It’s amazing how on trips like this, time gets so compressed that events taking place just 11 days ago seem like they happened a year ago.

When I left off the narrative, we had just spent the night in some border flophouse and then caught a crowded bus for the three-hour trip back to Ho Chi Minh City.

We arrived, around 1pm, both tired and sweaty (actually, Yonna doesn’t sweat, I think it has never been hot enough for her here). But we officially had no place to rest and clean up, since all of her belongings were either in transit, or still stacked in the lobby of her former apartment building.

We called for a large taxi, and somehow managed to get all of the boxes in, and to the central post office in one load. I looked like a complete wreck by this time.

The Central Post Office in Ho Chi Minh is a major tourist attraction. And all of the tourists hoping to snap pictures seemed put out by the legitimate post office business that involved boxes stacked on the front steps of the building as we unloaded the taxi. It was weird. But once we’d gotten them all inside, we had to go through the long processes of having each box re-opened to check for contraband of some sort. It was “Woman’s Day” in Vietnam. I think this may be analogous to Valentine’s Day in the US. All of the men had taken the day off work to buy flowers and chocolates for their wives and/or girlfriends. Ironically, this left all of the women behind to do the heavy lifting.

When the last box was accounted for, we went back to the apartment building, were all of our combined luggage remained. I went to the Vietnam Airlines ticket office to change our flight, while Yonna stayed behind to consolidate the baggage so we could leave two large bags behind in Ho Chi Minh, for retrieval before our departure to Tokyo later in March. When I left the Vietnam Airlines office it was suddenly pouring down rain. I caught a cab back to the apartment one last time, using one of the few Vietnamese phrases I’d learned very well, “so high, no vahn nahm” (Number 2, Ngo Van Nam, Yonna’s former address). I’d learned to say it in the sing-songy way a parent would point out a particulary high-flying kite to their young child, “How high is that kite? Soooo high!” The trip back was quite lovely in the rain.

Yonna had an idea. We would take our bags to the Park Hyatt Hotel. This is the most upscale hotel in HCMC. We’d pay $32 each for a day’s pool membership, and ask them to hold our bags in storage while we swam, then “forget” to pick our bags up when we left for the airport. Sounded like a plan to me.

Even though it was raining, the $32 was money well spent. Pool membership included access to the changing room, showers, jacuzzi, sauna, and the outdoor pool. I started with a 10 minute shower, using the luxury gels and shampoos. Then grabbed some of the complimentary water and hit the jacuzzi. Then, wrapped in a light dressing robe, I napped for a few minutes in a cozy lounge chair before meeting Yonna in the outdoor pool for a rainy night’s swim. It was extremely relaxing.

Then I shaved, showered again, and changed into my fancy new duds.

We raced to the airport by taxi and arrived about 40 minutes before our flight to Hanoi.

We were about to buy some food at the airport, but they closed as we approached the little shop. No meal on the flight either. Luckily I had some chocolate and a crushed sandwich that Yonna had bought for me that morning while we waited for the bus back from the Cambodian border. It was so hard to believe that this day had started that way.

Finally we were on the plane, looking exhausted, but I was happy to be on my way.

We arrived in Hanoi around 11:30pm, and after waiting for luggage, we were on the sidewalk around midnight.

Unlike our arrival in Ho Chi Minh (at around the same time) the reception outside Hanoi airport was bleak. The few taxis that had been there had already filled up with multiple parties and driven away, and new taxis were arriving at the rate of about one every 10 minutes. These guys were charging high rates for the 50-minute drive into the city. Apparently, Woman’s Day was having an impact here, as most cabbies were home with their wives/girlfriends. But then, Hanoi is the heart of socialism in Vietnam, so there is never the race for buck that you experience in HCMC. The cabbies wanted to be home in bed, not driving out to the airport.

Finally we managed to get a cab for ourselves. Yonna negotiated a price with the driver. I was too tired to even remember what the details were. But I was happy that the weather in Hanoi was much cooler. Almost to the point of being a bit chilly (or maybe that was just the carry-over from the muggy heat of HCMC).

As we drove, she explained that in Ho Chi Minh, there would have been a lot of back and forth in negotiating a price, but Hanoi, being so strongly socialist, the driver named a price, she went lower, and he didn’t even counter her. He just grimly drove us for 50 minutes into the heart of a maze of narrow streets and bleak buildings light by cold streetlights. At one point, Yonna pointed out a place advertising dog meat for sale. I felt my heart sinking a little.

When we arrived at her apartment, she asked the driver to back up a little and wait for us. We were confronted by a big, green, metal gate. This gate was chained and padlocked, and Yonna had about 50 keys on various key rings. The real problem was that the key she was almost certain was for the gate wasn’t working. Eventually the driver got fed up and drove off. I can’t blame him — he’d been waiting for at least 10 minutes by that time.

But we were still locked out, and it was becoming obvious that the lock had been changed. It was after 1am and we were standing on the sidewalk in Hanoi with our luggage. Yonna sent a text message to the building owner, who was currently travelling out of town. A few minutes later she got a call. Thankfully, the owner was awake, and had called another lodger to come and open the gate. This turned out to be a young woman from New Jersey. For some reason that struck me as really odd.

We took off our shoes at the foot of the stairs and walked up to the second floor, where Yonna’s apartment is. It is a small landing that is open to the general traffic of the house. On this landing is a piano, a bookcase, a couple of chairs and a shrine to some deceased member of the owner’s family. There is a small door leading into the bathroom opposite the door to Yonna’s small room. We conked out for the night.

I woke up to the sound of a dog squealing and crying like I’ve never heard before. I immediately thought of the place we’d passed in the dark the night before. I didn’t want to be lying there listening to a dog being killed for food. It made me really sad. But it turns out that the dog across the street is just deranged. It squeals and cries almost constantly throughout the night and day. I didn’t see any evidence that it was being mistreated. Maybe it was just retarded, or maybe it was trying to immitate the sing-songy way of the Vietnamese language.

I climbed out of bed and peaked out the window at my new surroundings.

It was pretty drab after what I’d seen in Ho Chi Minh City.

We left to find some breakfast. Yonna noticed that the first shipment of her boxes had arrived and were stacked up in the little architect’s office immediately across the alley from her building. The gate that had confounded us the night before was meant to close off this entire alleyway of apartments, offices and what I think was a daycare center.

A couple of buildings down the little side street was a restaurant called “Le Petite Bruxelles,” where we enjoyed a very large (and somewhat pricey) lunch of salads and pastas. After a very short stroll we walked back towards the apartment, turning down an alley just a few dozen meters from the green gate. We came to a hidden café where journalists had gathered to write pro-North articles during the war. Now it was a quite place for students (and dogs) to hang out and drink delicious iced coffee with sweetened-condensed milk (another thing I eventually learned to pronounce correctly).

We went back and unpacked a few boxes until it was time for dinner.

Then we took a taxi (the driver was just learning to drive!) to a small shop that Yonna wanted to visit. It had some pretty cool stuff, including a lamp that I really wanted to bring home (only $50).

Dinner was at an Indian restaurant (Tandoor, I think it was called). The food wasn’t nearly as good as what we’d had in HCMC, but it was pretty OK.