"Good Morning Vietnam!"

"Well, I made it!" said the over tired, forty something Canadian next to me. I then realized that it was my own reflection in the window and I wondered how I aged twenty years from that thirty-six hour trip. As I achingly got up from my seat and shuffled down the aisle I realized that if I keep making that flight, it would eventually kill me.

Talking about going to Vietnam and arriving in Hanoi's international airport are two totally different things. I walked off the plane and into the terminal and still couldn't believe that I made it. I had to remind myself over and over that this will be my home for a year and that it's not any city in Canada. Seeing how the temperature was twenty-four degrees and rising (in early January) I easily reconciled that this was not any city in Canada.

After collecting my bags and leaving the airport, I walked through the doors and entered Vietnam. I was immediately hit with the sights, sounds and smells of Hanoi: the busy streets packed with motor bikes and small cars, the incessant sound honking horns and the pollution that was entering my lungs. I took it all in for a few minutes. The overwhelming scene of people I don't know, speaking a language I can't understand, doing things in a culture I couldn't begin to imagine:

"Ahh, yeah!" I said with a grin, "this, is Asia!"

I quickly got an airport taxi to take me to the hotel my school had put me in for my first few days. My first impressions of my new home were seen from the back of that taxi. Regardless of my tiredness, I was eagerly gawking out the window and imagining the experiences that I was soon to have.

I got a real eyeful of Hanoi on my trip to my hotel. I saw things that were weird, scary, confusing, amazing, fantastic and wonderful. A view of REAL Asia, away from the overpriced, ridiculous tourist traps and all of the five star hotels and resorts. I got to take a glimpse down the back alleys and into the lives of those who are living their everyday lives and meet them eye to eye on their own level, their own turf. This has always been the thrill of traveling around Asia; to go beyond boundaries of the tourist areas and to go past where the guide books end.

I was full of excitement and wonder and ready to embrace all that Vietnam has to offer. I was ready to dive into the culture, the food and the women! Hanoi was my party and I just arrived fashionably late, the timing and the situation couldn't have been better. I dropped my bags off at the hotel and got my second wind. I was ready to hit up the town but, as it turned out, I was hit with the reality that I had work in the morning.