I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m starting to feel ready to get back to the real world. My real world, that is. Yesterday, as we were lounging in our hotel room on our last day in Sapa, I started to miss work. What is that about? Traveling for such a long time is great, but there’s a point at which I start to feel useless and unproductive and I miss the routines and comforts of my daily life at home. I miss waking up in my own home, cooking my own food, being able to drive myself wherever I want to go when I want to go. Of course, I don’t miss the general crappiness that is California right now–heat, smog, and furloughs!–but I’ll have to deal with it sooner or later.
That said, I’m definitely enjoying the time we have left here. We still have a week in Vietnam, and a lot more to see and do.
At the moment, we’re hanging out in our hotel lobby, waiting for our room to be ready for us. We took the night train from Lao Cai back to Hanoi, arriving here at 5 am. After we dropped our bags at our hotel (we’re staying in the same place we stayed in our first pass through Hanoi), we headed to Hoan Kiem Lake to check out the early morning exercise crowd. We walked around the lake twice, observing as locals and a few tourists ran, walked, stretched, played badminton, and did tai chi and aerobics. We kept meaning to get up early for this on our first visit, but we never quite made it out of bed in time. We then headed to a lakeside restaurant for breakfast and reading, and now we’re back here, waiting. I’m playing around on the internet while Huckleberry sleeps in the chair next to me and a man is getting a haircut in the alley outside the hotel.
We’ll be here for 3 days this time, but we’re going to do some day trips out of the city, first to the Perfume Pagoda, then to Tam Coc, which is kind of like Halong Bay but on land. Whatever that means. Next, a three day trip to Halong Bay where we’ll get to kayak and swim before a final pass through Hanoi before we head back to the States via Hong Kong.
Oh, Huckleberry’s awake now and wants to check her email, so I suppose I’ll end this kind of pointless post here.
I don’t think this is a pointless post, nor do I think you are “looking a gift horse in the mouth” either. At some point there comes the diminishing returns of traveling. But it sounds like you are having a great time still. I can’t wait to hear more!