Number 31

Written Tuesday night and posted Thursday Morning.

I finally hit my first snag on this trip. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, but I was hoping I was wrong. My gut was telling me that Bruce didn’t really have this trip under control and that I might be walking into a situation where they simply weren’t ready for me to come. Bruce assured me that I just needed to be patient and cajole the faculty into moving forward but now I question if he was trying to convince me or himself.

I arrived in Hanoi after an uneventful flight from Bangkok and was greeted by Phong (one of the students who I met in the Philippines) and another student. They advised me that there had been a misunderstanding as to when I was coming in and they had looked for me for about 4 hours this morning. Last night Bruce told me that when I got to the airport in Hanoi, I would be taking a taxi to Giao’s house and that I would have an email with the address and directions by this morning. This morning I had no email and told Bruce. He had me send an email, marked urgent, asking for directions to Giao’s house. I sent an email saying I needed directions and if I didn’t get them I’d be stuck in the airport because I would have no way to know how to get to Giao’s. Bruce called Giao, a few minutes after I sent the email to the Law School and was told, by Giao, that I would be picked up and not to worry about a taxi. They confirmed my arrival time and that was that. We thought. Apparently, the person I sent the email to doesn’t really understand English all that well and thought I was in the airport in Hanoi sending the email. These kinds of things happen and it was an unfortunate misunderstanding.

So the students met me at the airport and we took a cab to Giao’s house. He wasn’t home. Phong called him and a fellow who works at Giao’s wife’s restaurant (which is on the street level of their home) let us in and gave us tea. I’m not sure why he was there as it was after 9PM and the restaurant only serves “pho” for breakfast. When Giao showed up he seemed perturbed. I apologized for the misunderstanding (even though it was clearly a language problem that wasn’t my doing) and he seemed to accept it. I asked him about the schedule of meetings and he told me they hadn’t made one. I asked him about the room the Dean had promised them to use for the clinic and he said they didn’t have it yet. I was also told there would be no interpreter for me either in my meetings with the faculty or the students. The final straw was when he told me the students would be in final exams the whole time I was here. My sense, at this moment, is that the Vietnamese I met in the Philippines are fun, and gregarious and completely unprepared for my visit. And it further appears that they don’t particularly care that the result of this attitude is that not much will get done. I’m starting to wonder if Bruce pushed my visit on them when they really weren’t ready or interested in getting the Clinic going yet.

Bruce got back from the Philippines and left for the US today. He was super stressed to the point of yelling at the staff. I think he both dropped the ball on this one and threw me to the wolves with the hope that I would get something done. I’m calm and will make whatever decisions I need to make from a place of calm but I’m not pleased that he had me do a ton of work in preparation for what may turn out to be a waste of time. He clearly wants to take advantage of the fact that the new Dean is willing to allow the Clinic to be established, but I really don’t think he understands the time frame and intentions of the faculty.

Giao’s house is nice and the little bit of Hanoi I could see in the dark coming into town from the airport looked very new and modern. There’s wireless WIFI in the house but I need to wait for Giao’s son to come by tomorrow to get me set up. Hopefully, wherever we have our meeting tomorrow will have wireless and I’ll be able to post this.

It’s a pretty screwed up night in Hanoi but I’m willing to bet it was a good day in Chiang Mai…