters just adds to their traffic-fu black belts they seem to be born with.

So after writing this blog, I'll check out of the hotel, take a cab back to the airport and at 4:30 if all the stars properly align, will fly to Hue. After that I truly don't know what the next step is. You'll be surprised I'm sure to learn that Gabby has not told me. I dont' even have an address for the school, or the place I'll be living. I can only hope that she's arranged to have me picked up and just left that detail out. If not, my plan is to get to a hotel, and in the morning work my way to the school for the blind. So i'm not too worried.

Some more random pics for you:
This is down the street from my hotel, not too bad on traffic here.


I'll update you all again soon, next stop Hue! Miss everyone very much.

~Mickey