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Today I woke up just after 07h00, since it was still Dec. 29th in Vancouver, I decided to check my emails for birthday wishes, and luckily I did, I had several frantic emails from my family as well as from Foreign Affairs Canada telling me that my passport was handed in to the Canadian Embassy in Ha Noi. Apparently the tour operator in Ha Long Bay gave me the passport of a woman from Calgary and my passport to her 4 days ago!! Neither of us realized the mixup until the 29th. If I hadn't checked my email so early in the morning I would have been in a pretty bad spot as the Embassy closes early on the 31st for New Years. After getting a hold of the Consular section at the Embassy as soon as they opened, I arranged with Kien to go to Ha Noi and pick up my passport. We had to leave right away and ended up going with the Belgian couple who were finished with their time at the orphanage. and were heading to Ha Noi anyways.
Just as we were getting out of the taxi to get on the bus to Ha Noi, Catherine realized she left her diary with all of her interviews from the last 4 months (including an interview she did with me the day before) back at the room in the orphanage. They wanted to go back and find it, but I told them that we would look for it and one of the other volunteers who would be staying in Ha Noi could meet with them or leave it at the counter of their hotel. They agreed to this and we all set off on the bus to Ha Noi. As we all left in a hurry without eating breakfast (today was actually international food day, and I was supposed to cook everyone pancakes and maple syrup), Kien decided to buy us all some Vietnamese sandwiches from a stand just by the bus departure point. The bus started rolling away before Kien had a chance to get back on and Thibault, Catherine and I all started shouting at the fare collector to get the driver to stop because Kien wasn't on yet. He seemed to know what was going on and reassured us it was fine, the bus kept rolling and still no Kien. Finally as the bus was picking up speed he finally jumped through the front door, and we were off.
As we were eating our sandwiches, the ticket collector made Thibault and Catherine move their backpacks as they were large and would prevent other future passengers from having a place to sit. Kien, wanting their backpacks close by, moved them himself, and in the process he fumbled his sandwich and it fell on the ground. Feeling bad for him after all the trouble he went through to get them for us, and for the fact that he was coming along to help me get my passport back, I offered him my sandwich. He refused, but when I re-insisted with half my sandwich, he graciously accepted.
About 2 hours later, we were dropped off at a bus station in Ha Noi about a 10 minute walk from the Canadian Embassy. We walked with Thibault and Catherine for a few hundred metres until our paths diverged and bade them farewell as well as exchanging our numbers to ensure that I could let them know when we found Catherine's diary.
Reaching the Embassy, Kien had to wait for me outside, while I went in and talked to the consular officer and got my passport back. Once I had it in hand, I met back up with Kien and we set off to have lunch at his family's place. He told me he know this particular area of Ha Noi very well as he used to live in this area 2 years ago. Just a couple hundred metres from the Canadian Embassy was the museum and mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. Unfortunately the mausoleum was closed for the day already (they only allow visitors in the mornings), but we were able to get a couple of good photo's of the complex.
We set off to his family's place, about a 2km walk from the embassy. Down an alley was his aunt and her husband hard at work cooking up some bbq pork on an open flame pit. We had arrived, and Kien started introducing me to his aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. We were served some sticky glass noodles, bbq pork and fried nem's for lunch. Kien cut up some chili's for both of us, and we also flavoured our dishes with fresh Vietnamese pepper, supposedly one of the best countries in the world for pepper. Lunch came to 30,000 Dong each ($3.00 for both of us), I decided to pick up lunch as again Kien was already going out of his way to help me. After lunch, we went down the alley to where his grandfather lives. We had some Green Tea with his grandfather and Kien showed me several family pictures that were mounted on the wall. His parents, when he was five, his deceased grandmother, etc. I really appreciated all of this, and it was a great experience being invited in to his family's house like this.
We started walking back to the bus station to get back to the orphanage when our bus started coming towards us! Lucky for us, so we were able to jump on right away and off we were.
Once off the bus, Kien proposed to me two options: take a regular taxi back to the orphanage, or take a moto-taxi (scooter). I immediately lighted up my eyes at the chance to go on a moto-taxi, and only being 30,000 Dong each ($3.00 for both), it was much cheaper anyways. The ride back was amazing. I sat behind the driver, and Kien behind me. Immediately, I took out my camera to videotape the ride. The highlight was driving through the farmland, seeing all the rice paddies flooded, filled with farm workers tending to their crops, water buffalo everywhere and gentle rolling hills off to the left of us.
We made it back to the orphanage around 15h00, a good 6 hours after we left. All the other volunteers were playing with the kids and were happy to see both of us return. After all the pleasantries, I asked if anyone had seen Catherine's diary. Jin said they had looked everywhere and hadn't found it. Kien and i decided to do a second search to be sure and we couldn't find it either. I went to text Catherine and let her know we didn't find it, but for some reason the text wouldn't go through. I tried calling her and after a minute my line died as I had run out of airtime. We decided to send them an email with Kien's laptop in the office of the orphanage and with that out of the way it was time to take a nap!!
Apparently international day had gone on pretty well. Philippe ended up making the pancakes, and everyone really enjoyed the maple syrup. Lunch was Vietnamese nem's (spring rolls) and some other food I can't remember. Dinner ended up being a huge feast (sadly it was also out last dinner together as a group). We had Korean bulgogi, another Korean beef dish, Japanese curry, and Italian pasta and red wine. Dessert was Korean rice cakes with Boseung tried to sabotage by spiking 4 of them with ginger, although nobody actually ate one that had ginger in it! we had so much food leftover that a lot ended up being saved for tomorrow's breakfast.
To cap off the night, everyone surprise Philippe with a birthday 'cake' of Choco Pie's!!!
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