Dong-less in Hanoi

Jon, Bryce and I set out this morning with a pocket full of Dong to do some shopping in the Old Quarter. Shopping here is much different than back home. It’s mostly street vendors and 12 x 12 shops with no doors. It’s kind of like a flea market on steroids with everyone selling their handmade goods. There were some really neat items but an hour into shopping we ran out of dong. When we did the calculations we only spent less than $30.00 but racked up on some neat goodies. We bought Bryce and Kaitlyn handmade authentic Vietnamese outfits and a beautiful little handmade dress for one of Kailtyn’s dolls. We also purchased a couple of hand stitched T-shirts for them as they grow, a pair of shoes for each of them and the straw hats that we see everywhere. Our goal is to get Bryce 18 little inexpensive items so that he can receive one item each year at his “adoption day” celebration until he is 18.

We only had 10,000 dong left but were still being heavily solicited. This one lady with a baby on her hip desperately wanted us to buy postcards from her. I told her we were out of money and had to go back to the hotel. She said “go to hotel and get money remember me remember me I stay here”. We told her that we would come back another day and look for her ( I really liked the post cards and she had a baby)! Jon and I planned to walk around for a little while but the lady flagged us a cab and sent us on our way. We thought we had enough money for a cab but about a minute into the cabride realized that 10,000 dong is less than a dollar (OOPS!) So when we got back to the hotel our fabulous door man explained to the cab driver that I had to run up and get money and would be right back. SO Bryce and I ran up to the room grabbed some American money, had it exchanged at the front desk and then finally rescued Jon from the back seat of a Vietnamese cab.