Living that hotel life

For my last 4 nights in Hanoi, I'm treating myself (does $10 a night really count as treating?) to a shared hotel room with my friend Katie. In America, spending 4 days in a hotel would generally be pretty boring. But if you haven't figured out already, this is not America.

The hotel staff has gotten to know us pretty well. So well that we get asked personal questions daily, i.e. "You have boyfriend?" "What your address?" "You want to go on a date with my nice friend?"

Wednesday, my Vietnamese friend, Bich, promised me she would take me to the best hairstylist in Hanoi. When I asked how much it would cost she told me four dollars. FOUR DOLLARS. I was both excited and terrified.

I described the haircut I wanted, and Bich translated to the hairstylist. I was nervous--who knows if she was accurately translating the words for "layers" and "shoulder-length". The hairstylist seemed to understand what I wanted. But when I unleashed the beast (took my hair out of the ponytail) the look on her face clearly said "what have I done to deserve this". The humidity has not been kind to my curls.

So I was nervous that she wouldn't be able to work with my hair. It's four times as thick and a hundred times less manageable than perfect Asian hair, so that would be understandable. But the haircut turned out to be exactly the same as what I would get back home, just $40 less expensive!

Never doubt a Vietnamese hairstylist

We've spent this week treating ourselves in other ways as well. The sweat, dirt, and pollution have been wreaking havoc on everyone's skin, so my friends and I bought $1 mud masks and did them at the hotel. 

However, no one told me that they make skin products way more potent here--they probably use ingredients that are illegal anywhere else. Usually face masks make your face feel a bit stiff, but this mask legitimately froze my face into one expression. I couldn't move my mouth or cheeks--kind of like what you would imagine botox to feel like. It was a bit scary.

What have I done

 Halfway through Wednesday night, I woke up to a loud, intermittent tapping. I spent five minutes groggily trying to figure out what it was before realizing that the air conditioning unit next to my bed was dripping. It was Chinese (Vietnamese) water torture. I put a towel on the floor to try to muffle the sound, but that didn't work. Eventually I just put a pillow over my head until I fell back asleep.

The next day there was a puddle next to my bed. We told the people at the front desk that it was leaking a bit and they said they would send someone to fix it, but 2 days later it was still dripping. Friday night was really hot, and we woke up to find our entire floor covered in an inch of water. Thank goodness none of our stuff was on the floor or it would have been ruined.

We went back down to the front desk and they sent a Vietnamese man up to fix it. It took twice as long as it should have because he kept asking us if we had boyfriends, where we were from, and telling us we were beautiful. I was a bit cranky --all I wanted to do was take a shower, but this man was determined to teach me how to say "pretty" in Vietnamese.

Mr. Fix-it

I have one night left in the hotel, and tomorrow my flight leaves at 11:30pm for Tokyo. Then I'll spend 10 hours in the Japan airport before a 12 hour flight to Chicago.