Hanoi Seb

I'm in Hanoi now, landed a couple days ago. First day was kinda hairy. I flew from Kathmandu to Bangkok, where I had to wait 12 hours for my flight to Hanoi. I decided to tough it out at the airport, which is absolutely huge, and is more like a gigantic mall with airplanes floatin' around, than anything else. I finally get on my flight, an Air Asia flight, which decided to double my fare before I got on because my carry on bag was too heavy. Yes, they had a scale there, and even though it fits easily in the over-head bin, they still said too heavy. They made me check the bag in, and I somehow I managed to talk them down, but it annoyed my when all the over head bins were completely empty when I got in. After we took off, I pretty much had the single scariest experience in my life on a plane, after the whole thing dropped about 50 feet after we flew straight into some storm clouds. Everyone one the plane started laughing nervously when we straightened out, and again when the captain turned off the fasten seat belt light no more than two minutes after. I've lately been getting more scarred of flying, and this definitely did not help. I landed, and met my mom who had been staying at our hotel since the 11th. We decided to go out on the town, and when we got back, we realized that her purse had been pick-pocketed, and some bitch took her iPod (we were positive it was a woman who was aggressively trying to sell us crap at the Temple of Literature)

The experience did give me pause, as the whole day seemed to be one giant dichotomy. On the one hand, I got severely freaked out by the plane dropping and my mom getting robbed, yet at the same time I realized that I loved being back in Hanoi, and we started the day off right in terms of all the amazing food I had, and being able to hang out with my mom, my friend Ben August (who's upcoming wedding is the main reason for the whole trip), and my other friend Mark Morgan. We had these awesome pork meatballs things wrapped in vegetables at this place called New Day Restaurant. I ran into Vietnamese people who were legitimately happy to be able to talk with Westerners, exuding a child-like happiness that would come off as weird in the US, but I fell is perfectly alright, something that I wished people in the West could learn to do. People here have one thing that growing up in poverty can give you, which is being happy with less, and not getting too uptight and angry over every little obstacle you face in life. One thing I love about Hanoi is that people don't seem to care about being cool, and don't have all the fake posing and posturing that comes with it. I love being in a place where no one brags about dumb shit, or tries to impress other people and "sell" themselves all the time. My first day here I almost saw as a test, to see how would I paint my experience in Hanoi, whether I remembered it by the bad stuff or the good. I decided to just stay focused on as much good as I could, and so far, everything has been smooth (I literally just knocked on wood right now)

The second day in Hanoi was better, or at least devoid of shit luck. Had goat hot-pot with Ben and Huyen, then drinks with Mark at a place that didn't necessarily kick us out, but still made sure to let us know they wanted us to leave an hour before we ended up doing so. Yesterday, me, my mom and Mark took an overnight trip Halong Bay, one of the main tourist attractions in Vietnam. After a two hour drive, and and an hour ride on a ferry that takes you to a large island in the bay, we got on this awesome wooden junk (which is kinda like a yacht) and motored off. Besides us, the only other people on the boat was a middle-aged Australian couple, who ended being being really cool. Halong Bay has to be one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited in my entire life. You basically sail around a bay, with massive steep hills covered in vegetation shooting out everywhere. We took a kayak trip too, which when you stop paddling, lets you drift through the hills and natural caves of the bay, with only the sounds of jungle nature echoing about. Really takes your breath away. I was expecting it to be amazing, and it was still better than I hoped. Despite the fact it was really gray out, and even rained a little, we still went swimming, with Mark and Bruce, one of the Australians. Jumping into cold water and swimming 200 yards was probably not the best idea after eating a huge meal and drinking a couple beers, but fun never the less. We swam to a small, private sized beach on the side of one of the tiny hill-islands, which was cool despite it being kind of littered with trash and a rotting dead dog. On the boat, we had amazing food, an array of seafood caught mere hours ago. We cleared out their entire cooler of beer, but luckily they found a case of more. The Vietnamese tour guides even kind of hung out with us a little, despite knowing very little English, although you can tell it got kind of awkward for everyone after you quickly ran out of things to talk about. Nonetheless, it was amazing, and would highly recommend it. The tour we took was called the Eco-Tour, and from what I hear, it was the best tour to take, since they go where other tours can't, thus making the whole experience be devoid of crowds.

We got back to Hanoi later last night, and went to the Hanoi Opera House, where we saw the Vietnamese National Orchestra preform music by some guy named Dvorak. I would google him now, and at least pretend I've heard of him, but I assume he's some old Eastern European guy, and fuck it, I'm running out of time here. I thought they were good, but then I don't really have anything to compare it to. We then went to Nola, a cool bar cafe nearby for drinks. Met up with my friend Mark Roden and Anthony Carbone, and later with my Mom's friend Jonathan.