I hadn't gotten decent sleep for the past 2 days. I guess I was hella nervous about this upcoming sojourn, but I still wasn't feeling it. On the day of departure however, I found myself panicking and having anxiety attacks; I couldn't breathe normally, my stomach was queasy as hell, and I was constantly pacing back and forth in my room trying to distract my mind away from the thought of leaving and not coming back for months. I knew I should be excited, and I was, but somehow my body just reacted differently to this "excitement." My anxiety especially reached new levels when I was bidding farewell to both my grandmothers on the phone. This is it! I'm gonna be gone!
Thank the deities I calmed down when it was time to head out. Pa is on a business trip, so that leaves only Ma to take me to the airport. Parking is a hassle so Ma decided just to drop me off. She began to tear up as I left the car with my luggage, which gave me a lump in the throat. I guess you never really understand how much your parents love you until moments like these. I remember the countless times before the trip when I told Ma again and again that I would be fine and that she was worrying too much. I even got hella irritated with her many times, but now I think I'm beginning to understand why she was so restless about me going abroad. I promised myself I would not let her worry.
The check-in line was hella long. Thank the deities I already e-checked in the night before so I had my seat already assigned. It took about 30 minutes before I reached the counter and got my luggage checked in. Melanie arrived right when I was still in line, so I immediately called her when I finished all the procedures. Apparently this was her first time in the international terminal, and she certainly was amused by the internationalness of the place. She gave me two awesome parting gifts: one a map of Vietnam, which surprisingly I did not have, and the other the book Filipinos in Los Angeles by Mae Koerner, which even more surprisingly I did not have either! Thank you Melanie!! In exchange I gave her Taiwanese snacks. Haha, definitely not a fair trade but Melanie loves food. And then Dian arrived and we hung out for a bit on the second floor by the overpriced food places. When it was time to say goodbye because Melanie's parking was getting expensive, I reluctantly let the two go, knowing that I wouldn't see them again for months! I decided to call Annie next to ease my anxiety, who was dogsitting at the time (who knew dogsitting would be a business?) After a looong chat, I went into the security area.
Thanks for coming to hang out!! And keeping me from freaking out too much.
I tried to coordinate a meeting-up with all the other students who were on the same flight, and right before we boarded we found each other and self-introduced. There was me, Chau, Diane, and Tracey.
The plane took off a little bit behind schedule. But the flight was excellent. I loved the food of course (which was actually very filling, surprisingly), and there were personal TVs for every passenger! Unfortunately I didn't get to use it that much since I was dead-tired and slept (or more accurately attempted to sleep) most of the way. I did watch one movie, Obsessed, which I only knew from the DVD commercials I'd been seeing. The movie was hella creepy! That white obsessed girl freaked me out. She kind of looks like that convicted woman from Legally Blonde, the one who Reese Witherspoon had to defend. Then I watched a documentary on Shanghai and its transformations for the upcoming Expo in 2010, which I only half-paid attention to since my mind was hazy and shit from the red-eye flight. The flight was hella packed though, so I had no elbow and leg room, especially since the guy next to me was really buff and thus took up a lot of space. My lower back ached for pretty much the whole flight since I couldn't adjust myself to a comfortable position. I was delighted that I didn't end up with a killer migraine, which happened to me several times before from crowded seating conditions. There was also constant turbulence, although pretty small and not very scary.
We landed right on-time around 5:30 AM in Taipei Taoyuan International Airport. It felt like homecoming since I always fly this route, but at the same time it didn't since I wasn't actually going to leave the airport. The landing approach took us on a flight path over Keelung Port, the Yangming Mountains, Danshui River mouth, and most of northern coastal Taiwan. Off in the distance I could spot Taipei 101 and the Taipei Basin. And at one point it seemed as if we were so close to the Yangming Mountains that we were gonna hit it. The view was breathtaking, especially in the early morning sunlight, coupled with fog and mountains. The view made me hella nostalgic for Taiwan.
It turned out that Diane and Tracey were connecting to Hanoi on Vietnam Airlines, and that Chau and I were staying with China Airlines for this route. Basically our flight was an hour later than theirs, so we had much more time to kill. Then when we were sitting in front of the transit line and resting, we spotted a person sporting the EAP t-shirt, so we went up to the group to self-introduce. Basically this group was on the San Francisco flight, and all of them were connecting on Vietnam Airlines.
Chau and I tried to access the free wi-fi service supposedly available, but it didn't work, so we found two public computers and took advantage of the free internet. I also called home to Lao Lao to tell her I've arrived safely and was soon on my way to Hanoi.
Soon we were in the single-aisle 737, which was also packed, and it was goodbye Taipei. At this point I should be panicking, but for some reason nothing about this trip so far seemed different or out of the ordinary. I didn't feel like I was heading off into a foreign place to do foreign things. The trip seemed normal and average, like I've done it before. I don't know how I went from anxiety attacks/trouble breathing/queasy stomach to just normal feeling. Well it works out for the best.
I was especially clumsy on this flight. It must have been the lack of sleep. After breakfast, I was so dead tired I immediately fell asleep. I must have dreamt something really scary because I completely spazzed awake a moment later and almost tipped over the meal tray that was still on the traytable. The Japanese guy next to me (who was like more than 6 feet tall and could barely fit in with such minimal legroom) totally turned around and looked at me funny. Fail. Then I bumped my head into the drop-down TV monitor above my row twice—once when leaving to go use the lavatory, and once when returning to my seat. Utter fail. I also struggled while filling out the immigration forms for entering Vietnam and had to ask for a new form because I miswrote something on the first one. Damn, this sort of long distance traveling can really get to you.
As we began descending into Hanoi, I noticed that the landscape was lush green with farm fields, pockmarked with bumps all over that were mountains and hills. These mountains didn't rise gently and smoothly from the surface--they literally looked like bumps. The only area I knew where these kinds of formations occurred was in Guangxi Province in China. The TV monitor then showed briefly our flight path before turning off, and I saw that we indeed flew into Guangxi, reached the capital Nanning, and then turned southwest again into Vietnam. The greenness continued all the way till touchdown. There were farms and rivers and roads, as well as cute block houses and some large factories. The outskirts of Hanoi was so beautiful!! It still hadn't hit me that I was in Vietnam, a completely foreign country, and that I was to live here for the next 4+ months. Weird.
We found ourselves in a very new-looking terminal after disembarking, and amidst very hot weather. It was only 10 AM but it was already 93 degrees Fahrenheit. Chau went first in the immigration line and went through pretty smoothly. The same thing couldn't be said about me though. The officer took a look at my visa, and then summoned another officer standing nearby to show it to him. They then said something in Vietnamese (which of course I couldn't understand), and the second officer told me to follow him. Uh oh, I thought. The officer led me to the other end of the terminal where the on-site visa application office was and went inside, while I waited outside. I began to mildly panic that there was something wrong with my visa and that I was gonna get arrested or detained or deported or something. But I thought again, it was the San Francisco office that issued that visa, so if anything it would be their fault, not mine. I was still pretty nervous though, since they wouldn't tell me what the fuck was going on. I looked into the office, and saw that my passport was passed around to three different officers, all looking at it and fiddling with their computers. The officer that took me here then came out and mumbled to me something in English (I think), which I did not understand. He then walked away. Still confused and angry, I waited for another 5 minutes before an officer came out and handed my passport back, along with a new visa on a larger sheet of paper. He told me in broken English that this was my new visa, and I was allowed to go now. I was still utterly confused, but relieved that the "ordeal" was over, so I quickly headed over to the immigration line and passed through seamlessly. I opened up my passport to find that the original visa had been stamped "canceled."
Chau and I then grabbed our luggages and met up with the rest of the EAPers. It turned out we were the last ones to arrive that morning. I finally met Gerard, the program director, and he took us to go exchange some money. I gave away all USD 60 that I had and got in return about VND 1068000. I was hella confused, and realized that in order to survive with this ridiculous currency, I would need to bust out those math skills that I had way back in high school. Wonderful.
We were all driven into Hanoi city on a minibus, while our luggages traveled in a small truck. Along the way, I tried my best to let the city soak in. The scenery, although new, still seemed familiar to me. It looked a lot like Taiwan's countryside, with the green pastures and small houses lined up along the highway. There were also hella billboards along the way, mostly advertising foreign companies investing in Vietnam.
A Korean investor ad along the highway. There are hella Korean stores in Hanoi.
After a while of driving, we were finally entering Hanoi city. We went on a bridge to cross the Song Hong (Red River), Hanoi's critical lifeblood. Apparently the river was named "Red" due to its high silt content. The silt washes down from the highlands and accumulates here, and people collect the silt from the river and use it as construction material. Hanoi is located on the right bank of the river.
Hanoi city is a very interesting sight. I'm used to seeing skyscrapers, shiny office towers, luxury apartment complexes, and elevated expressways and rails dominating a cityscape like how it is in Taipei. Hanoi is quite different. There were not as many tall buildings around, mostly just traditional houses around four stories tall. The roads also shoot up yellow dust as we drove on. Then there's the traffic, which is like a motorist's hell.
Ah mopeds! As common (and dangerous) here as in Taiwan.
We arrived at our dormitory at Hanoi University (HANU), D11, which is actually called "Nha Khach," or "guest house." We soon found out why it was called this. We were supposed to be in an actual international dorm like previous years, but due to a great influx of Chinese students, the housing situation had been tight, "forcing" us into the dorm that was reserved only for governmental officials and diplomats who were at the university for training. Therefore our living situation is actually much better than it ever was for EAPers. Even though we are squeezed 3 into a room, the room is hella gigantic, fully stocked with an individual bathroom, closets, desks, beds, a TV, a fridge, air conditioning, fans, and desklamps. This year our program has 6 males and 12 females, making the roommate arrangement perfect. My roommates are Chanh (we actually sort of picked each other since we were both wearing white v-necks and black-rimmed glasses, hella funny), and Scott, who has actually been here for 2 months already working.
The first thing we did was shower to get the annoying sweat off. It is now about 97 or 98 degrees and pretty much maximum humidity. However just like in Taiwan, we began sweating immediately after showering. We then went downstairs to have some sandwiches and to chat with Gerard, who then took a bunch of us to a nearby cafe to have iced tea (and beer). It felt like a lazy hot afternoon, sitting in the cafe and drinking iced drinks. It was a wonderful feeling. Life in Hanoi sure is different from Taiwan or America, where lives are governed according to schedules and appointments.
At 4 PM, all of the students met downstairs at the lobby for an introductory session thingy for the program. Since the heat was unbearable, we decided to move the meeting to someone's room so we can get air conditioning. The meeting was pretty long, and by the end people were pretty much passed out on beds due to jetlag/long flights. Gerard then took us to a restaurant in the city called Chim Sao (I think it means parrot), and basically treated us to a full-on Vietnamese dinner with drinks. We had to take off our shoes since we had to sit on the floor on cushions; it kind of looked like a Japanese restaurant in that respect. The food was damn amazing. We started off with some shots of Vietnamese distilled alcohol and this iced tea made from a local tree. The alcohol tasted like Chinese medicine, but it wasn't too strong so it was ok. Then came a salad dish with goi cuon (spring rolls), followed by duck, pork, some sort of vegetable, fried tofu, fish, soup, and this vegetable-thing that I didn't like. This was my first meal in Vietnam, and it was perfect. It definitely got me excited for the rest of the trip and all the food that is waiting for me to devour.
Goi cuon. Much smaller (but tastier) than those in America!
The restaurant didn't have air conditioning, so by the end we were all dripping sweat and suffering from severe food coma (in addition to jetlag/exhaustion from the loooong day!). Some of us decided to go to Ho Hoan Kiem (Lake of the Returned Sword) to walk around, but most of us including me decided to go back and crash. However our bus driver was nice enough to take a detour to the lake so we could at least see what it looks like at night, which was pretty gorgeous.
Day 1 in Vietnam: I survived! I guess I worried too much. Really, a lot of Hanoi reminded me of Taiwan, particularly the air pollution, heat, humidity, openness and kindness of locals, and just the overall atmosphere of the city. I already feel at-home in many ways. I just need to get my Vietnamese skills up a notch so I can communicate with the locals! Either way, the trip has been amazing so far, and everyone in the program is hella nice. I can't wait for the remaining 4+ months.
Check out these amazing ceramic things. Note the female figures bottom-center bending over. Hella sexist!
These have got to be the worst imitation Pokemon I've ever seen
Trying to make something that looks like something. And failing!
Chuc mung sinh nhat Kim Anh!
The beds on our junkboat. They were really comfortable!
Service bar
Our lunch feast
A split rock!
This looks like a rhino with half its head submerged. Can you see it?
Isn't it so gorgeous?
Exploring a giant cave
It looks like a penis! Naturally I was drawn to it
Group photo in the cave!
We swam on this beach
