Our flight from Taipei touched down at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport around mid-day. We’d been advised that if there’s anything wrong with our visas – even a typo – we wouldn’t be allowed into Vietnam. I had already fixed one error. We should be good to go. But for me it was definitely nervous time in Hanoi.
To us Westerners, entering a country where “Socialist Republic” is part of the name can be intimidating. We like to think we know how things work at home. But over here, we know we don’t know how things work.
The visa checkpoint line moved slowly. We had time to observe the officer who’d be giving us the yea or nay. He looked like he was having a bad day. Dang.
OK, My Turn
When our time came, I went first. The officer, sitting in a glass-enclosed booth, motioned for me to come forward. I slid my passport and visa through the mouse-hole opening in the glass partition. He looked at my docs, then his computer, then me, then back at my docs. Several times. C’mon already! I was sweating.
What did I have to be nervous about? I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t be doing. And I must have checked that visa over ten times by now. What was taking him so long?
Finally, he stamped my passport, handed everything back to me, and sent me on my way. My Better Half followed shortly thereafter. Made it!
On any other trip, this is where we’d get our luggage, exit the airport, and find a taxi. Hopefully, a legitimate one. It’s not the most enjoyable part of a trip. But this time we don’t have to deal with any of that. We just have to find someone holding up a sign with our name on it.
How the Other Half Lives, Part I
This trip is unique for us. We signed up for pre- and post-cruise land packages offered by the company we’ll be river cruising with. Land packages like these are usually too pricey for us. Plus, we like to be independent and do our own thing.
Since on this trip, we’re going to see how the other half lives, I splurged to see how the other half gets from the airport to the hotel. And what do you know – there’s the guy we’re looking for!
He led us out past the taxi line to a special pick-up zone. A black sedan pulled up, we got in, and we were on our way to the hotel. Me like!
Noi Bai airport is 20 miles from downtown Hanoi. I’ve been trying to learn some Vietnamese for a while now. This was my chance to try it out. The unfortunate driver was a captive audience.
I like learning languages. So when we visit a foreign country, I try to learn enough to speak some basic touristese in the local lingo. Taxi drivers, unless they seem like they’re really not in the mood, are my first victims.
Vietnamese is unlike any other language I’ve studied. Westerners can guess the meaning of many French or Italian words. English speakers have a big head start. But westerners learning vietnamese start from scratch.
Captive Audience
I started by telling the driver, in vietnamese, that I’d been studying vietnamese. If he understood that much, at least he’d know I’d be trying to say some things in vietnamese. He understood. Great!
Then I think I said something like, “Nice weather today.” He got it. We exchanged a few sentences about the weather. He understood me and I understood him. I couldn’t believe it. I was having my first conversation with a Vietnamese guy.
We talked some more. At some point I told him I liked his car. It was a joke. I knew this big, black sedan wasn’t his personal ride. Humor doesn’t always translate well from one culture to another. That’s never stopped me before, though.
He got the joke! We had a laugh and he told me about his daily commute. He spoke carefully so I could understand. We understood about 80% of what we were saying to each other. I was shocked.
As we approached central Hanoi, traffic started getting crazy. We were in a swarm of motorbikes. No time for idle chit-chat now.
How was no one hitting each other? Yikes!
To be continued…
