One of the engineers on my team has a cousin in Delhi, and we start the day by texting her to see whether she’s still willing to meet up with us. We had already agreed in Vietnam that we wouldn’t try to fit Agra and the Taj Mahal into our…
We encounter some unexpected international travel issues at the Hanoi airport, which is especially annoying considering we are entitled Americans with the 6th most powerful passport in the world and unaccustomed to restricted movement. Even though I’ve printed off what feel like a thousand copies of all of our itinerary…
So the thing I was probably least prepared for on this trip was how much I have to work. I know, I know—it sounds contrived, saying that I wasn’t prepared for work on a work trip, but what I mean to say is that I was unprepared for not having…
On the opposite side of the coin of night life is office life. I am always interested to see what more of the mundane aspects of life are in various places, and office life in Vietnam is no exception. It takes around 45 minutes for our morning commute round, dropping…
Guest post by Matthias Monday morning I’m in the Lotte Hotel in the middle of Ha Noi; I know I want a suit but I don’t know from where, so I Google it. I see plenty of results for suit shops, but after some digging I’m warned by various forum…
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are for working. I am, after all, here for work, and Matthias has been gratefully able to come along. I didn’t mention it, but upon our arrival and meeting up at the airport, our business partners in Vietnam gifted each of us with detailed personal…
We again—for reasons I cannot quite ascertain—agree to arise early on Sunday in order to meet up with the rest of the group to go grab coffee at Café Giảng, a world famous egg coffee shop, and proceed from there to walk around Hanoi. We agree to meet in the…
Saturday night we all meet to go explore the night market. This turns out rather amusing for me overall, caught between the two worlds of keeping up with Matthias and keeping tabs on my coworkers, and the struggle not to abandon them all just to take pictures to document everything….
We are never far from water in Vietnam, which comforts me. On the highway, small pagodas dot the distance across low-lying fields, furrowed with water and soil and tufts of what I wonder whether is rice. The view from breakfast on the 63rd floor of our hotel is of the…
Back-dating this to Sunday, June 2nd, 2019, even though it’s June 6th 2020 by the time I’m posting it Going back the way we came ends up being unsurprisingly uncomplicated. We have a short flight to Copenhagen and an eight-hour flight back to Boston. We arrive at the airport with…
Back-dating this to Sunday, June 2nd, 2019, even though it’s June 6th 2020 by the time I’m posting it Our last day in Brussels, we check one of our various to-do lists to see what remains. ‘Go to that brewery that Ryan recommended’ and ‘Buy gifts’ are what’s left, besides…
Back-dating this to Saturday, June 1st, 2019, even though it’s June 6th 2020 by the time I’m posting it We aren’t sure what we’re doing today, other than leaving the house later than Matthias would like on account of my dilly-dallying. After a good day and night prior, we sleep…
Back-dating this to Friday, May 31st, 2019, even though it’s June 6th 2020 by the time I’m posting it Thursday we wake up groggily to our alarms going off earlier than we prefer. My phone, essentially unused as I haven’t bothered to get a Belgian SIM since Matthias has an…
Wednesday ends up a series of happy accidents. We awake not later than normal and walk to the square to get fries to go, as a snack to eat on our way to a more proper breakfast. I want a green smoothie and a salad or something (or rather my…
We wake up early to buckets of rain pouring onto the skylight. In Belgium there is a saying: sa drache; it’s bucketing. We manage to leave the house at a more reasonable hour, and poke our heads into yet more police activity in the little square where we are staying,…
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