January 7, 2006 - page 2

We met our guide, Quang, in Saigon and he seems very excited to have us. He's accompanied Centre groups in the past and knows Dr. Wyatt pretty well. Quang directed us toward our Hanoi flight. The Hanoi airport was much more layed back and I didn't experience any more physical or luggage harm. The drive into Hanoi from the airport took about an hour. It was dark outside and difficult to see, but billboards were visible everywhere. The amount of foreign influence and investment in Vietnam was abundantly clear. I'll be interested to see how far the influence has spread.

During our stay in Hanoi, we are in the Guoman Hotel. We all got settled into our rooms and split off into groups for dinner. Dr. Wyatt led a walk down to Hoan Kiem lake, but I was extremely tired and not feeling up to it. A group of us decided to try a nearby Thai restaurant. This was basically our first real interaction with the Vietnamese people and the language barrier proved to be quite frustrating, although this frustration was no doubt exacerbated by our exhaustion. After getting a table, it took us almost 10 minutes to finally figure out that they had stopped serving food at 9 p.m.

Embarrassed, we left and decided to just eat at one of the hotel restaurants. The main hotel restaurant had "The Emotion Band" as entertainment. They covered popular American songs and were quite amusing, but none us were really in the mood to be entertained. The second floor restaurant had a buffet and it took us another five minutes or so to figure out if we could just order off the menu. With this confirmed, I ordered vegetable fried rice and called it a night.

While in a bit of a cranky mood, I am anticipating my experiences in Vietnam will drastically improve once I'm well-rested and adjusted.