Hanoi

We have been in Hanoi for almost three weeks now, and already the city feels like home. It is much smaller than Saigon, but still big enough for us to get lost in. However, we live in a student residential area, which is nice for cheap groceries and other student necessities... you can all get creative about what that means.

Anyway, our weekly schedule runs on a semi-organized basis, and looks a little something like this: Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9-11 we have Vietnamese Language class, and in the afternoons on Monday or Wednesday we have a speaker, a cultural movie, or a field trip. Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-3 we have our internships, (my friend Sloane and I are interning at Bach Mai hospital, where we will be helping doctors learn English medical jargon,) and then on Tuesday nights we have photography class and critique. We have a lot of free time to explore the city, eat at the local food stalls, and see English movies at our new favorite movie theater with Vietnamese subtitles... I recommend seeing "The Ugly Truth." It was pretty cute.

This past weekend we took our first field trip out of the city, (or should I say vacation?) to Cat Ba Island in Ha Long Bay, which isn't one of the seven natural wonders of the world for no reason. I have never seen such beautiful islands and water- it actually felt like paradise. There are over 3,000 limestone islands in Ha Long Bay, which makes it easy to get lost there... But the weather was beautiful, and we were free to roam the beach and explore the islands. On Saturday, we went out on a boat all day, went sea kayaking, and jumped off the boat in to the water. We had beautiful weather, and got a little too much sun (sorry Mom.)

On Sunday, we returned home from the island, and on the way back I had one of the most extreme/hilarious "This is Vietnam" experiences I have had since I have been here. On the way home, we had to take a hydroshuttle from the islands to the mainland, which looked a little bit like a train in the water. It had one floor of seats, and was not an open boat, but instead a covered ferry. When we arrived at the shuttle, we were about fifteen minutes late, and were told that we were going to have to sit in the aisles on stools for the entire hour back to the mainland. Oh well. When in Vietnam. So we configured ourselves in to the small aisles amidst about 50 or 60 other tourists and settled in to the ride. About five minutes in, the two porters from the front of the boat came back to our aisle, and in broken English and extreme arm movements told us to follow them. We picked up all of our bags, (picture backpack, overnight duffle, and camera case,) and followed him up a narrow flight of stairs which we could only guess led to... SURPRISE! The roof. The boat must have been going about 45 miles an hour across the water, and as soon as we opened up the hatch all of our hair started whipping in our faces and bags and books started flying. The attendant motioned that we should follow him on to the roof of the boat and that we should sit in a small railed-in section of this flat-top boat. Now I know what people who film those scenes in movies on top of trains feel like. For the next hour, we laughed hilariously/nervously as all sixteen of us desperately tried to hold on to the railings on the top of this boat. When in Vietnam.

However, we made it safely back! And I have lived to tell the tale. Our next fieldtrip takes place in two weeks when we will head to Sapa, an ethnic minority village on the Chinese border, where we will climb the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia, Mt. Fansipan.