Goodbye Vietnam

Sent: Tue May 27 2008

In a plane with 20 people
Which row do you want?
Li chi minh (lior) and op ti minh (idan) are sitting next to each other
I am on a different cloud 3 rows back (by the window) with ipod on full volume. Rami or rafi perskey song I labeled as 5 star a few years back is playing. So is geula by hemi rodner, ein li avir by dafna armoni, and melech haolam by shlomo artzi. Must have prepared this list last time I had time to breathe, summer of 2004?

Hanoi is leaving us behind
The local laughter level in hanoi is now lower
The heat is at about 40c or 105f. We are arguing if above or below. With 80% humidity, it is national sauna day
Cambodia, coming up on the left, is hotter

Last day was spent breaking some norms we have established in VN
Rather than $10 per meal for 3 we went for $100
Just an order of magnitude in price and much more in quality. You are in a different plant.
A whole pineapple stuffed with cumin rice with grilled shrimps?
Hot carrot, banana leaf salad that makes you cry topped by peanuts?
Ratatouille in flipover
Tufo in mushroom and cognac

Some perfect dishes

Our guide was to pick us up to the airport at 12:30
We are ready at 12:10 and are sitting on the 2 stairs to the hotel which is 4 or 5 meters wide, right at the intersextion of hang nun, hang manh and hang quai (where the soap nazi resides – we left there our zip the other night,)
Li chi minh is hungry.
We hop to a great restaurant a b lock from the hotel. It I crazy. No way we can do it in 20 minutes (and we don’t).
3 set menu meals later, a pineapple on the floor, 15 plates and 5 biers we are 20 minutes late for the ride to the airport. I think the seafood set menu was better than the vegeterian one. Don’t you?
Since we were under time preassure we asked for the bill during main course. The waitress asked if 1 or 3?
Why is she asking if we need 3 bills? One bill for all of us
3 minutes later a beer shows up
We crack up
The whole restaurant is looking at us
Op ti minh walks out of the restauarant to calm down
We ask for the bill again and get a cup of tea. This one is on account of one of the set menus. But until we figure it out we laugh so hardtears come out of our eyes and noses.
So what is in the middle of a spectrum in which beer is on the far right side and and the bill on the far left? That’s right, tea.
De bill, de bill, de billa, hatichat debilla.

From above vietnam looks green with many interconnected villages. A different green, not like france, this one is more pastel.
Can not see the motorbikes
It was wonderful here
We close a chapter in our lives

By the time we left hanoi we had a favorite coffee place with high quality segrafedo coffee
We would seat there, in the 2nd floor which has a/c loolkinng at the traffic intelacing
Idan with capucino
Lior with capucino with little coffee
And I with the double macciato and soda with lime and Ice
The limes here are great. How come we don’t have them in israel.
Besof hakitz eshev bein yedidim is playing. Followed by ivri lider yoshev bebati kafe
A generation of people who don’t care about anything…
We are over the red river delta
That is the river we crossed in sapa a week ago

We did some last minute shopping
Negotation was fun. With lots of laughs. Each side thinks he got a great deal
Ze tuv li – who mefager vze tuv li

Blue skies on the way to cambodia