Yup, my wallet got stolen.  But that wasn’t until Friday night.

Thursday and Friday were mostly wedding planning and preparation, with a bit of touring around Hanoi.

Lina and I at a clothing market, buying cloth for wedding decorations:

Read more »

After getting back from Halong Bay, I took a cab back to Dong Da. I spent the evening walking around the area, and stumbled into a local market. It’s so much…more chaotic than the markets in Taipei. There are slabs of meat hanging everywhere, baskets with vegetables sitting out on the ground waiting to be sold, little shops selling drinks and oreos and pringles and Vietnamese snacks. Chickens and roosters are in cages, all stacked up, or just walking around through the street.

I roamed around for a while longer, contentedly eating a miniature pineapple. Eventually, I needed to get out of the heat, and found a cafe. I pointed to something random on the menu, and ended up staring at another condensed milk coffee.

I was starting to feel a bit frustrated and unsettled at this point, and not just because of the amount of condensed milk I had just consumed.   I was frustrated at being so far out of the city, at still feeling like I couldn’t really get a handle on this place, at not being able to get in touch with people and not having any idea what was going on with the weddings.  And frustrated at not knowing where this trip was going.

I kept feeling like I was going to miss something here, or that there was something else I ought to be doing or seeing in order to make this trip worthwhile. Like I was supposed to do something to make it more meaningful or adventurous, like just being in Hanoi for a wedding wasn’t enough. Read more »

Despite the fact that we had absolutely no idea what company was in charge of what, why the bar that we had been at the night before was suddenly doubling as a tour agency, or why everyone else in the van seemed to have booked completely different tours with completely different companies, we somehow got on the right van to Halong Bay.

Halong bay is one of the major travel destinations in Vietnam. The name means “Descending Dragon.” According to legend, Read more »

Taxi or Motorbike? That was the question on my mind as I sipped my coffee.

Lina didn’t need me to help out with the wedding planning yet, and they had some fittings to go to, so I decided that I was going to find a guide to take me to some of the villages surrounding Hanoi.

First priority, of course: coffee. The guy at this cafe seemed to understand a few words of English. No sugar, I had told him. Black coffee, and I’d tried hopelessly showing him the word for sugar, which Lina had written down for me, and combining it with every word and  gesture I could think of for “no.” And yet, still, there was sugar caked at the bottom of the coffee mug, just waiting to be stirred in.

Oh well. The more pressing issue was: Was I crazy enough to take a Xe-Om (a Motorcycle Taxi) again? Read more »

The logical thing to do would have been to take a cab to the Old Quarter, but of course, I wasn’t going to do that. I had a map, superbly honed urban navigation skills, and a firm belief that when traveling, one should always avoid doing things the easy way.

Read more »

A sea of unfamiliar faces, mostly Vietnamese, greet me just past Vietnam’s customs desks. It suddenly occurs to me that, after two years, I might not even recognize Lina’s mother and sister!

I walk past lines of taxi drivers and guides holding up name cards in dozens of languages, and suddenly see two unmistakable faces, grinning. Hin and her mother are holding a sign drawn up in colorful crayon: Welcome to Vietnam, Stephanie!!

In a flurry of hugs, they unload my bags, and quickly replace them with a huge bouquet of flowers. I’m completely speechless.

In carefully pronounced English, Lina’s sister welcomes me to Vietnam. Then she links her arm through mine and pulls me out of the airport, through the muggy air, to a waiting car.
Read more »

The timing worked out perfecly, as it happens: my contract at the school ended at the end of June, and my new job starts at the end of August, giving me 6 weeks to travel. So, I’ll spend about a week and a half in Vietnam for my friend’s wedding, then back to Taiwan (for a day!), and then back to the US.

In the midst of all the chaos of switching jobs, buying flight tickets, packing, and saying goodbyes, it somehow didn’t sink in until the day before my flight: I’m going to Vietnam!

Despite being all packed, having made plans with Lina’s family to pick me up at the airport and give me a place to stay for the first few nights, and having applied for my Vietnam visa–I felt woefully unprepared to be traveling to a totally foreign country.

I’ve traveled around Taiwan a lot–but Taiwan doesn’t really feel like a foreign country anymore, and I know enough Chinese to at least communicate and find my way from place to place.

With no knowledge of either the language or how to get around in Hanoi, I was feeling a little nervous.
Read more »