I gave a kiss to the love of my life and told her I’d see her in a couple of weeks. I’m joining our two boys on their Onwards and Upwards adventure to do it for the story. My flight from Miami, Newark, Beijing, then Hanoi was pretty much uneventful, however thank God for business-class. I met Michael, Daniel, and Gesy at the Hanoi airport as our flights pretty much arrived within minutes apart.

My adventure apparently started right away on my first evening in Hanoi as my checked bag was lost. I resigned myself to the fact that I was doing this for their story.  Upon my arrival at the Hanoi airport, and having flown from Beijing to Hanoi on Vietnam Airlines, I couldn’t help but notice the mannerism and professionalism of the flight crews, it was such a relief after such a long journey.  Having learned that my bag was not with me the customer service of Vietnam Airlines couldn’t have been more helpful and more courteous. With a high degree of confidence they assured me that they would do everything possible to locate my bag. Thankfully my bags were found in Beijing and were delivered to my hotel the next day.

The following day, I’m awoken by Daniel around 10:30am local time. I must have slept for 12 hours straight and was feeling rather refreshed. Moments later I joined the rest of the crew for our first day in Hanoi. Michael and Daniel right away wanted to check out the local flavor however Gesy and I were showing some restraint.

I for the life of me never experienced the tens of thousands of moped scooters that filled the streets of Hanoi. I literally saw a family of four on one moped. I thought I was a risk-averse individual, but crossing the streets of Hanoi puts risk into a different perspective. In my view I would describe it as organized chaos. Michael and Daniel jumped on a scooter with a driver heading off to the old quarters area of Hanoi, the open markets. Gesy and I continued to show restraint by jumping on to a rickshaw and met the boys a short time later.

We started walking around in this open market, which was nothing short of a sea of humanity and capitalism, where literally everything was for sale.  As we were walking around you couldn’t help but feel you were in a portable steam room unable to escape the heat.  The temperature was in the high 90’s with relative humidity around 80%; bottom line it was rather uncomfortable and we needed to find a different venue.

Voila we stumbled onto this back alley massage parlor, albeit very legit and with air-conditioning (thank god), and were met by a massage team of 5 Vietnamese women. My expectations were going to be tested. I picked out the head, neck, and shoulder massage 70-minute package for $12.00. I thought to myself — It was only $12.00 what did I have to lose, but I set my expectations accordingly. As this young lady proceeded to work out the damage that 20 hours of flying can do to the human body she tried to have a conversation with me, but I was only understanding every 10th word that happened to be in broken English. For me I tried to be consistent with my communication skills so I kept repeating the same thing over and over, in English, “this feels veri, veri, good.”  I said that for the 70 minutes and was hoping she got the message.  I literally had this petite woman walking on my back and working very hard to loosen the stiff muscles, to say that this was a great feeling would have been an understatement it absolutely exceeded my expectations.  I felt so refreshed. The value of this experience was priceless, and that was only the first day of the adventure.