Hanoi Day One

I have two pieces of good news. 1) At 7:45 this morning Everett crawled into the double bed Laura and I shared last night and is currently resting peacefully upstairs after his 18 hour train ride. 2) I can see my blog again. Apparently computers in Hanoi allow this.

Yesterday was easily the weirdest day of this entire trip thus far. After narrowly avoiding the train ride and catching our flight to Hanoi, Laura and I went in search of a taxi to take us to the hotel in the Old Quarter that Everett had told us to go to as he pushed his copy of Lonely Planet into my bag as we jumped off the train.

Luckily I had made use of my flight time to do a little reading in Lonely Planet because as soon as we got in the cab, he began to "do the hustle" as Lonley Planet referred to it. I told him where we wanted to go and after barely looking at it, he continued driving. Then, five minutes later he asked where we were from. I said America. Two minutes after that he makes a call and hands Laura the phone, saying that it is our hotel. A guy on the other end says that the hotel is full, but he would like to send us to his "second hotel." This was pretty much word for word what Lonely Planet decribed as "hustling." Apparently, it happens all the time where cab drivers try to get tourists to go to other hotels and the other hotels pay them some kind of commission. The other hotels also rip off tourists in various ways including extra charges, bad rooms, etc. So, after Laura handed me the phone, I told the guy we didn't want to go to his "second hotel," hung up and handed the phone back to our cab driver, who I was pretty irritated with by this point.

He continued driving, smoking a cigarette and throwing trash out of his window as we made our way to the Old Quarter. Luckily, with the book, I had maps so I could see exactly where we were. As soon as we got to this area of town, he pulled up to another hotel (not the one I'd told him to go to) and put on his blinkers, saying "this is your hotel." I said, "no, it's not." He persisted. Then a woman came out and told me to come to her hotel. I said no. Then she asked what hotel we were staying in. I told her. She tried to tell me it was small hotel and if we didn't have reservations, we wouldn't be able to get a room, but she had a nice room for me. I told her I didn't care, that I was going to the other hotel. By this point, I was angry and getting pretty tired of our cab driver's antics. The woman gave up and stepped back from the car. I slammed the door shut and we finally started to go the right direction to our hotel. Once we got here, our driver, who by this point was about one fake hotel away from having me punch him in the face, tried to make us pay more money than originally agreed. Laura was paying and I told her not to give him any more. She handed him the agreed upon amount, he abruptly turned around, got in the car and sped off. I only regret that the language barrier made it so that I could not fully explain to him how little I thought of him.

The people at this hotel were friendly, helpful and we were quickly checked into a nice room. One reason Everett had picked the hotel, and something that was noted in Lonely Planet was that the hotel offered a jacuzzi, sauna and spa. Before we headed out to wander around and grab some dinner, Laura went to check on those facilities. She came back very excited that they offered manicures, pedicures and massages until late in the evening. Midnight, in fact. I think probably I should have thought something was suspicious about a place offering massages until midnight. I think I probably should have been more suspicious when I saw the neon flashing sign for "massage" outside of our hotel, but it had been a long day. I just figured the "spa" stayed open late.

So, after a late dinner, Laura and I returned and went to the second floor of the hotel, ready for some cheap relaxation. Oh, what naive little tourists we were.

Walking in, there were three men sitting around in the main room. Laura asked to have a manicure, pedicure and foot massage. I wanted manicure, pedicure and body massage. After some serious language struggles, a lot of yelling and phone calls, we were eventually ushered into a random room with several large, black leather chairs and a few massage tables. The decorations included, but were not limited to, many fake flowers on the walls and a sparkly large mouse sticker on the door. They indicated Laura should get in a chair and I should get on the table.

We did and, as I lay down on the massage table, less than two feet from Laura's chair, we started to wonder what exactly was going on. I had to go to the bathroom and when I was directed there, I quickly realized that our plans for jacuzzi and sauna were definitely not going to happen. The jacuzzi actually looked much more like a giant bowl full of mildew than anything else and the entire bathroom area looked kind of like how I would imagine bathrooms looking in prison, complete with florescent lighting, stains on the walls and horrible steamy odors.

I returned and filled Laura in. Then I climbed back on my massage table, fully clothed. A few moments later about seven women dressed in very tight, tiny silk white shirts and the shortest lavender skirts I've ever seen, came into the room. One insisted that I strip down. Luckily, in preparation for our jacuzzi experience that was not to be, Laura and I were both wearing bathing suits. I kept on my bathing suit and hopped on the table where they'd tossed one of the red cushions from the back chairs for me to put my head on.

Then, the actual treatment experience began for both of us. As a woman who I'm pretty sure has never given a legitimate massage in her life slapped some baby oil on my back and began vigorously rubbing, another woman brought Laura a bucket of brown water to put her feet in. Laura screamed laughing at the water. The women all began laughing. Laura said she wasn't putting her feet in that. I told her just to do it. She did.

My "massage" continued as Laura and I laughed hysterically as random women came in and out of the room, I had a rubdown on my bum the likes of which I've never experienced and Laura was eventually allowed to take her feet out of the dirty water. At one point my "masseuse" told me to turn over. When I insisted on rebuckling the top to my bathing suit before doing that she practically collasped in laughter, yelling for the other girls, and then grabbed my bathing suit top, looking in. Then she began comparing breasts in Vietnam versus those in America- using lots of sign language. After that she massaged my stomach for a good 10 minutes. Something I've definitely never had done before. Laura was crying she was laughing so hard. Meanwhile, for her manicure and pedicure they had basically pulled out what looked an awful lot like a Caboodle and offered to let Laura pick between three nail polish colors that they had: yellow, green and light pink. Then they unwrapped the nail clippers from their original, unopened packaging. I'm pretty sure we might have been their first manicure and pedicure customers ever.

After my massage was over, I was quickly trying to get dressed as my masseuse threw a conical rice hat on my head, pulled my skirt away from me, grabbed her cell phone and started taking pictures. Laura was laughing so hard she couldn't breathe. Meanwhile, her "foot massage" was going all the way up her leg way past any foot region.

Finally, I had my clothes on and the rice hat off. Laura's foot massager stood up and as Laura, who had been trying to converse throughout the entire experience, asked her if she was married, she answered that she was divorced. Then Laura asked if she had a boyfriend. She told Laura she liked girls. I think Laura felt pretty awkward about the high reaching foot massage at that point.

Of course, as the woman was laughing about liking girls and Laura's reaction, she sat on the end of my massage table that I was already off. The table tipped, flew into the air and she went crashing into a cabinet full of nail stuff that went everywhere. Suddenly everyone in the room was screaming laughing and pointing at her- including Laura and I. It was mass chaos. And it was hilarious.

Then something happened.

Suddenly the room cleared, the lights went down and it got very quiet. The only women left were two working on my pedicure. Outside, of the room we could hear a man yelling at a woman. Then we heard a slap, followed by a yelp. A few moments later the women slowly trickled back into the room. One was red and had clearly been crying. It was very uncomfortable. I've never wanted to leave a place so badly. I noticed that one of the women had horrible bruises all over her arms and back. Most of them were very young.

Eventually, what can only be described as a manicure and pedicure my dachshund could have done a better job with, was finished. There was no waiting for things to dry. It was 11 p.m. by this point and we were very ready to go. We said our good byes and quickly headed to our room upstairs, just happy that yesterday was finally over.