Chez Allison

My very first evening in Hanoi we were all invited to the home of a former Luce scholar, Allison, for drinks (for explanation on Luce scholars, see "Welcome to Vietnam JN JKCKLDS" post), and we ended up staying for almost 24 hours. She happens to live in a restored French colonial villa with covered patios, a pool and lots of silk sheets. And she's gorgeous and extremely smart and is an amazing hostess. She graduated from Stanford undergrad, Yale Law School and she currently works for the American Bar Association as part of their international outreach program, working to set up a bar association in Vietnam. Drinks preceded a swim in her pool but not before she had made us fresh, chunky guacamole - a particular treat for those who have been living in Asia the past year. Then she invited us all to just spend the night. We actually took a taxi back to the hostel, forfeited our $7.50/night and picked up our bags so that we could accept her invitation. Because it was my first day, I was extremely jet-lagged and forfeited going out to dinner with them so that I could sleep.

In the morning, I woke up a few hours before everyone else and because I hadn't had dinner, I was extremely weak and kind of dehydrated, I think, because I was really nauseated. So I raided her fridge and layed on the kitchen floor sipping seltzer water and nibbling on crackers. I fell asleep at intervals, and then would wake up to try to consume a little more. After a few hours of that, I made it up to the dining room table. Then Allison appeared with French pain ou chocolats (chocolate croissants) and whipped up fritata. After all that, and consuming a 2-liter bottle of water, I went back to bed and slept until 3pm, awaking much revived.

Everyone else was just getting ready to leave at that point, so we taxied back to our hostel where we were could catch our over-night sleeper bus down the coast to Hue. I had a enough time to zip over to the Temple of Literature, home of Vietnam's first university, before we boarded the bus.