The Impossible Dream

February 29, 2008 at 2:26 pm (adventures in sleeping)

February 10

We have been talking medicine to protect us from getting malaria for our whole trip.  We are not entirely sure that any place we are going/ have gone actually have malaria problems, but I am a lawyer and therefore risk averse, Maura is a public health wonk, and we really, really don’t want to get malaria.  So there.  Of course, considering the main danger area was Sapa, and considering that it was negative 17,000 there, I think we can safely assume that any mosquitoes there were doing the same thing Maura and I were — hiding in their beds and waiting for it to be over.

Anywhose, so we are on Malarone.  My mom had promised that I would have funky dreams, and the medicine really has delivered.  On a scale of weird, they are just slightly more normal than the dreams I was having when I was whacked out on the second sleep medicine I took in law school.  They also make for excellent breakfast stories. 

This morning I had a doozy for Maura.  It started out with this weird, frenetic (lots of the dreams are frenetic) motorcycle related dream, in which I am pretty sure Paul Newman helped me change a flat.  But I think I was rushing in that dream because (segue to next dream) I was late for Jen’s wedding.  Now, I know there was some other awesome stuff from the dream that I forget, but here goes:

First, Jen had each bridesmaid go down at different times throughout the wedding.  Mary Beth went early on and went to grab a bouquet, but Jen stopped her and said, “No, you carry this,” handing MB a clear, plastic container containing, inter alia, a brain and a liver.  MB said, “Gross, no way!” to which we all responded, “Aw, come on, MB, don’t be so fancy.  It’s Jen’s wedding and this is what she wants.”  “Whatever, fine.”  And away she went, carrying her ghoulish arrangement.  Maura turned to me and said either (can’t remember which):

“Would you ever carry that?”

or

“Would you ever do that at your wedding?”

Whatever the question, the answer was the same: “Eew, Aaabsolutely not.”

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Day 2: Operation No Sleep Til . . . At Least 9 pm

February 11, 2008 at 2:01 pm (adventures in sleeping, traveling to learn)

Today we decided to take it “easy” by doing a walking tour laid out in Lonely Planet of the Old Quarter of Hanoi. Our hotel is located right in the heart of the Old Quarter, so it seemed like the obvious choice. Of course, even walking down the street in Hanoi is a stressful experience, what with the honking mopeds driving down the streets, the parked mopeds blocking the sidewalk, touts, fruit sellers, mud, and general mayhem. But after we got in the flow — or the un-flow– of things, we really started to dig it.
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dsc_0002.jpgFirst stop was Hoan Kiem Lake and the temple on the island in its center. The lake was named, as we heard innumerable times, the Restored Sword Lake. dsc_0005.jpgThe founder of Hanoi had found a sword (a la King Arthur) and used it to drive the Mongols out of Vietnam. He went rowing in the lake after the victory and a turtle came and took the sword, restoring it to its rightful place. So that is basically the extent of our knowledge of Vietnamese folklore.
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Next, we walked through the streets in the Old Quarter, each with its own specialization. The herb street, the blacksmith street, the toy street. One of the highlights was a temple behind an unassuming doorway. Don’t miss the temple at 102, Lonely Planet told us. We didn’t, but we were a good 30 feet into the place and pretty sure we were walking into someone’s living room. It was then that we developed our theory of “keep walking that way until someone yells at you.” Moments later, we emerged into a bookshop below the small but beautiful Buddhist temple.
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dsc_0039.jpgWe finally figured out that Vietnamese New Year is February 7th. Which is perfect because we will still be in the country … but in a place calmer than Hanoi [Flash forward: Ugh, famous last words.] We can already see the build-up. Red decorations are being sold everywhere. It also appears that Santa Claus gets in on the Tet too. People are also transporting loads of trees on the backs of their mopeds, sometimes two and sometimes very tall. dsc_0036.jpg[We later found out that they were kumquat trees and peach trees. The colors for Tet are Red and yellow, so the kumquat is orange (which is kinda like yellow) and the peach is pink (ditto for red). Further south, the peach is replaced by yellow apricot trees.] People are also burning paper money, red tissue dsc_0044.jpgpaper boxes, and (oddly) gigantic paper bunnies everywhere. It literally seems like people just hop off their mopeds, pull out a tin bucket (or just use the sidewalk), start a fire and throw some paper goods in there. I even saw some guys burning (fake) US $100 bills. (Though with the way things are going, we are probably going to have to start doing that to keep warm.) [Irony alert: When I wrote that, I was referring to the ever weakening dollar. Of course, over the course of the next week, there were several times when I would happily have burned cold hard cash for a little warmth.]
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dsc_0091.jpgAfter our leisurely, though often harried (have I mentioned the mopeds?) walk, we got a bite of lunch and a mediocre $18 message. That brought us to 4:30. Four and a half hours before I said we could sleep. We were too tired to wander around looking for an internet cafe [and clearly would not have been rewarded for our trouble anyway], so we went back to the room to try not to nap. We somehow made it through. We had an early bird special at a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant, hence all the Western Europeaners with their dog-eared LPs. Got back to the hotel with an hour and twenty minutes to go before bed. And now 46 minutes. Sweet, sweet bliss. [Eds. note: Yeah, I made it another 15 minutes and sacked out.]

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Day 0-1: The Flight, or Thank God for Insomnia

February 10, 2008 at 12:55 pm (adventures in sleeping, travelling is work)

 January 28-29

My impressions of the 24+ hour odyssey from my UES apartment to out Hanoi hotel are these:

  • It is really annoying to have to take stuff out of your suitcase at the last minute.  Especially, if it means you may not be able to dry your hair for a month.  Jen, you will also be glad to hear that the filtering water bottle did not make the cut.  I was just too big!
  • The subway stop at Stuphin Blvd. in Queens is eerily quiet at 9:15 on a Monday morning, as is the international terminal at JFK.  Bad omen? Maybe considering all i heard at the subway stop was a woman talking about the end of the world. 
  • Thai stewardesses have nice outfits, but are they comfortable after 17 hours?
  • It is possible to look worse before you start a 17 hour flight than afterit.  [Sorry, the picture is just too embarrassing to post]. 
  • No Reservations is a really, really, really bad movie, even when it’s free on a 17 hour flight.  I really just wanted to see Catherine Z-J and Aaron Eckhart make cute, but instead I got to see Abigail Breslin cry for two hours.  Less fun.
  • 3:10 to Yuma, on the other hand is a excellent movie and you should all run to see it.  Christian Bale has never been nominated for an Oscar, but Renee Zellweger has twice (and won one).  Crime against humanity?
  • If you have a bad childhood and want to punish your bourgeois parents, don’t do it by wandering into the Alaskan wilderness, eating poisoned plants, and dying slowly, painfully and alone.  Do something productive, like become a transexual or build a dam in Guatemala. 
  • As evidenced by the 3 above bullets, it is possible to watch 3 movies on a flight.
  • World 6-1 of Super Mario Brothers is frakkin’ hard.  That ^&*# smiley, armored-turtle-shooting cloud is the devil. 
  • Insomnia can be your friend.  I slept for 4 hours on the flight and was able to push through all the way to Hanoi.  It’s much easier to do when you don’t sleep naturally.  So hoorah for sleep dysfunctions.  [Though by the time we got to Hanoi, I was having hallucinations.  No wait, that was just the traffic.]

Sorry for the no pictures, but what do you want?  I picture inside Thai airlines?  Me in all my blanched, groggy glory?  Wait until the touring begins. 

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