Want to know what a perfect day on the road looks like?   Really? - Good Morning Hanoi.

Got up this morning at 9 am - hard to get out of my King sized bed with the crisp white linens anxious to see some of Hanoi as I hadn't't had the chance the day before. Turned on my laptop to check my mail as the beautiful old Hotel has wifi in their $15.00 (breakfast included) antique filled rooms with 12 foot ceilings. Got a bottle of water out of the fridge to drink during my bath. Got dressed and went downstairs to the breakfast room where I met a nice couple from Singapore. He, an American from Ohio, doing an MBA in Singapore, she, a Romanian, also studying in Singapore, in Vietnam for their one week Spring Break.
 We ordered breakfast : eggs, baguettes, jam: then the Vietnamese family that runs this Hotel brought us a fruit tray of beautifully arranged watermelon, mango, dragon fruit and bananas. We chatted about Singapore, Ohio, Romania, Canada and then I went back to my room to gather my laundry. Dropped laundry off at the front desk ($1.00 per kg) as I went out for a day of shopping. Shopped all day, tried on a lot of silk fashions and looked at beautifully crafted silk Home Decor items. Did not buy a thing. Don't want to carry the stuff around. Wished I had Wit here to take my shopping purchases home for me.
At five pm met up with some new friends at our prearranged location. Met most of them the night before through two people I had met on a bus a few days before. I ran into on the street as I was coming out of the Water Puppet Show two hours after arriving in Hanoi.  I heard "Canada - hey Canada" from across the street. My Aussie friends were heading to meet friends they had met on a previous bus, and we kept adding to the group until we were 11. We wandered around, tried a few street corner beer joints that serve $.30 plastic cups of beer, then we witnessed one of the funniest street actions ever.

We were up in a restaurant overlooking the lake and a big traffic circle when I saw an itsey bitsy police truck pull up. They are so miniature they look like cartoon vehicles. From the back of the covered truck jumped about 6 police officers. combined with the three or so in the front - it made for a gaggle of cops. They grabbed a balloon seller and threw him into the back of the truck. He was one of those big balloon sellers (imagine Hello Kitty, Disney characters, Happy Faces....) and the balloons did not want to go into the truck and they were popping out and the crowd of cops were trying to push them in and it was a keystone cops moment. I couldn't get at my camera fast enough.....Big Hanoi bust - seizure of fake Hello Kitty trademark merchandise. We suspected the ragtag cops were headed back to the station to start a night of helium karaoke!!!

A few hours later, we are sitting ( on tiny little kindergarten sized plastic chairs that are so popular here), on a street corner when the same police truck approaches. The owner of the bar???? (actually the owner of 20 plastic chairs and a huge plastic jug of watered down home brewed beer), yells grab your chairs and get onto the sidewalk. Every sidewalk here is filled with motor scooters so you have to walk and sit on the roadway.
The cops all jump out of the circus truck and check that our feet are not touching the roadway!!!! Sign me up. Full time Stampede Parade duty!!!!

Anyway we had a lot of laughs. Tonight we walked around until we found a real bar that would negotiate on beer prices, ( I am hanging with beer drinkers!!!) - we were able to get them to sell beer at .75 instead of $1.50. Sat around continuing the previous nights discussion on world politics, religion, fashion, movies, food and gender roles. Fascinating discussions because these are very smart ,worldly people, actually representing a lot of the world. Esther and Adam from Australia, Esther and Remko from Holland, Sylvie and Thomas from Switzerland, Meikie from Holland, Emma and Ivan from Ireland, Christine from Alaska, Micheal from Sweden and me. Age range - 22 to 60. We had a few drinks then went for dinner at a restaurant in the middle of the Hotels where we were staying..
As it was Thomas's 40th birthday - two of the group brought a birthday cake and huge flares and we celebrated, after dinner, his entry into a new decade.
Email addresses exchanged and around 11:45 we walked back to our Hotels, everybody going separate ways tomorrow - some to Sapa, some to Halong, a couple to places south and a couple of us staying on in Hanoi. Some of the group had been spending a fair bit of time together so the goodbyes were difficult. Just as I was sad to say goodbye to Andrea only two days ago, it was sad to know that maybe you would not see these people again either. Very nice group - everyone interesting and curious about how things work in other countries. Lots of comparing what is good and not so good, similar and not so similar.

Came into my Hotel, picked up my freshly laundered clothes. Picked up a free drink from the lobby fridge before switching on my flat screen TV with the 300 channels that I could watch from the tub.

Even I could not imagine how far your money could go here, how easy it is to travel here - make travel arrangements and find accommodation, and how easy it is to connect with really nice and interesting people.

Imagine a room at the Delta, include Breakfast and hot and cold drinks all day, then imagine it only costing $15. It even comes with a stocked fridge and two toothbrushes....new ones too!!!!

Seems like there is no need to rush home to pick up the shovel....

D.