First Saturday in Hanoi

2012-07-07


Today (Saturday July 7th 2012) I spent the first half of my day looking for an apartment to live in. I informed the real estate agent that my limit is $750USD. He took me to see some apartments between the ranges of 600USD and 1000USD. I informed him that some of the apartments were nice while others were well, not so pleasant. I was looking for a two bedroom apartment so that I may have one just in case any of my friends visit. Hint! Hint! Hint! (This means it would nice to have visitors here).

Inside the last apartment of the day we saw, my colleague John* lives there so I called him up. John* decided to take me into town. John* is a very nice guy. He has been there for three months. As a colleague, he has been informative and helpful with things inside and out of the office. I am very grateful to have met
him.

We I took a stroll through the city. We went by the Ho Kiem Lake in Hanoi. The city itself is very nice. It is very modern city. Nothing like what it has been recently portrayed in western media. But let’s be realistic, when western media portray developing countries they are not the best, i.e. assuming that African live on trees etc. I was told to take some landscape pictures. I hope these help.

So back to the stroll, we later went to a coffee shop. Very nice place. Here one can see over the lake and a view of the city as well. We talk about each other, family and friends back home and such. After this we walked back to his apartment so that he may drive me home.

The day overall was good but I did not like the stares and the finger pointing that I got from the locals. I was very annoyed and somewhat disturb by the whole experience. People would point and tap their friends to look at me. Also some would point and laugh. I understand that there is limited exposure to black people in Vietnam, but the reactions were very ignorant. I was more annoyed by the adults as they would be the ones to point and laugh or tap their friends to look at me. The children are much better as they would just look and turn away to go about their business.

  

  

The television channels have western channels including MTV, the Diva channel, CBC, sadly CNN among other television channels.