Vietnam Day 10 Part 3

2007/11/05

Owen slept pretty well last night, but before he slept he was crying quite a bit. His teeth are obviously hurting him, so we used some Orajel, but we couldn't get him to eat much cereal. As a result, he didn't eat enough and woke up hungry at about 3:15 and had almost a full bottle of formula. He was satisfied and fell back to sleep pretty quickly. He has been sleeping with me in the big bed, which makes it pretty easy to get him into bed. He slept in again this morning, waking after 7:00. After getting changed, eating, playing, and having his bath, he took a long nap from aroun 10 to just after noon.

Today was nice and sunny and the temperature was a little warmer than it has been, so it was a good day to go for a walk with Owen. It was still pretty windy so we dressed him in some warm clothes and brought some hats and headed out toward Hoan Kiem Lake. We walked a few blocks down the street, passing a number of electronics shops, and turned left toward the lake. A nice tree-covered path surrounds the lake and lots of people take advantage of the calm setting in the middle of the busy city.

There's a legend associated with the lake that involves the Emperor Le Thai To in the 15th century. Apparently a sword was sent from Heaven to help the Emperor drive the Chinese out of Vietnam. Once the war was over, the Emperor saw a giant golden tortoise on the water of the lake and the tortoise grabbed the sword and dove into the lake.

Tortoises still live in the lake, apparently, and show themselves very rarely. We happened on a crowd of people standing at the edge of the lake, looking for something. Mom thought she saw the head of a tortoise poking out of the water and everyone seemed very excited. It's good luck to see the tortoise and lots of people were crowding around the edge of the lake. Some people stopped their scooters and parked in the street, jumped off, and ran to the shore to get a peek. Police were directing the traffic to move along - it seemed like everyone would have stopped in the middle of the street and run to the water's edge to get a look at the tortoise.

After that excitement, we continued our walk around the lake. There are cafes and restaurants that look very nice and people are selling souvenirs everywhere. Near the north end of the lake is a small island with a temple on it, Ngoc Son Temple. The remains of one of the tortoises is on display in the temple, but we didn't go in to see it today (we didn't know about the tortoise legend at the time).

We walked south along the east side of the lake and made our way to the shopping center we had visited when we first got to Hanoi. We looked for a lighter jacket for Owen that had a hood, because he was wearing a heave jacket and he keeps taking off his warm hat. We didn't find anything suitable, unfortunately, but we stopped at Highlands Coffee for ice cream and coffee. It was a nice pit stop.

It's about a 15 minute walk from the shopping center back to the hotel (assuming you don't get hit by a passing scooter), and we went right back to the room. Owen ate around 4 and had a short nap.

I should say something about the service at the Somerset Grand Hanoi because it has been very good. The light bulb in our dining room burned out last night and we forgot about it until it got dark today. After calling for service, a man showed up in about 5 minutes and replaced the bulb. A few days ago our washer/dryer wasn't working and maintenance came in 5-10 minutes, saw that the unit wasn't working, and actually dragged the whole unit out of the apartment and brought in a new unit. Service has been excellent and the Somerset has been the perfect place to stay. Room service has also been excellent and very fast. Unfortunately, we cannot get the Somerset to give us a room for the period of November 9-10, so we need to move to another hotel temporarily.

Tomorrow is our first interview with the US CIS at 1:30. We're very excited about moving the process forward and can't wait to get past this step.