Asia-Europe 2012

I arrived today at 8:30AM at the customs office in Noibai to clear the shipment. The amount of required paperwork was incredible. I had more than 100 pages of documents/invoices/receipts/insurances forms only for the temporary import of my personal motorbike. The level of incompetence and ignorance of the officers appeared to be at par with the number of stars and decorations on their uniforms. Half of them were playing solitaire, few more were checking facebook. The two guys who were actually working were reading my documents as if this was the first time ever in their lives seeing such papers. They began calling various supervisors, requesting clearances, checking regulations, manuals, books etc. At 11:30 everyone stopped working for 2 hrs for lunch break. After lunch, by 4PM I managed (with the aid of a Vietnamese translator) to advance through 3 different clerks. Business hours were until 5:30 but at 5:10 they gave the documents back asking to come back the following morning, as it was already too late.

Some people should not exist.

The military museum in Hanoi explains the struggle of the Vietnamese people against the Chinese, Japanese and French imperialists. Of special interest are various pieces of equipment captured during the war against the USA. We also saw there the famous T54 battle tank that crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon in 1975, thus ending the war.

Not pictured but also included is a WW2 era T34 used during ’70s conflict.

One interesting thing is that the war against China from 1979 is only briefly mentioned as “The North war” and not as “the war against China”, most likely to maintain good relationship with their neighbor.

For the Christmas the hotel organized a party. Note the “crevetzi vietnamezi” (expanded schrimp) Brings back memories from 20 years ago.

After 3 weeks I decided it was time for a haircut. Like most businesses in Hanoi, the barber shop operates on the sidewalk (under an old railway bridge). The guy was using some antique tools I usually see only in museums. But they still worked fine, and the result was better than expected. Cost was ~ 2USD.

Bike arrived today in Hanoi. But without the papers. Shipping company again messed up. For some unknown reason, they shipped the documents two days AFTER bike departure. ETA for docs is Dec 26. I am wondering if these guys are real customs brokers or they just hired a bunch of day laborers and put them in front of a computer to do customs brokerage work.