Fortnight

For those of you who may not know what or how long is a fortnight, it is 14 days. Depending on what is going on in your life it can be a short amount of time or feel like an eternity…

First Week

I arrived at my hotel in the middle of the night. After being escorted through a side entrance, down a long hall where the floor was covered in plastic I was shown to my room where I would be for my 14 day quarantine. The room was nice enough and I was fortunate to be in a section of the hotel that had a very small balcony.

Here is the view from my balcony. Not the best picture but you can kind of see that there is a small park across the street.

.

The first few days were not too bad. I arrived on a Saturday night, Sunday morning so I had that first day off where I could unpack and get a little more used to the major time change. My work also sent someone with my laptop so I could start working on Monday. Each day I filled out a form for the next day with my food selection. I was given a printout of choices for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The food came from the restaurants downstairs and was quite good (at least in the beginning). It arrived at whatever time I put on my form. One of the blue jumpsuit people would arrive and would place the food on a table outside my door. They would knock on the door to let me know it was there and then they would disappear.

3 times a day, knock knock, prop the door open, grab the tray, put tray on desk or bed, close door, eat food, open door, put tray back on table.

I have to admit, after a while I had two feelings emerge about this routine. First, I felt like an animal in a zoo. I pace a lot normally and tried to pace even more to get some exercise. So here I am pacing around a confined space, I’m not allowed to leave and then someone feeds me probably at the same time each day. Second, I started to feel like I was in a jail. Granted it was a nice room and the food was good but it was a little demeaning. It felt like maybe I wasn’t able to take care of myself or maybe I was not good enough to walk around with everyone else. Neither one of these was an overwhelming feeling but it was a little weird and did make me do some thinking.

Oh man! It is day 8 and I just got off of the scale that I found in the bathroom under the vanity. I have gained 7 pounds. Yikes!!! Remember those choices of food I mentioned above? Well, lunch and dinner comes with choices of starter (appetizer for Americans 🙂 ). I have been good and mostly eating salads or smoked salmon. Then it comes with main course. Maybe I have not been so good here. Now the killer, dessert. They have some of the best chocolate mousse I have ever had. It tastes like dark chocolate. On top of that each meal comes with a small basket of fresh baked rolls.

I have since stopped ordering dessert and have also asked them to stop sending bread…but only sometimes. The bread is just too good.

Day 10

I am seriously counting the days. I am starting to go a little bonkers. Work is really hard. The bank is not ready to have remote works and they are not geared for it so I really don’t have a lot to do. I am trying not to watch a lot of TV. I did get to see some of the baseball playoffs and a UFC fight. I am watching “The Rookie” on Hulu at night.

I now have a new friend. Beside the park is a wide sidewalk and a two lane street. Part of the sidewalk and part of the street is used as a paid parking area so there is an attendant. I was on the balcony one evening finishing a glass of wine I ordered with my dinner when I saw one of the attendants eating his dinner. He saw me and raised his glass of whatever he was drinking in a toast. I did the same and we shared a smile. The people here really are quite nice…even from a distance.

a

Day 12

I am getting excited to leave and I am having trouble thinking of anything else. I received my second and final Covid test this morning. Please, please, please come back negative. Oh, I get to leave tomorrow at 10:00pm local time since I landed in Hanoi at 10pm. I am totally over the food. Eating from the same two restaurants 3 meals a day for this long is not good.

Day 14

It is Saturday so I have to work a half day. This is probably good since I just can’t wait to get out of here. I have a reservation at a new hotel starting tonight so I will be leaving. It is now 2:00pm. I have finished my lunch and yes I put my tray back outside on the ever present table. I have packed just about all of my things. I moved in quite a bit so I have made multiple passes through all of the drawers and cabinets to make sure I don’t leave anything behind. 4:00PM. I am going to take a nap. I need to kill some time. I am getting very anxious. 9:55PM. I GOT A CALL THAT THEY ARE ON THEIR WAY TO GET ME! I love you jumpsuit person.

My immediate future holds a taxi ride to a new hotel. I know it doesn’t sound like much but it will be absolute bliss!!!!

Stay tuned for my next entry which will be about apartment hunting and my first few days of work. Thanks for reading.