Day 5 and 6, May 29 th and 30 th: Hanoi

The day started off as  bit cloudy and "only" + 30 degrees. The idea was to make the day to be a shopping day. But as you know, we men just don't know how to and that's why we just ended up wandering down the streets of the old part of Hanoi called the Old Quater. There were few items we were supposed to find but at least I got back to the apartment empty handed. After spending some time in the old town we also went to see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in the Bach Thao park. We didn't want to go to the museum there as I think that it would had been a bit too much for Enni.

Ho Chi Minh museum

We also tried the Food street (Tong Duy Tan) which offers a good selection of those nice little plastic chair places and for sure some local delicacies.

 A view from the plastic chair place on the Food street: the old bambu chairs have been replaced by the plastic ones (notice them piled above the Ech Op- sign ;)

Nap time - Hanoi style

We were supposed to find a dress for Enni abd something like that we also bought, a set of shorts and shirt, which by the way Enni never usually wears. This time as she got to choose she also was willing to wear it. We took our first rikshaw ride back to the apartment and then went to have the swimming training session of the day. I developed some new ways of sun bathing, including the "cure" for the "sinking feet by the pool" problem. I also used the same method to reach the best possible position floating by using Enni's floating rings, one broken behind the neck and the other one on my foot. This way I can reach the maximum water reflection. ;)

On the rikshaw ride

Engineering way of dealing with the problem of "sinking feet by the pool"

In the evening I got a chance to meet my old team mates as quite many of them were visiting here building up the factory. We went to the same restaurant than we did the other day and afterwards to the Havanna bar for a few refreshment drinks. :) It was nice to see all the people again and in this exotic place.

Dinner out with old team mates

The next day started even a bit more cloudy and "only" + 28 degrees. The agenda for the day was to find a playground for activating Enni, although in this heat and humidity it might sound a bit weird. Well, off we went after the breakfast! We ended up circling around the Hoan Kiem lake as Foursquare mentioned there should had been a playground. Well, it might be that we have used to a bit different kinds of playgounds in Finland or then we just missed the place. Luckily there was a local guy approaching us trying to sell us stuff and I decided to ask him directions. After buying a Lonely planet: Vietnam (on good price!) he told me where to find a playground. Not the one we were looking for though. There was a restaurant that had a slide and a carousel which was more than I had hoped for! Spending an hour there and we returned to the apartment. We also visited the Ngoc Son Temple to see the stuffed 250kg weighing turtle. Nice!

 Enni on the bridge to Ngoc Son Temple

 One of the many occasions that people wanted to take a picture next to the cute little princess :)

Enni fought back and wanted to take a picture next to the locals sitting on a tree

Another temlpe in the middle of the Hoan Kiem

In the afternoon we continued our swimming practices for an hour and then it started raining. We were forced to take a short nap ;) and watch some TV. Also we made some paintings, and went for a coffee in downstairs.

In the evening wewent to eat in Lang Toi on that is on "our" street. The language barrier there was on the level that we were almost forced to use body language. The result was that I ended up having a fish that had it all still in it. Taste was still rather nice.

The fish with all intact

The joys of the carousel :)

Day 4, May 28 th: Hanoi

Day 4 began after a good night sleep as the time difference works for my advantage. Enni woke up only after 8 which usually never happens back home! Brilliant, lets keep it this way!

Breakfast at the apartment and after that we decided to go and have a look at the mystical Circus marked on the map. It's pretty near so we ended up walking. Took only one bottle of water with us. That's the recipe of disaster. Well, maybe not a disaster but a wrong estimation at least. The day started up as a quite hot ona which is no different from the other days in here. But it surprised me big time. After a walk of about half an hour I was sweating like a pig and the water bottle was half empty already. Technically of coure it was full as the other half was filled with air. ;) The water was fresh taken from the fridge when we left but now it was already warm like fresh milk! It started to look like Enni's cheeks were also quite red, meaning that she was also feeling the heat. Now, in this point you may gueaa that I'm not a too experienced south-east traveller. Nope, I'm not. But I also understand that it's rather easy to get some type of a heatstroke, especially for the kids. So, as sweaty as I was I took Enni and carried her for the next kilometer or so. We found a small booth selling umbrellas and the lady was offering one with pictures of princesses for Enni. The deal was on immediately! :) The sun cover helped us over the worst and we found a cafe with airconditioning... or at least a huge set of fans. Took some cool drinks there and carried on as soon as the red from Enni's cheeks had vanished. This taught me not to underestimate the hot weather, at least in this point of the trip!

Moving on we actully got to the place named Circus and found out that it was closed. They had had a show there earlier and the next one would be in the evening. Bugger. We took a taxi back to apartment and cooled down for a while and went to eat in the same place we ate the day before. This was because Enni liked the food there and that I hadn't tried the springrolls and the dumplings there. Boy, was that the best solution like ever! Awesome stuff and the people there of course recognised us and were thrilled with Enni's presence. I suppose they do it with every white people there to feel them welcomed. After all, I liked the atmosphere and food there. After the food I went to buy a local SIM for less than 4 €.

Something still to try on the menu... ;)

After the meal we went to the pool and swam for few hours until I felt like I needed to get inside, off the sun. After the pool we went to have some coffee downstairs and a while after that walking around the streets we came accross the first Nokia branded store. OK, it had ALSO Nokia logo on it. ;)

The 

The "Nokia" store.

In the evening we went to eat a bit further from the apartment and I learned my second lesson ofthe day: Everything that shimmers is not gold. The place had a spectacular view but the food side was rather weak. Everthing I asked for was "not today" or sold out. Nothing on the list actually was interesting enough to be ordered. Then the waitress brought another menu from which she showed me something and I thought that "what the heck... I have to eat something". Ended up with an aptizer sized dish of prawn. A thing that I'm not too fond of.

The view from the restaurant

The apetizer sized dish.

The greatest lesson of the day should be the "you live, you learn" Like Alanis Morrisette once sang. :) I think that the coming days will bring more of these small challenges jut to piss me off. No, seriously they're just flavoring the life. I'm ok, if the seasoning is not too much off the pitch. ;)

What goes around, comes around- tree and...

...some new friends we found last night. Yummmmy!!

Day 3, May 27 th: Frankfurt- Hanoi

The main difference between the the places seen on the trip must have so far been the weather. Leaving from Finland in beautiful and on Finnish scale nice summer weather, via Germany and rain to the Vietnamese hot and damp "weather". I'm not sure you can call this weather anymore. :D

Ok, but before moving to Vietnam I must bring up the Vietnamese airlines' company. Enni was really thrilled by the beep green color (yes, I know women have probably a real name for this color too) and the personel was dressed up in somewhat eastern style. The entertainment center seemed awesome before you got to use it. It had this all in one remote (see the picture below) that had a TV remote-game controller-sky phone-credit card reader- combination. Boy was I excited not ot mention Enni getting to push all these buttons. The reality was a bit more sad than what it first seemed like. The reaction of the center to the remote was worse than on ols Symbian phones after a few updates (sorry all ya Nokian's but U must know what I'm talking about), the movies shown in this infortainment system were not based on this "watch whenever you like" method but started a movie on oen time and you may join watching it whenever you wished for (!). Maybe the worst thing still was the gaming section. The games list featured some mostly classics like Chess, Caveman and Tetris. The ones I used to grow with for crying out loud! Ok, they were coded in 2000 but still I kinda got the nostalgic vibes from them. :)

 Sky call device...

 Gaming-/remote controller...

Credit card reader. All-in-One!

Otherwise the flight was ok, and we actually enjoyed our stay. Traveling with an 4 yo girl is actually not as stressing as you might think! ;) Well, of course the sleeping due to the time difference was a bit challenging for the little princess but as we all, they sleep as they feel sleepy after all. :) After the refreshing 4 hour night sleep we woke up in the Vietnamese airspace and managed to change into something more nicer just before the breakfast.

Landing went well and the border formalities were quite well managed. One thing caught my process developer's eye/ear/heart at the passport control and it was the fact that were queuing to one booth from where we got moved to another queue and after that I noticed that the people that came to the first queue 10 minutes after us got past the control before we did. Talking about the need to shuffle the deck of cards by the border officers! :D Well, we are on the vacation and I thought to myself that I won't let these little things matter too much for the following month or so. ;)

The baggage claim was as in east usually: all the people were packed right next to the conveyor, which usually drives me crazy, but as mentioned before I kept my cool (although the temperature inside the airport was not) and took a step back just to have a small possibility in training people that it doesn't help a jack to wait next to the belt. I got what I wanted and our bags were among the first ones so I got to push from the back row to the conveyor and back. Also taught Enni these very important lessons. :)

We at the conveyor

After the airport we took some money from the ATM, and I got to be a millionaire for the first time in my life! :) Sadly the maximum withdrawal limit was set to 2 million local dollars. ;) I'm not sure whether 2 will pass for multi or not.

The taxi ride to the apartment complex (Pacific place) was about a half an hour, in which Enni was almost sleeping already despite all the things to see.

A lady with a rooster and duck on a scooter

The apartment building is a 19 floor high building with a roof top restaurant, gym and a pool. Guess which was the one Enni was heading right after our arrival? Well, as I already decide before the trip that we'll be doing what Enni wants (at least as often as possible) we went to the pool. I also decided to try to teach Enni to swim, cause hey, wat else would be better, right? ;) We went to eat some local noodle soup during the day in the Quan ngon and also visited the Highland coffee (nothing to do with the Whisky brand BTW) to eat the "forgotten" Lydia's day cake. In the evening we went to a Thai restaurant that must have a side office in Hämeenlinna (see the picture below).

 The view to north-ish from the pool

 City view from the pool

 Enni going to see the pool... for the third time that day. ;)

Sawasdee, almost like Sawaddee

I got to try the gym in the evening as well. A typical hotel gym with (sadly) no kettlebells. :( Oh, and I got to drink my first sip of Bia Ha Noi... most probably not the last ones. Over and out till the next time!

Day 2, May 26 th: Helsinki-Frankfurt

The day started after the usual pre-trip quality sleep at 6:00. Quick shower done and I'm pretty amazed how co-operative Enni was in the morning: I didn't need to tell her anything twice! There's always the first time I suppose... ;) I think that the last night plea for good behaviour actually helped. And this was in the light of some rewards in the form of candies and stuff so technically I bribed her, right? ;)

We managed to get ready in 40 minutes which must be a new record! Of to the shuttle and to the airport where we managed to flowthrough the check-in and baggage drop without any traffic. After the security check I had to fulfill the corruption on my side.

The flight to Frankfurt was on time and now, sitting in the Sky lounge we still have about 30 minutes to the first call to the flight that'll take us to Hanoi, Vietnam. Where by the way the weather seems to be rather fine for us Finns: 35 degrees today and 36 tomorrow as we arrive, the real feel should be over 40 degrees. Lucky us... I suppose. :)

So, the picture of the day:

 Enni making "funny faces" by our gate.

Enni completing a train with slides. By the way these blocks were not made of wood but this rubber like foam. @ Helsinki-Vantaa airport.

Tomorrow maybe more pictures from Frankfurt as my Nokian ain't letting me to the networks here. Trying to tell me something I think...

Day 1, May 25 th: Arriving to Helsinki

So I thought that I needed to do something during this trip other than lay by the pool and do the ultimate chillaxation. This is what I came up with: a blog about our family trip to Hanoi!

So first a bit about the facts behind all this. As some of you know I used to work in Nokia still a while back and as you might already guess I am no more. :) So, Nokia is building up a new factory facility to Hanoi, Vietnam. I was involved into that project as well as my wife Laura. Well, the thing is that before I got to go to work for the Hanoi factory for real I got kicked out of the company. Bummer! Also Laura got outsourced to TCS. Double bummer! The thing is that Laura still works in the project and got asked if she would like to work for longer time in Vietnam. After a quick and thorough thinking such as "my wife is going. I'm here without work. Nothing actually stops us all from going. Lets go for it!" we decided to go for it. After a 3 week long ping pong game it was settled: we would all be going to Hanoi for 5 weeks!

So, this blog is about the trip mentioned earlier. I'm not going to be updating the blog daily although I'm trying to (I really am!)... after all, I'm on vacation you know. ;) I'm pretty sure there aren't too many followers for this and I mostly just consider it as theraphy for myself. :)

So, here goes!

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We decided that it probably would be the best option to stay the last night in Hotel close to the airport in Helsinki as that way we would save some time by not needing to wake up at 4 and then drive to the airport. Conveniently enough the parking is included to the price of the hotel room and you'll get a free shuttle from the hotel to the airport. My parents will pick up the car from the hotel and we also got to drive Laura to the airport, saving some expenses there as well! The funny thing is that my wife had to buy (due to the bureaucracy) her flights through the company tool as we bought our by ourselves. Well, everybody knows that there'll be no chance to get the same flights. That means that Laura flies through Hong Kong on saturday and me and our daughter Enni will come via Frankfurt on Sunday.

So far the trip hasn't been out of ordinary other than the anticipation of Enni. She wasn't falling asleep too easily... but after a while of making all I can she passed out like all of a sudden.

I also thought that I would include a picture of the day to the blog. Some days there might be more than 1, but at least that 1 picture. That's what I'm going for. So here's the first one: Enni sleepin... spending time with the fishes. ;)

So here we go, opening words have been shared, please enjoy!