First Week in Hanoi & Ha Long Bay trip

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been so long since I have posted an update. Anna and I are having lots of fun  meeting new people and exploring new places in Hanoi and Vietnam. Just last weekend we went on a trip to Ha Long Bay with a bunch of other volunteers in our program. Here are some pictures that I have not posted yet but are not really relevant to anything in this post so I will just leave them here.


At first the woman just kind of put this on Anna's shoulder and started laughing and then before we knew it we were being guilted into buying some very expensive pineapple... still amazingly sweet here so it was worth it.


I got to play some fusbal with local kids at the conference




First beer in hanoi - a total of 30,000 dong for both (about $1.70 CAD)





Here are some pictures of what the streets and sidewalks look like in Hoang Mai (where we're staying) which is what they consider to be a suburb of Hanoi. I tried to take pictures of a relatively clean part but it gets much dirtier, people here seem to dump their garbage and food at the curb so certain parts of the street can get quite gross.

First I should probably mention how our work placement has been going and what we've done this past week. On Wednesday we spent the day at the youth centre doing daycare tasks like watching little kids and cooking lunch for them. It got a bit overwhelming with the noise and heat (trying to take care of little kids who don't even speak your language is very difficult haha). In the afternoon we went to the local elementary school to do some activities like singing songs and doing fill in the blank worksheets with the kids. As we were leaving they were all in the yard for recess and we walked through the crowd feeling like celebrities since nearly every kid wanted to say hi, ask where we were from and give us high fives. We were drained by the end of the day and just wanted to get back to the apartment to shower and relax... dinner was amazing that night, as usual. (The cook at our apartment is fantastic and always makes great meals for the group in the evening).


Here's a drawing of Dat (the cook and resident handyman at the SJ apartment) that one of the volunteers left behind

On Thursday and Friday we spent the day in the SJ Vietnam office because we needed wifi for our research. We have created a list and gathered information for 25 NGO's in Hanoi focusing on a variety of different tasks and are currently waiting for replies to our emails so that we can meet in person and discuss volunteer requirements for them in the future. Overall we've been doing a combination of tasks and jobs. We have been hoping to focus more on some of the NGO research which is what we signed up for with IVHQ but there seems to be some confusion and lately we have also been doing work with kids and cleaning and stuff at the Youth Centre. Today Anna and I were at the centre again playing and cooking in the morning and then we came back to the office to try and respond to some emails and map out the local NGO offices on a map of Hanoi (the most confusing and cluttered map I've ever laid eyes on).

Our trip to Ha Long was a boat cruise around the bay so we got to spend an entire day just cruising around the waters and taking in the scenery. We left Saturday morning at 8 am and drove three and a half hours to the marina where we boarded our house boat and had lunch.




Our first feast on the boat








After lunch we went to a fishing village farther into Ha Long Bay where we spent an hour in two person kayaks exploring the area on our own. While kayaking Anna somehow ran into a mutual friend of someone from Queens which was quite possibly the most unlikely place to meet someone. She was wearing a Queens U hat so when the girl saw the hat she yelled out her name and we paddled over (such a small world). Next we got to jump off the second story of the boat into the water. The water was perfect temperature and we had all been waiting to dive in from the second we got on the bus so everyone loved it. For dinner we had some local Vietnamese dishes and then spent the evening playing games and getting to know everyone on our boat, there was a couple from Mexico and then another group of five guys from the UK on a gap year.











The next morning we woke up to breakfast and Vietnamese coffee and then stopped on Cat Ba island for a quick visit to one of the caves in Ha Long Bay.



Then before heading back we went for another cruise through the towering islands just to take it all in one last time. Overall it was a nice weekend trip and a fun way to get out of the busy city to explore the more rural areas of Vietnam.

Also, as a quick update, when we arrived back at the apartment after our Ha Long Bay trip we met two new volunteers from China who we are rooming with. So far it is just the four of us in that room and they seem friendly and clean which is all you can ask for in a roommate. They are from a province which is apparently very close to Hong Kong but are studying in the USA at Syracuse University in general arts programs.

Heres the link for my final HKG video and hopefully I will find time to put all my great videos from Ha Long Bay into another music video this week and have it on the blog soon.