Le's brother Nhan and his friend and I went to Restaurant and had
a Cobra for dinner...it was about 2 metres long and cost 450,000VND...it was very good to eat...
On the 30th we went to the Highway 4 Restaurant with Le's friend from Law
School, Ngoc Anh and her brother and tutor, Nhan...After the Restaurant we went to Karaoke...Heaps of fun, but very smoky...
The next day was spent preparing for New Years Eve and enroling at
the Centre for learning Vietnamese...At night we went to eat "streetfood"...these are little street side restaurants that
spring up all over the city at night to feed the estimated 4 million people of Ha Noi...
We then went to Hoan Kiem Lake for the New Years Eve celebrations...there
were so many people that the taxi couldn't get within about 1 km...so we walked in amongst the motorbikes, cars, buses full
of tourists...and the thousands of street hawkers...and then walked around and waited for 12pm...absolutely a fantastic experience...I
cannot wait for Tet...the Lunar New year...
The next day was spent sleeping and walking around Ha Noi "Window Shopping"...Ha Noi is a shoppers
paradise, there are literally thousands and thousands of shops, all really to sell you anything from toothpaste to very intricate
artworks and carvings hand made from marble, one of which was $900US that had taken three years to carve...I have purchased
it and will put up some photos soon...part of the experience of shopping is to barter for everything...and Le is fantastic
at it...she got me a Rolex down from $350US which is the Foreigners price, to the Vietnamese price of $150US...
On Friday I spent the morning travelling around Ha Noi with the receptionist from the hotel,
a young guy also called Tung and his friend, over here the local people love to talk to English speakers to improve their
English...we went to the Ho Chi Minh Museum...not the Mausoleum...it was closed...we will go there next week...and also went
to the One Pillar Pagoda and Van Mieu...the Temple of Literature that was built in 1070, in 1076 it became Viet Nam's first
University...talk about history...it really is a fantastic place...
On Sunday we took both of the boys to Lenin Park and they played for hours...we all had a great
time and will do it again next week...at the moment Duong is living with his Grand parents and does not get to play with other
children...we are going to get his school changed so that he can live with us and go to the same school as Thai Son and he
will hopefully get back to normal as quickly as possible...he is about 2.5Kgs less than Son in weight so we have a lot
of work to do...
Well that is the end of the first week of 2004...check out Week 4 soon and there will be heaps
more to come...I will send an email as soon as there are updates...
