Around the World in 180 Days: I Blame Jetlag

I don't know if anyone looks at the paragraph at the top of the blog where it says how much time we've spent in the process of moving from place to place, but I am a little surprised that, if we continue at this rate, if there were teleporters then we could have cut more than a month of our trip. I'm not saying I want to cut a month of the trip, but at least an entire 1/6 of this was spent getting from point A to point B and that's a lot of time.
The Buenos Aires airport system didn't make sense until we realized that they don't make you lose your liquids above 3 ounces until the second security because you only have to do that when you go to the US. After security #1 we went to another long line where they stamped our passports and took our thumbprints and photographs and then were funnelled through the perfumed duty-free shop to reach our gate. Before we could board the plane there was the second security and here we had to empty our water bottle a second time, having done it preemptively before. For whatever reason United never gets that we want vegetarian meals but come dinner they managed to rustle up a couple of salad plates. I was so excited that people were speaking English to us again.
We had a very short layover in Houston but had plenty of time to go through customs. From Houston to San Francisco it was about 4 hours but on top of the 10-hour one we had just had it felt like forever. After collecting our bags we took the BART shuttle to near our hotel and a cab the rest of the way. Our stopover in San Francisco was two nights and so much of it was running around shipping things and running errands and, for me, a little much-needed peer interaction that it just flew by.
On Friday there was some momentary celebration as our flight was delayed and I thought I might have a few more hours with my friend but it turned out that it just meant we had to sit at the airport for longer in case it got un-delayed. Two hours after we were supposed to leave and still not boarding, but by three hours we were in the air. Finally they remembered the vegetarian food! Since we left at 5.00 San Francisco time and arrived at 11.00 the next evening (with a plus-16-hours upon reaching Hong Kong) we got two dinners.
Customs was a breeze--all we had to do was walk through the green door labelled 'nothing to declare'. It took some time to get our luggage and take it to the airport hotel, but because it was the airport hotel we could walk to it along a causeway. Despite it being an airport hotel and probably because it was Hong Kong it was fancy. Somehow we managed to get a few hour's solid sleep so left our bags at the front desk and took the Hong Kong airport equivalent of BART to Kowloon. There was a vegetarian restaurant we found on the eighth floor of some building but it was closed for another 40 minutes after we arrived so we walked to the promenade and the bay. It was packed with people on the boardwalk because of New Year but we pushsed out way through and eventually came upon this 1881 heritage site.
The heritage site was dominated by two giant blond bear statues wearing purple robes that people took pictures with. Along the sides of the square there were smaller statues of the bears wearing less regal clothes, one standing by a piano, others posing in other ways.
When we made it back to the restaurant it was packed in a way I've never seen a veggie-only restaurant packed before. The food was unsurprisingly the best Chinese food I've eaten. Barring a small altercation with a pair of chopsticks and a small piece of pineapple the meal went smoothly and afterwards we took the ferry across the bay to Hong Kong.
The streets were packed with people. Crossing the road is an ordeal because most of the sidewalk has a fence on it and crosswalks are sparse so it's nice when there is an underground walkway. The first walkway we went on was lined with women on each side. Groups ate lunch or napped on large squares of cardboard or picnic blankets. They didn't seem to be homeless but we have no idea who they were.
After the street crossing we came across an evangelical demonstration. There were rows of folding seats in the middle of a blocked-off road, dancers dressed in pink-and-white silk, western music, and a speaker who spoke in English and Chinese (Mandarin?).
In the middle of the city there was a park. We spent some time walking around the aviary and afterwards walked through the rest of it looking for an exit. Finally we found one and made our way to the Ladies' Market but found it too overwhelming and packed to go into. The goldfish market wasn't where it was supposed to be on the map and the flower market was closed so we took a taxi to the shuttle station and went back to the airport.
Our flight to Hanoi was only 30 minutes late and we arrived 2 hours later. Back in Olympia we got our visas for Vietnam but apparently they weren't right and we spent about an hour waiting to get new ones. When we had finally made it through customs we were relieved to find that the car the hotel had sent was still waiting for us and we crashed as soon as we arrived.
Many of the shops and restaurants in Hanoi emptied out for the holidays so we ate street food and probiotics the first day. I only went out in the evening and by then the lake was lit up by green lights, the silk lanterns on the streets by blue and red and yellow and orange lights, and the big pink flowers on some streets and yellow stars on others show up. The street booths are still open and bustling and people dressed up for Tet pose for pictures.
My Vietnamese is limited to two badly-pronounced phrases--cảm ơn (thank you) and ăn chay (vegetarian)--but we managed to avoid the meaty pho and have a kind of cheesy sweet dipping sauce with noodle clumps.
Breakfast comes with the hotel and is a great time for me to practice with chopsticks without being observed. They work most of the time for me but I'm still operating on the principle that as long as it gets from the plate to your mouth it isn't bad manners.
For a few hours before lunch we go on a walking tour of the city. I'd like to learn more about the Vietnamese buddhism because it seems almost like there is an element of ancestor worship in some of the temples. We visit two, one 1500 years old and the other from the 11th century. The offerings in both were paper money or stacks of food, and were brimming with incense and worshippers.
Between temples we tour a tube-house. For centuries people were taxed based on how much space on the street they take up so houses were built long, tall, and narrow. The one we visit has two floors and four rooms in a line away from the street on the downstairs floor. There are courtyards inside, places where there is no roof and plants grow, and paintings on the walls.
After the tube house we visited the Hao Lo prison but were too disturbed to go through all of it.
Hopefully most restaurants will be open tomorrow but today we ate at an Indian restaurant. It was a good protein boost in a place where most of the protein comes from the chicken watching you eat your soup.