Thanksgiving in Hanoi

Pushing my bike-in-a-box and panniers on the airport cart through the arrival gates, I brace myself for the assault of touts offering taxi rides and hotel rooms. So it is a bit of a let down when the throngs of people at the gate make a gap for me to pass through. I look around, and everything makes sense.

The passengers on the plane are half tourists, half Vietnamese. The tourists are intantly recognizable: uniformly white with backpacks or rolling suitcases. Here is me: an Asian guy pushing a cart with a beat up box with two bike pedals poking through (they were rusted on, I couldn't get them off) and a bundle of fading bags. "I don't look too out of place," I think to myself, and walk straight out to the taxi stand.

I consider riding my bike out of the airport, but Lonely Planet advises against it because part of the way to the city is through an expressway. And sleeping less than two hours on the overnight flight makes me feel not quite up to the task. So when the cab driver waves me over, I don't need much elbow twisting to hop in to the taxi. Less than an hour later, I am deposited in front of the backpackers' hostel in the middle of Hanoi's Old Quarter.

The way I jammed every piece of my bike into the box, I almost expect it not to survive the trip over. So I am really glad to see that every piece has arrived intact. This is an old bike I picked up almost two years ago in Brisbane - a third-, fourth-, or fifth-hand bike. It looks like it was put together using cannibalized parts from the bicycle graveyard - making it the perfect bike to bring to Vietnam.

While checking email in the lobby of the hostel, I overhear two Americans talking about Thanksgiving. My ears instantly perk up. It turns out that a pub near the hostel is doing Thanksgiving dinner tonight. I've already written off the idea of having a Thanksgiving this year (again). So when I hear that a place is offering Thanksgiving dinner, I just can't turn it down. Yes, it'd blow my budget for the day; okay, two days. But how often can one have Thanksgiving dinner in Hanoi?

Dinner is a lot of fun. Four other Americans and I sit down and have a wonderfully cooked turkey dinner. It is as good a Thanksgiving dinner as you can find in this part of the world. The only thing not American about the dinner is the portions. The upside to that is, I get full without slipping into a turkey-induced coma afterwards.