Tan’s in Việt Nam!

The program people and I went clubbing in Hanoi last night. It was a place called New Century. You get in free. However, everything in there has super inflated prices. Water bottles in there cost 40,000 dong. Normally, you get it for 3000 dong. One time I got it for 2500 dong. My friend Sean was offered a wet towel, which he took 6 and offered it to a bunch of us. It costs 20,000 dong. These Vietnamese people are slick!

When we arrived, there was a fashion show. Well, it wasn’t really a fashion show. There was a runway, but I am pretty sure they were showcasing the girls, not the clothes they were wearing. The girls were really really really pretty. Think about the prettiest girl you know. Now imagine 10 of her. Later, they took down the runway and the dance floor was open to all dancers. The “models” then became those dancers on those elevated platforms. All they do was dance. And they were wearing those shirts where it seems like you lost the back half of it. And their shorts were the shorts that girls wear when they want to be in a hip hop music video. Basically, it’s really really really short.

We danced. there were actually a lot of older guys out there. Not old as in “30 years old” but along the lines of “45 years old”. It was as if you can go clubbing with your parents. One man kept hanging around our group. He was a male caucasian, probably 40ish, and wore an orange shirt. I couldn’t figure out whether he was checking out the guys or the girls more. Neither could anyone else.

Earlier in the day, the program had a scavenger hunt, where we went all over to find things in Hanoi. We were given 300,000 dong and a taxi to find stuff. One of the things was to find a cheesecake. That cost 65,000 dong. Don’t eat Western food in Vietnam. What a ripoff. I can eat lunch for one week on that kind of money. 2 weeks if I eat like my sister Jennifer. The taxi guy wasn’t that great either so we ditched him at Ho Tay (the West Lake. It was a lake created about 100 years ago when a dike broke and flooded parts of Hanoi. It is now a very pretty place where couples go.) We bought some banh tom (fried shrimp stuff), which is pretty famous at this lake. The banh tom was part of the scavenger hunt, but we ended up eating all of it before the hunt was over.

We hopped on another taxi to go back to Ho Hoan Kiem to pick up a tshirt of Bac Ho (Uncle Ho! AKA Ho Chi Minh), a bicycle pedal, and a pirated dvd copy of the scent of the green papaya. By now, we were running short on money, so we hopped on xe om (motorbikes. “om” actually means “hug”, and i guess you’re supposed to hug the guy to hang on.) (actually, it’s really really cute at night when you see a guy riding a xe om and his girl is holding on behind him. I am a hopeless romantic. But I disgress).

Xe om is fun. You have to bargain for the price. Since my group had two white people, it was quite obvious we were going to pay a foreigner’s price. My haggling skills are getting better. At one point the guy was demanding 30,000 dong for the 4 of us, and I said 20,000 dong. At first I said 10,000, but everyone on the street started laughing. Ah well. He wouldn’t budge, and I wouldn’t budge, so I said, “Fine, I’ll pay 20,000 dong, and another 5,000 so you can go get coffee.” He laughed, flagged down another xe om, and we went on our way. My uncle taught me that line. I never knew 3 people could fit on such a small bike. And one of the 3 was this huge white guy over 6 ft tall.

Uploading pictures continues to be quite a hassle. I am very grateful that Tin is willing to play with my site for me. When I am uploading pictures, I am in the University library, using their internet for free. As a student, I get that perk. However, their login system is weird, and their internet is inconsistent. Tin, I know you set up my wordpress so that I could upload onto my site, but I think my pictures are too big. I am still using photobucket.com. Anyways, here are some pictures of Hanoi life from the past several days. Nothing too crazy. Actually I really like the very last picture.

These kids were training for the army or something. I asked them and they said stuff that was lost in translation. I asked them if I could try. They laughed and said no. Gotta love the comunist youth. It is actually the 60th anniversary of Communism in Vietnam. All over the city you can see people making preparations for a really big celebration, especially at Bac Ho’s Masoleum. I am guessing it is for Tet Trung Thu, which is coming up in a month.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 20th, 2005 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Super Xanga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.