Museum of Ethnology

Recently we had friends who hopped over from Korea, where they teach English, to visit us here in Hanoi.  It was great having Nick & Jessica and their almost one year old daughter with us for a visit.  On their last day here we took them to see the museum of ethnology.  We highly recommend the museum as it has artifacts from multiple ethnic groups that live within the borders of Vietnam and even has actual reconstructed houses representing the diversity of housing from some of the different ethnic minoriites. As you can see by the pictures, the houses they have collected are very impressive. 

The houses tended to be the best representations and came from wealthy families that sold or donated them to the museum.  Within the houses are pictures of how they were moved and reconstructed.  Actually, there were workers living in the long house when we were at the museum.

Here is a picture of Ann, Brittany and our friend Jessica with her daughter in a different house (outside not pictured). 

They had a fire going on inside to illustrate where a family would cook and keep warm during the cooler months. 

Wish I knew more about this boat, but it was very long and intereseing.  We know there are boat races in the South and this is one of them.


The museum also has pictures of people representing the 54 different ethnic groups in Vietnam.  

You can go inside all the houses and get a feel of what it would be like for a family, or a community to use the housing at the time of year you visit.  As the day was cool, we could imagine the challenge of people staying warm and needing to have a fire going during the evening hours before getting wrapped up in blankets.  We have visited when it is quite a bit warmer, and the breeze through the very tall community house was certainly refreshing.

Banking Experience

It all started on Friday, Jan. 13th, realizing we needed our passports in order to open a bank account.  Almost turned them in to the immigration office to apply for our resident cards (no more 3 month visas!)  We will be able to obtain 3-year resident cards at less than the cost of 3-month renewal of our visas.  Unfortunately, Ann’s passport expires in 2 years, so her resident card will also expire in 2 years.  We’ll find out down the road what we need to do then.

We went to HSBC bank, thinking that it would be best to open an account at an international bank rather than a local Vietnamese bank.  As it turned out, the minimum balance for a corporate/business account is $8,000.00 US with a $100 fee per month should the balance fall under that amount.  We were shocked at the amount. 

So we began researching Vietnamese bank accounts to find out which one would be a safe one as well as easy to use.  One criteria that’s important is how close the office is for us to do business.  Standard Charter has an office in Hanoi now but it is more than 30 minutes drive to get to it.  Citibank refused to give us any information over the phone.  And after what happened at HSBC, we decided it probably required a minimum we couldn’t possibly work with.

We decided over the weekend on the Military Bank.  It guarantees deposits (a good thing) and has English on its website as well as online access capability.  Only a 10 minute drive away.  So far so good.

On the web, we were told we need our passport, our business license, and our tax code.  No problem.

When we got to the bank, we were told we needed to have a notarized copy of our business license, tax code and red stamp.  Ouch.  Getting notary done could sometimes take a few days because of the crowd.  We were told there is an office close by, somewhere on Quan Thanh Street.  They didn’t know the address.

So off we go, driving slowly down the street to spot whatever office it could be.  2 rounds and we could not spot it.  So we stopped and asked a parking guard if he knew where we could get paper notarized.  He didn’t know and went to a nearby bank to ask.  He came back and told us it is one street over:  14 Phan Dinh Phung.  We were thrilled to be given an address.

We got to the address and close by there was a photocopy shop.  I ran over and got a copy made of our business license (we had one already but needed another one for the immigration office.)  Walked into the District People’s Committee Office to get the notary and were told we needed 2 copies of each—so back to the photocopy shop.  We were able to get our copies notarized in about 15-20 minutes!  (We were told later this is very rare to have no one else in there.) 

Back to the bank, we were able to get our accounts set up (although it took more than the 5 minutes the lady told us it would take—it actually took about 1 hour.)  But it was not without difficulty trying to understand all the banking terminology in Vietnamese.  We guessed at much of it (in context) and got the accounts set up:  one in Vietnamese Dong and another in U.S. Dollar.  They were even offering to sell us checks (which we didn’t know what it was until another lady came by the table and was signing and red stamping her check.  Where she was going to use that, we don’t know since we don’t know of any store which would take a check.)

While we were at the bank, our friend, who is helping us with all the procedures, called and said that we need to pay our first VAT tax which is due the next day and that it needed to be paid by bank transfer from our bank account.  Whew!  Glad to know we decided to get the account set up now as next week the banks will all be closed the entire week for Tet (Lunar New Year) Celebrations.

All in all, we spent 4 hours running around and setting up a bank account for CrossPoint.

Cool vs. Cold

As we entered the new year the temperature had fallen and we began to experience Hanoi's winter.  Temperature wise it doesn't sound too bad.  Like today, it was a high of 61 and a low of 51.  In Illinois, that would be great at this time of year - but here we shiver.  You ask, why?  We use hot water bottles (that we can just plug in), blankets, sweatshirts, warm things for our feet - all this for inside.  The reason is - our inside temperature in our bedroom has been around 56 F when we wake up and climbs to around 57 F.

We are thankful for a space heater and for being able to warm a room up with our two way air conditioners/heaters.  We don't use them often, besides really increasing the electric bill, they really dry out the air.  Exercise is also a good warmer upper.

We marvel at some of the young people we know who live further north, who have no indoor heating, unless they start a fire, with temperatures dropping into the low 40's.  We see a lot fires on the street here in Hanoi when the temperature drops to the low 50's.  There are many people whose work is outside, like Xe Om drivers (motorcycle taxi), who wait in the cold for their next passenger.

A little fun comparison

                                                      Winter

Our Home in Illinois                             Our home here
House w/ central heat - 68 F         vs.  Little heat 54 F - 61F
Car w/ heater                                 vs.  motorbike in all weather, including cold rain (no snow)
Warm clothes                                 vs.  warm clothes
Heated stores, restaurants              vs.  not heated stores, shops, cafes
Crazy winter traffic                        vs.  Crazy car and motorbike traffic rain or shine

                                          If there is a power outage
Frozen water pipes                         vs.  Darker
Danger of freezing to death           vs.  More shivering, as body heat is the only source

Until the last line, our home in Illinois looked better.  Stay warm and dry, enjoy the snow and be thankful for a warm house, warm car, warm clothes and if the power goes out - come visit us.    

Water is almost out and the home phone isn't working, again.

Earlier this week we noticed the water pressure was going down in the house, even though the water pump had been working for 3 hours.  A quick description of how our water system works.  First, water from the city goes into a tank that sits below our courtyard.  There is another water tank on our roof and when the mechanism lets the water pump know (under our stairway), that it is low in water, it pumps the water from the outside tank to the tank on top of the roof.  Our water is then gravity fed to the whole house. 

As the lunar new year is approaching when no one works, and having no water is never a good situation, we contacted our landlord and he sent someone within a couple of hours.  The repairman was able to fix the problem, yea!

Our phone line seems to be going out on a semi regular basis and we are not sure why.  Fortunately we have cell phones to call our landlord about the water and the phone.  What did people do before?  Neighbors did you say?  We thought that was old technology.  Just kidding - I guess that is one advantage/disadvantage of new technology - not needing to ask neighbors for help. 

The repairman came today and was able to fix the phone line again.  After checking the phone, he climbs out our kitchen window, standing on the wall that separates our house from our neighbor's courtyard, then he borrows our ladder to check the phone connection on the pole in the alley and then he tries the phone again.  If it still does not work, he repeats the process.  Today it only took one time at each place.   We are thankful. 

We hope all your utilities are working - ready for any cold weather or household emergency. 

November Part 2

Our area had all the alley raised recently.  The project started in October and finished the beginning of November.  We were thankful we had a second entrance to our house.  Most of our neighbors do not and had to figure out how to navigate the trench down the middle. 

Brittany posed for me and you can tell by her mask that it smelled.  Of course, it is the sewer for our alley.











After they dug it all up, they lined it with new bricks and raised it by adding dirt, sand and then cement on the sides and new covers in the middle.  You can see the pile of sand that was on our main road.

Hmmm, it is going to be higher than our courtyard.

All finished.  It looks nice. The entrance to our courtyard is off to the right.  Our landlord is planning to smooth our entry into the alley with a cement ramp.  If you look closely, there is a drainage hole off to the right in the corner of the cement.

The whole process took some weeks. The reason it was done, as far as we understand, was to raise the alley so that it is still higher than the sewer our alley sewer dumps into.  sounds like a good thing.

Accident

Ann and Brittany were in an accident a few months ago and we are just now getting it into the blog.  This accident turned out, overall, well - as neither Brittany nor Ann were seriously injured.  Actually Brittany was not injured at all, except for the trauma of the experience. Ann had some minor injuries such as scrapes and a good size bump on her elbow.

It all started when Ann and Brittany were out on Ann's little 50cc motorbike (Honda Cub).  Her front tire suddenly went flat and after finding out where the nearest repair place was, began to push the motorbike with Brittany pushing from behind.  The place was not far, but it was up a hill, so Ann really appreciated Brittany's help pushing.

As they pushed the bike on the right hand side of the road, right by the sidewalk, uncharacteristically for roads here, it was vacant of any other vehicle...Until a lone motorbike turned onto the road at the top of the hill.  Ann and Brittany noticed that he was heading straight for them and seeing this, Brittany jumped out of the way in time onto the sidewalk.  Ann also began to get away, but as she was holding the bike up, she was knocked to the ground from the impact of the much larger motorbike.  The man was intoxicated (it was 3 in the afternoon), was apologetic,  and to Ann's dismay, left on his motorbike.  We hope he didn't run into anyone else.

We are thankful that the worst was shaken nerves and that Russell came to the rescue as Ann's arm was in too much pain to push the motorbike (with a flat tire) any where.  Ann got back on the motorbike and drove in a few days, although not without extra caution!

November 2011 Part 1

Thanksgiving 2011 in Hanoi.  1.  Rolls in the motorbike trunk - check  2.  One driver, two passengers - check  3.  Pumpkin pie - check  4.  Oatmeal apple cake - check  5.  Exact address of where we are going - we'll figure it out when we get near. 

Our friends house seems to be one of many dead zones for cell phones (as is our first floor).  We called two different friends that were coming and neither got our call, but in the nick of time another friend arrived and we followed them to the right house, a few more up from where we were.

We had great food and fellowship and this year and to curiously, little rocks on the tables.  We learned that these would be a type of Ebenezer stone.  Recorded in I Samuel 7 is how the prophet Samuel set an Ebenezer stone, literally meaning, "stone of help", to commemorate the victory the Lord had given the Israelites over the Philistines.  We were encouraged to pickup a stone and when we had thought of a situation the Lord had been our help this past year, we dropped the stone into a bowl. 

One of our beautiful palm trees out in front of our house is dying.  Today it lost it's last two fronds (massive "leaves" around 15 feet long).  When the fronds have come down, they land in our little courtyard, or in our alley, dragging wires down with it.  We are thankful the wires have never broken. Asking our landlord again about removing the dying tree, especially as some of our neighbors are nervous the tree falling.

November 20th was Teachers Day here in Vietnam.  We were treated by Ann's English class to a dinner with some of the parents and the kids.  The picture is of Brittany with the girls in the class all digging into a bowl of multiple scoops of ice cream.  The boys got their own bowl and even us adults were given a bowl to share - it was good. 

The English class we host in our home took us out to a new, not yet fully open, resort that is located about 1 1/2 hours outside Hanoi.  It is a beautiful place, with a big lake, some different types of boats and bicycles built for two.  We had a lot of fun riding among the trees, walking on grass and breathing the clean air.  To the right is a picture of Ann and Brittany in a rubber canoe.  Below is a picture of our class and few of their children.



There is more to write about November, but it will have to wait until next time.