Water World

Noon

4 p.m.

Evening

Tropical Storm 11W DIANMU continues to slide to the west parallel to the southern coast of China. The system will make landfall over northern Vietnam later tonight, bringing heavy rainfall, gusty winds, and a risk of flooding and landslides, especially in the higher terrain of northern Vietnam and southern China. The remainder of the region will also see widespread unsettled weather, as deep tropical moisture gets a lift from the very warm afternoon sun.

Tropical Storm/Tropical depression 11W DIANMU is maintaining strength as it traverses the Gulf of Tonkin, with the coast of northern Vietnam in its sights. The system should make landfall later tonight, bringing typical tropical weather hazards to the region.

The heat spreads across parts of central and eastern China as a weak frontal boundary stalls out to the north. The warm air is piling on as it butts up against a fairly strong shot of cool air that has brought autumn temperatures to Mongolia, northern China. Dangerous heat indices will once again be in place across interior central China, peaking near 44C (111F), as the heat and humidity combine for an oppressive afternoon. The frontal system will bring some scattered showers, and some scattered thundershowers, along a line from Mongolia, eastward to Japan.

It has been a fickle day in Hanoi. At 11:15 a.m. I felt the first sprinkles of rain. Gradually the heavens broke forth and I ducked from awning to awning trying to find a better garment than the gossamer plastic shroud that clung to my skin, wrapping me in my own sauna. Using sign language and broken English I managed to learn from a little girl in a shop where I might find better rain gear. And finally a man at another shop used a word we both understood: "Raincoat." It wasn't really a rain coat, it was a plastic tarp with snaps. They have all kinds in Hanoi. For example, the Madonna and Child version shown below: (Yes, it's a single garment.)

With my gossamer rain fabric stuffed and protected by my new raincoat, I sloshed my way back to the May de Ville Legend, stripped off the wet clothes and napped. Then I pulled back the curtain at 4 p.m. and saw nothing but sun. I went to dinner, came back, edited some photos and fell asleep. When I awoke, I heard thunder, walked down stairs, and found this at the doorway to the hotel:

Sorry about the quality of the pictures. It turns out that my Flip camera, made obsolete by cell phones that take photos, sometimes produces much sharper night shots. The picture of the smiling lady materializing like Botticelli's Venus from the inlet that used to be our alley, was shot with a Flip. The other alley shots were taken with my Verizon LG Droid. Bring back the Flip!

The preferred footwear

By the way, allow me to recommend what to bring with you to Hanoi during monsoon season:

Yes, that is a Croc shoe. It doesn't retain water, and it's nice and cushy for those days when you have to stick your precious feet into murky water without knowing quite what's at the bottom -- nails, broken glass? These were worn by a Korean guest of the May de Ville Legend.

But wait--there's more!

This is how our alley looked at 1 a.m. Who'da thot?

The flood had covered the first black step only a couple hours earlier.

All right, there's more photos to share, and you being intelligent readers, you won't need comment or captions for some of them. They kind of speak for themselves. Here they are:

Is the little girl excited about her new bike? Will it get home in one piece?

Is this overhead wiring some sort of street art metaphor for Hanoi traffic?

The nine bottles he is strapping to his bike weigh 40 pounds each.

Are these mannequins intentionally Caucasian to help tourists buy for their grandchildren?

A merchant's eye view of the street from beneath the very essential awnings.

And here's  photo of me in the early afternoon. I could't find my sweat band, so I used the belt from the bathroom provided by the May de Ville. Kind of fashionable, doncha think?



Love,

Robert, and Jean Baptiste

Hanoi!

Under glittering lights that banish the monsoon darkness, this street vendor sold me this incredible inedible fruit for  a whopping $1. But there was no modeling fee!

HANOI, AUG 18-19--

Hello, Wilson!

It only took minutes to get past immigration at Hanoi's modern airport, and customs just waived me through. The May de Ville Legend didn't have anyone to greet me with a sign that bore my name, but there was a hard-working young man who snagged me, called the hotel and arranged to be their transportation agent. I say hard-working, because he told me he put in 16 hours a day, probably a lot of it as a free-lance taxi driver. I expected to pay $25, but I'll be charged $18 for the ride. That's him and his car in the photo below.

Worst opening line

Perhaps you have heard of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the worst possible opening lines. Bulwer-Lytton inspired the contest decades after he penned the immemorial phrase, it was a dark and stormy night...

Well, I arrived on a dark and stormy night, in the tail end of the monsoon season. Here is how some of the multitudinous scooter drivers dressed for the occasion, as seen through the taxi windshield:

My rain gear and Guccci hat

By the end of the next day, I had gone rogue and followed their lead with a charming outfit that I purchased in the middle of a deluge while I cowered under an awning, speaking with a family from Spain.

A local snagged me and sold me that fashionable, sheer plastic rain garment. I noticed she also had one of those Gucci hats that all the locals wear, and I couldn't resist. Afterward I shot a selfie in my bathroom at the hotel.

The photo is almost as good as all those selfies people shoot for posting on OK Cupid. Pity I won't be here long enough to find the girl for me.

You know, when you're in a strange city with a strange man on a dark and stormy night, you kind of wonder whether that was the right thing to do. And what you are actually going to pay when and if you reach your destination. It helped that the driver worked a bit with the local information booth at the airport, called the hotel and had me speak with the desk clerk. But with my slight hearing loss and their accent, this kind of felt like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates. You just nevah know what you gonna ge-et.

Particularly when the taxi pulls over and this is the alley you're gonna walk down in the rain:

Well, the May de Ville Legend was off to the left. We walked right by by the door and had to back track, but it was indeed there. Whew! In no time at all I was checked in, and Jean Baptiste was relaxing on one of the twin beds, checking out the $23 per night room. It's tight quarters. You have to scoot a bed to get into the closet or refrigerator. But there's air conditioning, and a comfortable shower, and a little desk where I can write to you with this tiny little $180 Dell computer with the crappy keyboard and tiny type. Blame any typos on this machine, OK?

I probably was asleep by midnight. The next morning there was a free breakfast on the 10 floor, providing an opportunity to sample the local food. It was OK, and had some stuff I've never eaten before -- jellied coconut milk, for instance. When I started shooting photos, one of the staff gestured toward the roof, which turned out to give a grand view of the surroundings:

The rain had let up for a moment, giving me an opportunity to record some views. The photo immediately below serves as a reminder that France had colonized Vietnam. Note what appears to be a small pagoda atop a structure reflecting French Colonial architecture.

Check out how crowded this city is, but keep in mind this is the Old Quarter.

Here's a look at a street intersection below, with scooters being the dominant form of transport for individuals:

There's an outlet store for items made in Vietnam -- I guarantee that they beat Sports Authority's going out of business fire sale:

And here's a puzzler. Didn't anyone tell the Vietnamese that Saigon is now called Ho Chi Minh City? Maybe the name change didn't make it into the business sector:

The Hotel Viet proudly flies several flags, including Old Glory:

And solar power has arrived--with the sun beaming down most of the time, there's no shortage of hot water Note that mechanism at the right of the photo with all those long black tubes. I'm pretty sure that's what we're looking at.

This final from-the-roof shot gives an inkling of what it's like to work during monsoon season:

After  napping off jet lag, and two intrusions by a maid who was surprised I was in my room blogging, I decided to go out on the street. The monsoon patiently waited until I had walked just far enough not to get lost in the confusing street network of the Old Quarter. But monsoons have only so much patience. The rain started. I dodged the deluge from awning to awning. Scooters navigated up the narrow passage ways. People sought shelter where they could, as the following photos attest:

I bought my Gucci rain hat, my sheer raincoat, and headed back to my room for a nap. Later I ventured out for dinner. This is what Old Quarter streets can look like at night:

Before returning to my room for the night, I checked out a local garment vendor,who held up a $23 North Face jacket made in Vietnam.

If there are any donors who want some outdoor gear, let me know before I return in September. I'll have plenty of room in my luggage and backpack when I offload the One World Futbols. You'll never see prices like this again--unless you'r coming to Asia.

Love,

Robert, and Jean Baptiste

My moneybelt, basking in the glow of Uncle Ho

Rescued!

AUG 17--SOMEPLACE, OVER THE PACIFIC . . .

Hi, Wilson.

Jean Baptiste isn't doing the dispatch today. They're in the dark in the duffebag with a lot of their cousins. And they're lucky to be there. The airline, whose name will be omitted here, almost didn't let them on the plane to Hanoi. Remember the flap last year about a scholar taking One World Futbols into China? The Chinese airline was afraid they would blow up because they couldn't be flattened. Same thing this time. Finally,  at the last minute, we were rescued in a very unexpected way.

Because of the issue that came up last summer, I came to the SeaTac Airport all prepared. I put a note in the duffel bag saying "These Balls Breathe!" The note explained that a change in air pressure had no affect on them. And just to make sure,when I checked in for my boarding pass, I wanted to make sure they balls wouldn't get stopped along the way, so I mentioned it at the check in counter. Bad idea.

Old notions die hard

Would you believe it if I told you that Italy was slow to trade Roman Numerals for Arabic numbers because they were afraid they might be tricky? For example, when you wrote "three" in Roman numerals, it looked like this: IIJ (sort of ). That little curl at the end of the third verticle line told you that the number had ended. You couldn't slip another line in, the story goes. But the Arabic "3" didn't provide for that, and the Italians were suspicious.. Something like that.

The fact is, a good idea sometimes has a lot of opposition from established ideas, and in this case the airline thought all balls should be flattened. You have to flatten the ball so it won't blow up, they said.

But it breathes, I responded.

But they couldn't understand that.

I squeezed it to show that it breathed.

But you won't be in the cargo hold to squeeze it, they said. At least I think that's what they said. None of it made much sense.

"But when pressure falls, air leaves the ball, and pressure increases, air goes into the ball. Just like me. I don't blow up!" I said.

Sorry, you have to flatten the ball, they said.

I opened my luggage, pulled out my utility tool, came up with a blade, and performed surgery on the round cap on one of the balls showing what the interior was like and that the ball was still functional. (Kind of making it useless as a gift to a Vietnamese school, even though it still bounced just fine).

They didn't get it. So I took my balls and went home -- sort of. I walked off to a corner to make some phone calls to see whether a friend could pick up the balls so that I didn't have to forfeit them.

While I was doing that, the counter supervisor approached me with a young man, Conner Adams, who looked to be wearing one of those flightline vests. He had been playing soccer since he was three years old.

Conner Adams saved the day when he explained to airline staff that a One World Futbol isn't going to blow up in flight. As a result, nine could board the flight to Hanoi on Wednesday, Aug 17.

Oh, yeah, he had heard about this football, he said. But I don't think he had ever actually seen one. I squeezed the ball and showed him that it breathed. After some rumination, he assurred the staff that it would be safe to ship. After some additional discussion among the staff, the duffle bag was back at the conveyor belt. And I got something out of the deal -- a window seat near the front of the aircraft, which gave me lots of leg room and a leg up on my connecting flight from Seoul to Hanoi.

The supervisor didn't have to do that, but she did. Nice PR on her part.

I don't blame airlines for being careful, But I'm amazed how something, that should be so obvious, isn't.

Oh some more about Conner: By the power vested in me, I bequeathed upon him a OneWorldFutbol -- the one I carved up a bit to demonstrate how they worked. I only cut part of the rim, so it's still fairly intact, and as I was geting ready to leave the check-in counter, Conner was playing with the ball. He dropped it to the floor and then caught it on the rebound between his knees.

I'm hoping I can tell you more about Conner. This is most of what I know so far: he is active in Seattle soccer and has done some traveling, including to Vietnam and other countries. Naturally I told him how to find out about the One World Futbol by visiting its Web site.

And by virtue of another power vested in me, I also hereby declare him to be the newest member of Team Wilson. I'll be sending him an e-mail explaining what all that means.

Oh, and Jean Baptiste? I didn't want a repeat of all this drama at the security screening, so I pulled them out of my backpack and placed them in the duffle bag with all their cousins. I had wanted to show them more of the airport, but this seemed the safer route. Now my question is, will I have a problem bringing Jean Baptiste home?

Well, that's all I'm going to say about that.

I'll be in Hanoi by the time you get this.


Love,

Robert