Day 219: Just Trying to Stay Alive in this Heat — Haiku
A few times in the middle of the night we heard Willa toss and turn and whimper. So we weren’t surprised when she woke up with a stomach ache. Poor girl.
Teddy and James met Khan for our scheduled family bike ride — with James in his full new Hanoi outfit.
Willa and I stayed back. She nibbled some toast at breakfast and went back to the room to lie down with her book. She’s completely obsessed with these “13-Story Treehouse” books (not sure what we’ll do when they’re done!)
Not surprisingly, James and Teddy were back within 30 minutes. It’s just too damn hot for any physical activity out there. Our guide even said it was unseasonably bad — most likely climate change. “Feels like” index of 110, with suffocating humidity. Like you can drink the air.
So, most of the day was spent in the pool or hunkered indoors in the AC. How beautiful is this spot?
The kids even watched a very rare movie-on-a-non-travel-day (“Bolt”) just so we could have some time to catch up on email, etc.
At lunch Willa ordered spaghetti and James ordered a Hawaiian pizza. Our waiter dubbed the kids “Spaghetti Girl and Pizza Boy” — but with his accent “pizza,” comes out “PEEZ-er.” So cute. At dinner when they walked in, the same server exclaimed: “Hallo! It’s Spaghetti an’ PEEEEZER!!”
We chuckled and said to the kids, “I think you’ve got new nicknames: Spaghetti and Peezer.” James wasn’t amused and jabbed his middle finger at both of us (not an insult, he always points with his middle finger) and goes, “Well then YOU’RE GIN and YOU’RE TONIC!”
Snap! Might have to do with his being very hangry — here’s his #restaurantface, aka the face he makes when the food takes too long.
Willa was too busy reading a 13-Story Treehouse book to notice.
By the way, this server wasn’t the only one to give them new names. The reception ladies refer to James as Germs and Willa as Willy.
I wrote a haiku about it, because I’m into haiku this week:
When you go abroad,
unintentional nicknames
might just stick. Like “Germs.”
Another funny thing: While Willa and I were doing school in the main reception lounge area, I asked the lady about the little animal scratching and chirping noises we hear coming from up on our roof at night.
“Oh!” She said with a totally un-self-conscious giggle. “Those are rats!”
Whaaaaaa??
I am SO sorry I asked.
As we walked out, she mentioned that all electricity in town would be down from 4 – 7 am.
Sure enough, at 4 am the white-noise of our room’s AC unit shut off and the newly silent room came alive with the sounds of scritch-scratch creatures having a party not just up on the roof but also just behind the thin wall where our headboard is. We kept laughing like, HELLO, rats, we can HEAR YOU!!
I wrote a haiku about it:
Scritch, scritch on the roof
gives us chills now that we know
it’s rats, not monkeys.
We still really like this place, though, it’s all good.
