Always The Tour Guide

(PICTURE: Me and the soon-to-be mother-in-law in front of the Opera House.)

I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a month that I've lived in Hanoi where I didn't play tour guide to a visiting friend or a friend of a friend. It seems that there are always people in town who are separated from me by just one or two degrees. In fact, over the last month, there have been three different people who I've shown around the city. Yes, this can get exhausting but it is always nice to give someone a tour; as I know from my own traveling there is nothing better than knowing a local in a foreign city.

Not too long ago, Huyen's mother came into Hanoi to visit her mother who was in the hospital for a foot operation. Despite living only an hour away from Hanoi, Huyen's mom has spent little to no time in the city. This is like living in Livingston, NJ and never going to New York.

Huyen and I couldn't let her mom come to the big city and not get a tour so we convinced her to leave the hospital for an hour and to come with us. We whisked her around the town and showed her a few famous places like Hoam Kiem Lake and the Opera House. However, Huyen's mom was much more interested in the food so we grabbed a couple of our favorite treats that weren't too far from the hospital. Despite only having an evening to play tour guide, it was great to give my future mother-in-law a tour of Hanoi!

Printer-Ink-Man

(PICTURE: Printer-Ink-Man in action.)

My printer ran out of ink the other day. I told Huyen we needed to pick up another ink cartridge and she told me that they were too expensive. Instead she said she would call the Printer-Ink-Man.

Remember the other day when I was talking about Vietnamese ingenuity. Well, this is exactly what I was talking about. The Printer-Ink Man's job is to go from home to home and office to office refilling ink cartridges. It saves the consumer money and creates a job! Genius!...except for the fact that my printer is now printing pages a little bit funny.

Wedding Update: My Fat Fingers

(PICTURE: Huyen rejected my first choice for wedding bands. I thought it would be a good homage to Ahoy Hanoi.)

This past weekend Huyen and I began to do some of the more "fun" planning and preparing for weddings. Well, that's unless you consider driving twelves hours to drop off paperwork and be asked somewhat intrusive questions fun.

Huyen and I both want to get very simple, matching wedding bands. Personally, I hate jewelery. Minus my college pocket watch and the occasional trendy necklace in my youth, I've never worn jewelery. Frankly, I don't like the way it feels or looks on me. Thankfully, Huyen doesn't really wear jewelery either so we're on the same page on this. The two of us started our wedding band search by going to one of the biggest jewelery stores in Hanoi. We immediately spotted bands that we liked and asked to try them on. Well, it didn't go so well. The band couldn't even fit on my sausage-like pinky finger. The store clerk told us that if we wanted the ring in my size it would take 7-8 months to have imported from France. Yeah, no thanks. She also told us that we were going to have a very hard time finding any rings my size in Hanoi. So, the challenge is on!

Huyen and I will be going to some other jewelery shops soon to see if a) they have my size OR b) can make me a ring. Worst case scenario, my internet guru mom has found a good site for us to order rings from and have shipped to New Jersey. I'm just a littler nervous though about not trying on a ring until a few days before the big day. The point is, even the simple parts of wedding planning don't end up being so simple!

Wedding Update: Scouting Hotels

While in Ha Nam last week, Huyen and I scouted some hotels for the wedding. As I've been doing some planning for the wedding, I realized it makes more sense for people to stay close to her home the night before the wedding since we'll be going there for the "rehearsal dinner" the night before. Instead of driving more than an hour in unpredictable traffic to and from Hanoi, we can all save time by staying a few minutes away in Phu Ly.

I've come up with something I call "The Brett Test." I think to myself, will my friend Brett be willing to sleep/eat in this hotel/restaurant. I was pleasantly surprised by the hotel that Huyen and I found and I'm pretty sure it'll pass the Brett test. Brett?

It's got a nice-ish lobby:


Clean beds and bathroom:



And a nice view:



That said, I would suggest bringing your own pillow case. You can buy a new one with the savings since this hotel costs about $15 a night for the suites.

Boy Genius!

(PICTURE: Genius in the flesh. I'm talking about the guy on the right.)

Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Su!!!! Su is officially a boy genius -- he passed his university entrance exam and will begin university in the Fall!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, Su was ecstatic yesterday when I called him. It'll be great to have Su in Hanoi in the near future. Su is a great kid and I'm excited to be able to take him around the city and introduce him to lots of new things.

As I've written on the blog in the past, passing the university entrance exam is a pretty tall feat. This hit home yesterday when Su told Huyen and I that 50% of his classmates did not pass their exams. I can't imagine if 50% of the people I graduated with couldn't get accepted to a university.

Congrats again to Su!

A Very Peculiar Grapefruit

The other night Huyen peeled a grapefruit and discovered that inside the grapefruit was a smaller undeveloped grapefruit:

(PICTURE: The baby grapefruit on the right was inside the big grapefruit.)

Does anyone else find this really strange? I'm pretty sure I've never eaten a fruit that had an identical twin growing inside of it.

Asthma

I know that there are some doctors reading my blog so I'm gonna pose this question to you: Is the rate of kids with Asthma higher in Hanoi than in most other places in Vietnam/The World/Developed countries? I ask because I've noticed that at least 50% of my private students have inhalers.

If the rate of Asthma is high here it wouldn't surprise me at all. As most people who have been to Hanoi know, the air is not clean here. I would think having grown up in this environment could not be good for your lungs. In fact, I have felt that my breathing in Vietnam sometimes feels strained compared to when I lived in America or Japan.

But on the other hand, my private students are quite affluent and I wonder if their parents take them to more expensive doctors who prescribe them unnecessary medications. This has been something I've wondered about for a while so I thought I'd throw it up on the blog today.