I get out for a good mountain bicycle ride on Monday morning, do the laundry, and eat too much during
football games because I have food left over that will spoil. I still end up dumping a couple of vegetables and some milk
because they won't last the length of my trip. My neighbor picks me up at about 6pm and she drives me close to Bradley
International airport where traffic bogs down and she asks if this is close enough. Of course it is. I go find
the China Southern counter and get checked in. They don't have a vegetarian meal scheduled for me but they have one left over
that they give me. And the lady asks me:
1) Do you need a wheelchair to get to the gate?
2) Do you need a wheelchair on the airplane
3) Do you need a wheelchair transferring planes in China
4) Do you need a wheelchair in Hanoi
I have no idea where any of this is coming from. But I answer no and ge tthrough security and immigration
quickly. When I get on the plain and take my seat, the flight attendant asks me
1) Do you need a wheelchair for the plan
Where is this coming from? But I do tell her that I ordered a vegetarian meal and she makes note of it. From there
the first flight is smooth and I get my two vegetarian meals. Between China and Hanoi they have no record of me ordering
a vegetarian meal and so I just have water (for the two hour flight).
After getting to my hotel and my room not being ready, I go walk around and have some good vegetarian springs rolls. And practice some new Vietnamese that I've been trying to learn. And then go unpack and relax for a bit at the hotel. Near 4pm I put on running clothes and go do a run/walk around Ho Hoan Kiem lake where people gather to run, walk, do Tai Chi and yoga and just move. After the 12km run/walk I go grab a quick shower and grab a coke and some salty chips for dinner - as I'm craving salt.
On Thanksgiving Thursday, I have breakfast at the hotel and then start walking to get a bicycle. I'm about 50 meters from the bicycle shop and owner from a year ago just happens to be walking from his next door neighbor's bicycle shop and he stops and stares down the street and sees me coming. At first their is a pondering look on his face and then a look of recognition and a smile. I'm smiling too and the first thing he says is, "It's been a long time since you were here." We talk about it being a year and then we get a bicycle for me. We're chatting away like old friends as we put my pedals and saddlebag on the bicycle and he lengthens the seat tube and does a few other things. And I give him 1,000,000 Vietnamese Dong and tell him I'll give him the last 350,000 Vd when I return the bike in nine days. To get re-acclimated, I go do laps around West Lake with a couple of incidents including a teenage girl turning left on her bicycle just as I'm passing her and for a couple of seconds we're leaning on each other holding each other up. I'm going to quit going to ride at West Lake because it seems like I'm pushing my luck. I get in more then 60 kilometers, grab a shower, and have some delicious veggie spring rolls. And then I stop at a Circle K for extra water and some chocolate to relax with over the next few days.
I'm down at the breakfast room at 6:30am because it opens at 6:00am. But this is Vietnamese time so the food and juices aren't entirely out yet. I catch up on a few details before I take northwest from Hanoi on the bicycle. I just keep riding and enjoying the sites. At a convenient point, my legs tell me to turn back to home and I enjoy the farms and oxen and timber mills and small villages and hamlets. After a shower I meditate and walk over to a restaurant that I saw last night and told him I'd be back the next day. I'm sure he's heard this a million times with no returns, so he has a big smile on his face when I show up a few minutes after I said I would. I ask for stir fried vegetables and garlic and no rice. It's not on the menu but we spoke about it yesterday. It's delicious. Then I go back to my room and relax. Except that as I watch some television I get the chills and soon I'm under the blankets watching television and even dropping into sleep for a bit. When I wake up I have some salty chips and a Coke and later go walking. It turns out that they close down a few of the streets and have all of the vendors selling their wares. It's good to mingle with the people though I start to get a bit cold at 65 degrees and my nose starts running. So I've figured out that below 67 degrees my nose may start running (an efter-effect of the radiation). I go home and read for a while and then hope for good sleep - knowing that I've slept very well since I got here but waking up well before the 6am alarm.
Confusing ride where I end up in a different area than what I intended. But it's a new area that makes me sad because there's a ton of luxury homes being built where beautiful green and lush farms used to be. But I manage to get lost many times and have to stop and use my phone to navigate home. After a shower I grab a Vietnamese veggie sandwich with cheese and I pick up some other supplies at Circle K. When I get back to the hotel, the veggie sandwich only has cheese on it - no veggies. Later I do some end of month calendar work for websites that I'm responsible for. And watch F1 FP1 from Qatar. Today I am lazy and just watch television and the F1 sprint qualifying later at night. Maybe if I stay up later I'll sleep until my 6am alarm goes off.
I still wake up about an hour before my 6am alarm and cannot sleep anymore. But I stay in bed until the alarm goes off. After breakfast I watch the F1 sprint race and then, being lazy, just go to West Lake and do two laps. This was a big mistake because it is crowded on a Sunday with most people using their day off from work to relax and recreate around the lake. But I get in two laps and head back into the city and say to myself, "I should ride over to Train Street now and check it out". Train Street is really a narrow alley with active train tracks running through it and cafes and shops right up against the train tracks. It's very cool but somewhat of a tourist trap as people pay higher than usual prices to sit at tables on the three foot wide sidewalk and eat and drink and watch the train come past them within inches. I park and lock my bicycle and walk down the sidewalk and refuse the offers of food and drink and I catch a train going past just past the Train Street (i.e., Train Alley). You could literally reach out and touch the train. When the train passes the security guards who I've practiced my Vietnamese with tell me to hold up and they run to the train tracks and give me a Hanoi beer cap that has been flattened by the train. Like we used to do as kids. I try to give them some money for letting me park my bicycle at their station as I walked up and down the sidewalk, but they won't let me. I get on the bicycle and ride home to watch the F1 qualifying for Sundays Grand Prix of Qatar while eating salty chips and having Coca cola. I relax in the afternoon since my legs are really tired and later I walk around and have a Vietnamese dinner.
Monday is a crazy day. After breakfast I go down to start my ride and my rear tire is flat. It was fine when I finished yesterday's ride. I must have picked up a very slow leak. I realize that the bike does not have quick release hubs, so I start riding it with a flat rear tire (very slowly) to the bicycle shop. A Grab mototaxi driver stops me and says he can repair it. We pull the tube out from under the tire and find the leak near the base of the valve stem. He sands it down, uses some vulcanizing cement, and applies a patch. He says I'm ready to go and takes my money. I get aboout 20 meters away and it is flat again. The mototaxi driver motions for me to pull over and I just refuse and say "I'm going to the bicycle shop" Fortunately it is pretty much downhill and the technician changes out the tube and the owner hands me a wrench to carry and return in case I have any other flats (since no quick release hubs). I start out going south where I've never been before and ride out about 25 kilometers. I pull over to take some pictures of the scenery and the cows and when I get on the bicycle the rear tire is flat again. So I find a safe place and tip the bicycle upside down and pull the rear wheel off and tire off. I inspect the tire very carefully and diligently but cannot find anything that poked through. By now some people have gathered to watch because they probably don't see foreigners with flat tires who can speak a little Vietnamese very often. I put everything back together and use my recently-purchased ePump to pump up the tire and start riding back home. I make a detour to the bicycle shop and owner comes out. I don't say anything and just pull the punctured tube out to hand it to him. He is completely puzzled trying to figure out what happened and did they accidentally put the original tube back in or what. I use The Google Translator to fully describe what happened and he is still puzzled but I Google translate "We'll see how well my repair did tomorrow morning" and "Can I have another spare tube to carry and you can put it on my bill". So that's our plan. I finally make it back home, grab a shower, recharge the ePump (just to keep it full), and watch the F1 race from Qatar where a major strategy blunder is made by the leading team and their dominant pace advantage is thrown away. By now it is approaching 6pm and I go grab dinner and walk around a bit and check my rear tire (with the bicycle parked inside the hotel hallway) and then watch some Netflix.
Tuesday is a better day. After breakfast I get dressed to go cycling and there are no flat tires on the bicycle. I go out for my favorite ride along the Red river. It's my favorite because there's only a few kilometers of heavy traffic and traffic lights and then it gets more rural as you go out into the farmlands. I get to a good turn around place and take a quick water break and see that I am 30 kilometers from As I finish up its about 60 kilometers with no flat tires (accept in my imagination as I say on every little pebble or bump in the road, "That feels like its going down"). After a shower I have a Vietnamese lunch and skip the idea of working in a cafe because they all seem very crowded. Thus I work from my hotel room putting together the templates for 2026 calendars on some of the websites that I maintain. To get a break after this work is done I walk around a bit and then come back home and relax with television and Netflix.
Wednesday is a great day though it does not start that way. I wake up at 5:25am and cannot sleep so I call my former employer's benefits provider to straighten out why I didn't get a reimbursement payment in October or November. I will end up being on hold for one hour and end up not speaking to anyone before giving up and going to eat breakfast. As I'm on hold I pay some bills and note that the city of Long Beach has diteched their very old bill prompting website for a new one where you have to register with an email account and you need to know your water/gas/trash/sewer account number. I end up making an estimated payment through my bank and we'll go from there. I've done this before. After breakfast I take an hour to "let it settle" before cycling and I plow through the former employer's benefits interface and when I find the ledger of funding and payments, it makes sense and it isn't as if they forgot to pay me. I just ran out of my alloted funds. Not a problem. I start out on the bicycle and have a good ride for an hour going out and then turn for home. But I decide I haven't done enough for today so I make a lap of West Lake and this gets me near 55 kilometers. But I am so tired from so many fun rides on this trip. After a shower I meditate and realize my bank's website has my city of Long Beach water/gas/trash/sewer account number (under mem for payment) and I get it and complete the registration for the new city of Long Beach bill paying portal. It's a nice site and easy to navigate and has more information than the previous 20 year old website - though that 20 year old website still provide enough information to get your billing statement and usage details. I'm out of energy so I walk for 30 minutes to find The Pizza Company which is a chain in southeast asia. On the way there I notice a bicycle shop and I look up and see my bicycle shop's owner standing in sidewalk smiling at me. He asks me where the bicycle, half expecting that I had a problem with it or it got stolen, but I say it's at the hotel and I rode 55 km this morning - now I'm just walking to a restaurant. And we chat for a bit and then I proceed. I didn't even realize I was on his street. I get to where Google maps says the restaurant is, but I can't find it. Maybe it is in the five story mall across the street. Thus I go up to the food court on the fifth (top) floor and cannot find it. Maybe pizza was not meant to be today. But as I exit the mall possibly starting to walk somewhere else, I see The Pizza Company restaurant - I was standing right in front of it. I know I want the veggie pizza and I order before I even sit down at the table. And the waiter says today is "buy 1, get 1 free". Thus I gat two medium veggie pizzas and a Pepsi for $10. I eat half of one pizza and carry the boxed one and a half veggie pizza back home. At home I relax and take care of a Thailand arrival card which you can finally do online and buy an airplane flight from CHiang Rai to Bangkok. The itinerary is starting to shape up.
Thursday starts with air quality warnings around Hanoi, so I cut the bicycle ride short to about 40 kilometers. After a shower I meditate, sort out what goes back to the rental shop and what doesn't, and ride slowly to the bicycle shop. The owner and I settle the bill and chat for a bit. And when we shake hands for me to go, he won't let go. He just keeps saying stuff, "stay healthy", "see you next year", and etc. I finally get extracted from his grasp and walk to a restaurant for VBietnamese food. And then I walk back to the hotel to sort out which clothes go to the laundry service 20 meters down the street. With the laundry in work I relax with television and Netflix. I keep looking up at the clock and my body feels like it is 8pm or something later but the clocks says its 4pm or so. Later I do some Python coding for the k-means clustering addition to the neural network code for my friend. And some Python plotting of my historical monthyly expenses just to see what that looks liek.
I'm awak eand out of bed at 5:40am. As I leave the hotel to go run/walk it is still dark. But I walk to Hoan Kiem lake near my hotel where I can run/walk. I'm a bit surprised that in the darkness there are lots of runners, walkers, and cyclists using the street, which is good. I get in a 12 kilometer run/walk and note the Christmas songs being played with the various groups of people doing pilates or tai chi or other mentally and physically stimulating exercises. Just as I am finishing up it starts to rain harder than the mist that has been present on and off during my run. I guess it was a wise decision on my part to give the bicycle back a day early and run today (rather than cycle in the partly wet, slick conditions). As I get back to the hotel I see that the laundry place is already open. So I pick up my freshly laundered clothes and am almost ready to move on to my next stop. After a shower i grab breakfast and read the news and do some more coding. Since it is raining, I mostly stay inside the hotel and I have one medium pizza to keep me noursihed throughout the day.
On Saturday I go for another run/walk around the lake. Today I am a bit earlier and I am very pp,leasantly surprised that the city shuts down the perimeters streets around the lake to traffic so that just the runners occupy the street. I get in a decent 10 kilometer run, grab a shower, and pack. At 1`am I get a cab for Hanoi airport and catch a 100 minute flight to Chiang Mai, Thailand. The airport is empty and it takes three minutes to get through immigration. The bag takes a bit longer but I catch a cab to my hotel. The first thing I do is check the Internet and neither my phone nor my laptop can connect. So I go to the front desk and tell them that the router needs to be rebooted. They get there maintenance guy to come to my room. He reboots the router and everything is good. The speed is relatively fast for this part of the world. I walk over to the night bazaar and there is nobody around. On early Saturday evening there is nobody around. I go to my favorite vegetarian stall and have a delicious red curry vegetables with rice. I walk around a bit and the place is empty. Walking back to my hotel I run into a handfull of people when usually it would be crowded. I get to my room and the electricity doesn't work. So I walk down to the front desk and ask for help again. Then maintenance guy comes and resets the circuit breaker to my room and I have electricity again. What next?