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.

Al Fresco's

We ventured to downtown tonight for dinner. We went to this restaurant that our friends, who adopted from here in March, told us about. This Australian guy owns three different restaurants here including a pizza place (that delivers to our hotel) and the one we went to tonight. Jon and I got an appetizer of onion rings, a small pizza and a 1/3 rack of ribs for 225,000 vnd (Vietnamese Dong), which translates into about $15! It was all fantastic but the ribs were the best I’ve ever had. For a few minutes we forgot we were in Nam and felt like we were at Texas Roadhouse that is until the bill came and we remembered that we couldn’t eat this good for 15 bucks in the US!

Embassy Appointment #1

Well we just returned from the Embassy and all went well. There was another family there who were just checking in as they’ve been here 5 weeks with no return home date yet. The Embassy interview was fine, they just asked us some questions about the orphanage, our referral and our agency. They said we should hear something back by November 18th. Jon tried to take a picture of the embassy for you all but got yelled at in Vietnamese when he went to snap a picture! J I was up most of the night with an “upset stomach” but feel much better now. One of the other couples in our group have the same thing so they went to the clinic this morning and she had to be put on an IV. The other couples’ baby has viral bronchitis and a standing temp of 102. So we are looking pretty good compared to both of them. Miss you all and are looking forward to some chicken minis from CFA when we return.