Week Spent in the City

Last week was fairly uneventful. We spent a couple days teaching at the Youth Centre and doing more report work for the NGO project. On Tuesday afternoon we were suppose to meet with an NGO called REACH, their office was almost a two hour bus ride from the volunteer apartment. It was a completely different part of the city than what we are used to-it is much more industrialized and more modern. After getting off the bus we realized that Jim had left his wallet on the bus!!! We called our coordinator and we got in touch with the bus company who told her to come pick it up at the bus station/office. Jim was really lucky, neither of us thought he'd see his wallet again. All his belongings were still in the wallet besides a bit of missing cash. Thank goodness he wasn't along because his phone doesn't have a local SIM card and he would not have had any cash to get home. We also then realized that we bussed to a different company called REACH so we were at the wrong location. Overall we were pretty discouraged by this point and so we rescheduled the meeting with REACH and took another bus back to the apartment. ....What a day that was.....

Most of the week we had a lot of down time to explore Hanoi and we didn't do a weekend trip because we wanted some down time in the city. On Thursday night the power kept shutting off and because we depend on fans to keep us cool the apartment quickly got very hot. Us and every other volunteer decided to find a cheap hostel with AC in the old quarter. The next day we didn't have much work to do so we ventured to one of the city's underground malls that has a water park and skating rink inside. It was kind of cool, we mainly just walked around and observed.
On Saturday we checked into a hostel in the old quarter because buses stop at 9pm and to take a taxi to our apartment costs just as much as staying in a hostel overnight. During the day we met up with a friend we met in Hong Kong-Mitch, he has been in Cambodia for the past 3 weeks and just arrived to Hanoi. Together we visited the Temple of Literature, the fine arts museum and the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. For dinner we took him to this cool/hip vegan restaurant that we found earlier last week, they make super good smoothies. Today 12 new volunteers showed up, so now I think our total is about 24, so our last week here will be pretty chaotic.

We've started to plan what we are doing once we leave here. So far we plan to head to Sapa on Friday and spend a few days trekking and while we are there we booked a 2 day 1 night hike up Mount Fansipan which they call the roof of Indo-China, its ⅓ the height of mount everest! Then on the 16th we fly out of Hanoi and into Bangkok. The rest of the plans aren't finalized but we are hoping to find a nice hotel off of the beach and take time to relax until we head home. We've been looking into ethical elephant parks so we may do that for a day and also spend a couple days exploring Bangkok.

Here are some photos to go along with my stories:

This is at the Youth Centre, these boys love playing with Jim.
















The Night Market




















This little dog was so excited to go for a motorcycle ride



This is the other end of the city where the underground mall is. It is so different from where we are staying.





The temple of literature

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum





Fine arts museum





Jim finally got a hair cut! Cost him $3 including tip ahaha I think he looks really good!



This is our friend Mitch who we met in Hong Kong, he is from Calgary. (Sorry that the photo is sideways)



This is that cute vegan restaurant, so yummy!







I was trying to capture how much stuff people pack onto their tiny motorcycle, its ridiculous!!!