Halfway to Vietnam

Bangkok Airport

How could it be that some 250 people want to fly fromTel Aviv to Bangkok on a Sunday night in February?

Modern international airports don'tdiffer from one another all that much – but you definitely realizethat you're in Asia here. Suddenly we meaty Caucasians are in aminority. And we hear all kinds of Asian languages that we can'trecognize.

I guess I could just stay in theairport for a week and then go home, because the main reason why I'minterested in being in Vietnam is to be in a place that's differentfrom what I'm used to. I'm sure that the people who work in theairport can look at the passengers drifting through the variouslounges and tell immediately: this one is Vietnamese, this one isBurmese, this one is Chinese, etc. - but for us, while the peopledon't look the same, we don't know the meaning of the differences inappearance.

The departures display at the airporthad the names of dozens of places we have never heard of. But theairport is kind of a halfway house, still a largely familiarterritory. Once we have arrived in Hanoi, another two hour flightfrom here, and stepped out into that environment, we'll be on totallyunfamiliar ground.

Before air travel was so common, it tookdays and days to get from one place to another, but once you werethere, you were in places that were radically different. There's acinematic cliché, the hero's arrival in an Asian port, let's say. Today the arrival of a Western traveler even in a rather restrictiveplace like Vietnam is an ordinary occurrence. They're used to it. But we aren't.

The Flight

I almost never talk to the people nextto me on a plane, but I discovered that the young Asian woman next tome spoke English very well – because she spoke to the stewardess inEnglish, not in Vietnamese – and I ended up finding out a lot abouther: a Thai woman who works for an NGO that combats HIV in Asia (theCIA web site said there was almost no HIV in Vietnam, but she said itwas definitely a problem), who studied in California for a few years,married a Danish man there, and was leaving their six month olddaughter for a few days while she came to Hanoi on work.

It is characteristic of today's worldthat Asian people meet and speak to each other in English. I askedher, how would a Thai person have spoken to a Vietnamese person ahundred years ago? They would have needed an interpreter, of course,she said (she didn't say “of course”).

I think I'll have to ask peopleimpolite questions, as gently as possible, to learn interestingthings about them.

The Drive from the Airport

Heavy traffic, night, non-descripturban sprawl, Tiem, the guide supplying information to us, in Englishthat it's going to take us some time to get used to.

The Hanoi Imperial Hotel

As they say in Hebrew, as its name sois it. Okay, not quite “imperial,” but well above the averagestandard of living in the world.

The weather is cloudy and cool.

I took some pictures from the balconyof our hotel room.

I like to document the presence of theplace that way, though it's cloudy, and there's not much to see. Lots of small buildings jumbled together here, and on every balconyand patio, potted plants.

At breakfast, on the 8^thfloor of the hotel, in addition to bread, cheese, and ordinaryEuropean foods (like ham), we could have eaten shrimps, pork friedrice, and other things that we don't eat – the steamed vegetableswere delicious, and they had beautiful fruit. A cook made me a nice vegetable omelet. The waitress in thebreakfast room was friendly and smiley when I asked which directionthe lake is. You couldn't see it from the restaurant windows.

In a moment we're heading off for ashort walk before meeting our guide at nine.