A few developments since I last wrote. My friend Henry is here visiting, and it's wonderful for more than just the fact that he brought me Firefly sweet tea vodka. It's been weird having somebody from home here, and showing him around and taking him to all of my favorite restaurants really has made me realize that this city is feeling more and more like home to me every day. Henry arrived on a Wednesday night, and things were pretty uneventful (what with him getting over the jet lag and getting used to everything here) until Sunday.
On Sunday, I took the day off of work and we went to champagne brunch at the Intercontinental Hotel to celebrate/mourn Tara's leaving. The brunch consists of all you can drink champagne and all you can eat brunch (complete with roast beef and yorkshire pudding). After an afternoon of drinking champagne, followed by an evening at the Blue Gecko filled with more drinking and darts, I decided it was time to call it a night (it was, incidentally, only about 7pm).
Henry and I came home, and while unlocking the gate, I looked down and there was a tiny stray kitten sitting on the stoop. I've wanted a cat my whole life, and on this particular day, not thinking completely clearly, I picked it up, took it inside, poured it a dish of milk, and, again, not thinking clearly, adamantly demanded that I'd keep it.
The entire time, Henry was telling me what an awful idea it was, and when Spencer showed up about half an hour later, he agreed, and the two of them together tried to talk me out of keeping it. Spencer made the mistake of calling Zara to have her talk some sense into me. He either didn't know, or had forgotten, what an animal-lover Zara is, so when she came home and saw the kitten, she fell in love with it too. We decided to keep it until we could find it a home.
The next morning, Spencer, Henry and I left for the airport for our flight up to Hanoi. We arrived that afternoon and spent the rest of the day walking around the lake and exploring the city a bit. I really liked Hanoi. It's much prettier than Ho Chi Minh City. There are lakes and parks everywhere, and it's cleaner as well. For some reason that I can't explain, though, I still prefer HCMC - I feel like it has more character, as far as cities go. That evening, we booked ourselves a three day, two night trip to Ha Long Bay. I don't really remember much from our time in Hanoi - a lot of time was spent watching World Cup matches, making lots of "that's what she said" jokes (very few of which were actually funny), and drinking bia hoi (beer of the day - fresh-brewed beer that tastes suspiciously like Natty Light, but only costs about ten cents a glass). We also saw a few sites (the Prison where John McCain was a POW, and Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, where he was embalmed - in a word...creepy).
We woke up early to take the three-hour van ride to Ha Long Bay. It was pretty uneventful, though Spencer and I spent the time sharing my ipod and listening to Bill Bryson's memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and periodically cracking up. The ride went pretty quickly, and we got dropped off at the port and made our way to the junk boat we'd be on for the next few days. We got settled in our rooms, had lunch, and went up to the top of the ship to look around and catch some sun. Ha Long Bay is gorgeous; it's about 1600 square kilometers, and consists of almost 2000 limestone islets, some of which are really big, and some that are pretty small. Our ship sailed around for a few hours and we stopped at the Surprise Cave, which was a huge cave with tons of stalactites and stalagmites and shapes that were supposed to resemble animals, though I could never really see what any of them were supposed to be (at one point I think I offended our tour guide by guessing that one shape was a monkey. Turns out it was the Buddha). Of course, we all left our cameras on the boat and have no photos of the cave, but suffice it to say, it was really cool. After the cave, we had about 45 minutes of kayaking around. I'd never been kayaking before, and Spencer was kind enough not to get mad at me (at least, not visibly) when I completely sucked at it. We got back that evening and anchored the boat and went for a swim. Henry, Spencer, and a Kiwi named Rob that we made friends with all jumped from the top level of the boat, but I wussed out and climbed in off of the back. We swam for a bit, had dinner, and the four of us (Henry, Spencer, Rob, and me) spent the evening playing euchre and drinking games.
The next morning, we were woken up earlier than we would've liked (thank you, bottle of Johnny Walker) and ushered onto a boat to take us to Cat Ba Island. We hadn't really paid attention to the itinerary, so we were unsure what we were doing on the island, but as soon as we got there, they told us we were going on a hike. We were all pretty confident in our climbing, so even when things got steep and we only had on our flip flops, we weren't too concerned. It was when we got closer to the top, and things got even steeper (at times it was pretty much a vertical climb up rocks) and muddier that we were a bit concerned. It was pretty miserable towards the end, but once we got up, the view was spectacular. We climbed an old, rickety viewing tower (in hindsight, probably not the best idea) and rested there for a while before the treacherous climb back down. Going down was much more slippery and muddy than the way up, and there were a few moments when we were cussing ourselves for only having brought flip flops. We made it through safe and sound, though, and have a few pictures as proof. After the hike, we went to lunch at a hotel on the island, and then went off to Monkey Island, where we sat on the beach for a few hours and saw a few monkeys (overall, Monkey Island was pretty unimpressive).
We headed back to the boat for the night and found that a lot of the older crowd that had been there the night before had been replaced by younger backpackers. We hung out with them all night, trying our hands at karaoke and various drinking games. The next day was more cruising around the islands and then back into Ha Long City, where we had lunch and all took the van back to Hanoi together.
That evening, Henry met up with a few of the people that were on the boat with us the second night, and Spencer and I, both being exhausted and unable to stand Vietnamese food after three days of fried seafood on the boat, went to a nice Italian restaurant.
We left for the airport the next day, and after a two hour flight delay, made it onto the plane and got back into HCMC safe and sound (though the landing scared the bajesus out of me).
Not much has been happening since then - getting readjusted at work is going well, though I'm still getting used to Saturdays and Sundays of eight teaching hours each. Henry went up the coast on a week and a half long trip, and has just gotten back for a few days before heading home. We also found the kitten a home with our cleaner's sister. She lives out in the countryside in a house with a yard. We had to give her away just a few days ago. It's been lonely around here without her, but she'll be much better cared for.
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