Effortless

It feels like forever since I last got to write anything. All of the pens that I brought with me on the trip have run out of ink and when I was at the market today and tried to buy just two pens instead of the entire canister, the women shooed me away and mumbled something to themselves. Probably along the lines of, "Crazy foreigner. What good does selling 2 pens do us?" Who knows what they said, though whatever it was I'm hoping it sounded ruder than it really was. To be honest, they kind of scared me with their intense reaction. That aside, I haven't been able to write in about four days or so and I have got to find myself a pen tomorrow. On the other hand, it feels good to get back on my blog and post a little something about what I've been experiencing.

I finished reading "The Celestine Prophecy" a few days ago and one of the nine spiritual insights that the main character of the book is attempting to discover has to do with examining the coincidences that occur in your life and also of equal importance, to examine why certain people come into your lives at certain times. The premise is to keep your mind open to the knowledge or insights that they have to offer you.

My first day in Hanoi, I was eatting breakfast at a cafe when this girl who was by herself walked by. As she passed, she happened to glance in my direction and we exchanged a smile. I honestly had an intuition that I was going to have another encounter with her at some point. About 5 minutes later, she came back, stopped in front of the menu stand and read it for a brief moment before walking into the cafe. Again, as she walked passed me we exchanged a smile and then she came back and almost simultaneously she asked if she could join me and I motioned for her to come sit down. She happened to be from Austria and unfortunately I know that the language barrier kept us from experiencing each other's full personalities, but we spent the day together going to some parts of Hanoi away from the tourist district. It was good hanging out with her, but at the end of the day, I definitely felt a need to get away and be on my own again. I didn't really think about her much until today when I went out to look for a tour of Halong Bay. Trying to find a trip around here is like taking a huge gamble. Half the time you don't really know if you will be getting what the tour agency advertises. When I met with her she told me about this agency called Ocean Tours and I happened to walk by them today when I was thinking about Halong Bay. I stopped in and they were really great. I think this bit of information was what I needed to learn from Karen.

Yesterday, I took a day trip out to the Perfume Pagoda. It's this super sacred Buddhist place where tons of Vietnamese go to this temple that is located inside a cave and they ask for an abundant year. On the trip there was an American couple and while we were walking back to the boat to take us back (you have to take a one hour boat ride on the river to get there) I ended up talking to Courtney about her bargaining strategies. They live in Thailand so I figured that they would have a lot of experience with these things. Bargaining is one of those skills that was simply lost on me. For the most part, I might as well have a sign on my head that says, "I am a sucker and will give up really easily." In fact, the other day, I went to buy a pork bun and the women told me it was 1000 dong more than I had paid the day before, but I was too lazy to say anything. Well, today, I actually had fun bargaining and think I was fairly successful. The original price quote I got was 150,000 and I ended up paying 60,000. Thanks Courtney for the information.

Lastly, a man whose identity is still unknown to me gave me one of the greatest insights so far. I was riding a motorbike taxi back from the museum and we pulled up to a stop light. The man next to us was wearing a sweatshirt that said, "Buffalo Tours. Inspirational Travel" on the back. I was quite familiar with Buffalo Tours as I had actually had quite a bit of interest in potentially taking one of their trips which encompassed Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam and was unique in the fact that their were these really cool volunteer projects in each place. The whole philosophy of the organization is to give back when traveling and it was started by a Vietnamese guy, so it is all local and all the profits and salaries benefit the people who live here. I hadn't thought about looking them up once I got here, but I had thought many times over the course of this trip that I wished there was something I could do to make a difference. Anyhow, I thought that if I had time today I would try to find out where their office was and go talk to them. But I got to wandering all over the old quarter and other parts of Hanoi and pretty much forgot about it when I turned down one street on my way to find some old house and there was the Buffalo Tours office. I walked in, told them I was interested in trying to find an organization in Hanoi that I could perhaps volunteer at for a day or to and then make a monetary donation. The women set me up with a place called Morning Star Center which is a school for children with intellectual disabilities. They rely solely on private funding and they often help students integrate into regular schools and teach independant living skills. I'm staying in Hanoi now rather than try to see the Northwest part of the country, which is supposed to be beautiful, but I know that I am right where I want to be.