The Motherland

My parents were born in Hanoi so we were really excited to visit the capital city to see where they grew up & stuff. We only had one day there so we booked our hotel in the Old Quarter so we could walk to popular sites like Sword Lake, The Opera House and St. Joseph's Cathedral.


Before we left Vancouver, mom wrote down her address on a pamphlet some where and of course, I forgot to bring it! We tried to email home prior to arriving in Hanoi but no response :( I knew they lived near the lake and the Opera House so we roamed around the neighbourhoods and tried to guess where they lived. We walked through alleys and small streets and tried to take as many photos as we could hoping that they could recognize the area...we were SO off and this was how we found out:

After walking to the cathedral, Hank wanted to walk back to the hotel because he really needed to go pee. The only problem was that we were far....like REALLY far so I suggested that we walk into another hotel down the street. He hesitated for a second and decided to go in and ask. Hotels in the Old Quarter are super small and nothing like North American hotels where you could just go in and use their facilities without staff noticing. Sure enough, they didn't have a problem so he did his thing and back we went onto the streets of Hanoi.

As we approached a new intersection, we decided to pull out our map to figure out which route to take. We were both studying it when we heard somebody yell, "Linnnnnaaa?!?" We looked at each other for a split second then looked around to see who was calling my name. To our immediate surprise, it was my cousin from Guangzhou, China who was with her mom and my other aunt and uncle...from LA, California! What were the chances!?! To think that if Hank didn't need to pee or make that pitstop, we could've missed them all together!

After a nice dinner with all of them (our second dinner btw), my 2 aunts led the way and walked us back towards Sword Lake and showed us where they really lived! The 9 siblings and my grandparents lived in the top 3 floors of a yellow building right next door to the Water Puppet Theatre. Hank and I were on the opposite side of the lake! No where close eh?

We split up soon after they showed us a few more iconic places like where mom and dad used to go on dates and which ice cream parlors they'd hang out at. So cute! My aunt from Cali kept saying that she wasn`t able to recognize a lot of the city but luckily, these places were still around :)

When we got back to the hotel, we rested for a bit and I remembered that dad wanted me to call his childhood friend who I've never met before. Using broken Vietnamese, we carried on a decent conversation and before we knew it, he insisted on meeting in person and mumbled something and hung up. Five minutes later, we received a phone call and we were told that our somebody was waiting for us downstairs in the lobby! Hank and I basically went downstairs and followed some random stranger into a cab and took off. Pretty smart huh?

Luckily, we learned pretty quickly that the guy we followed was my dad's friend's son, Tuan. When we got out of the cab, he took us around the neighbourhood and showed us where my parents lived after they got married. Tuan then showed us the way to his home where we met the rest of his family. They are the sweetest people on earth - especially his 18 month old baby :) They shared a ton of stories about their past and showed us old pictures of their long friendship with my parents over a nice pot of Vietnamese tea. I wished mom and dad were with us so they could reminisce with them!

What turned out to be a really great night didn't end there...they didn't take no for an answer so the whole family took us out to eat late night dinner...it was our 3rd meal of the evening! Too bad our stay was really short in Hanoi but for sure we'll be back :)