Impressions of Ha Tinh

While most of our two-and-a-half days in Ha Tinh was spent working at the orphanage (more on that in a different post), we got to spend some time exploring the city.  Going there, our expectations were not high.  We knew we would be working at an orphanage in a poor district of Vietnam.  However, we were pleasantly surprised to find a small city of 100,000 people that were friendly and pleasant.

Sadly, our trip into Ha Tinh started on a tragic note -- we drove by an accident in the road which involved a dump truck and a woman on a bicycle that didn't move in the 10 seconds or so that we drove by.  We have noticed a few fender benders in our time in Vietnam, but despite the crazy driving of the mopeds and cars, this was the first true accident I had seen.

The orphanage was about a mile and a half away, and we walked there or back from our hotel a few times, so we had a chance to interact with many people in town.  It was clear to us that Ha Tinh does not see a lot of foreigners.  Everywhere we went people stopped and stared at us, and they were eager to come up and greet us with a loud and friendly "hello!", usually the only word of English they knew.  We're used to being noticed and looked at when in Cau Giay and Hanoi, but in Ha Tinh it was much more pronounced.

Our first night in Ha Tinh we met one of the Fulbright English Language Teaching Assistants, a recent college graduate named Lucas who had been placed in Ha Tinh and will be there for a year.  Lucas and his Vietnamese co-worker at their school took us to a famous chicken restaurant in town, a place where they serve the whole chicken.  Since this is probably the last time I'll be served fried chicken legs and heads, I decided to give it a try.  Wasn't too bad, actually:

Sadly we said goodbye to our friend Viet after the first full day in the orphanage.  The kids were especially bummed because a) Viet is always fun to hang out with, and b) she could translate what people were saying to us!  We were on our own...

Right after we put Viet on the bus back to Hanoi, we discovered quite possibly our favorite street food in Vietnam.  We've been talking about and eating banh xeo for the last few days, and in Ha Tinh we found some of the best from a small little stand across from our hotel.  We liked it so much that we went back the next night and even gave the owner a $2 bill as a tip.

The hotel we stayed in at Ha Tinh was recommended to us by Lucas as the only one in Ha Tinh that did not double as a brothel.  While we can't attest to the business practices of the other places, the BMC was quite nice.  It had shopping on the first couple of floors, plus a movie theater and an arcade.  And it also let us discover the joy of Jollibees, a fast-food burger and chicken place based in the Phillipines that served excellent soft serve ice cream cones for 15 cents:

Breakfast at the BMC was included and always had an interesting assortment including fried rice, dragon fruit, boiled red pumpkin, and french fries: