my brief moment of panic...

There are a few things about the hotel we are living in you must first understand in order to fully visualize my moment of panic. Let me state first and foremost that we are staying at a nice place. Throw out the image in your mind of hotels you have been to, it is not the same, but it is enough.  Culture affects everything, especially the trade of hospitality.  Our room is decent, the beds are comfortable and we have all our needs met, namely AC. 

Things you must understand:

1) When housekeeping finishes with the room they turn off the power to the room in a little box OUTSIDE the door.  Power is valuable, why waste it if we are not even there? It does not matter if there is food in the fridge or if the room gets quite warm in your absence. Along with that, there are commonly power outages, and if we are lucky the generator will run to keep lights in the ballroom where our class meets.  No power in the rest of the hotel for hours at a time. 

2) The second thing is that we have one metal key to access our room. There are not multiple copies should you both need one.  Additionally, the door does not stay shut unless it is locked, so you must lock it when you come and go. The funny thing is that you lock the door either from the outside or the inside, both are secure, therefore you can get locked in. I think you see where I am going.

3) The bathrooms are nice, but privacy is something to be desired. Each bathroom shares a wall with the hallway.  Not that strange you might think, except that there are two rather large windows from the bathroom into the hallway that open about 6 inches each.  There is someone down the hall for example, who has rather loud morning habits that wake me up.  I am not sure of the purpose these windows serve, but they let in sound and air.  They also let our air conditioned air out into the muggy hallway.

Which brings to mind the fact that the whole hotel is not air-conditioned, only the bedrooms and the restaurant, and the ballroom.  When the power goes off it gets warm quickly.

To my story: I woke up yesterday not feeling 100% and Ben let me sleep in.  He left while I was still asleep so he locked the door behind him so it would not fly open.  I was sleeping soundly when I heard the air click off. I lay there for a while longer but I started to get hot. I rolled over to turn on the light…nothing.  Interesting. I walked to the door…locked. I stepped up on the bathtub to look out the window… no one.   I walked back into the bedroom to try to figure out what to do. I knew Ben would come, at very least, around noon when class broke for lunch, but it was only 9:30 and I had no lights, no phone, no air and I was trapped.  I went back to the bathroom to try to see if I could reach my arm out to the power switch on the wall in the hallway, but I could not get close.  I sat back down on the bed trying to decide how to best entertain myself for what could be hours in a hot, dark room.  I was just starting to get desperate, deciding if I needed to just start wailing on the door to get a housekeeper to come, when I heard the lock on the door click and in walked my knight in shining armor.  Ben came to check on me during mid-morning break!!! My hero!!! It turned out the whole hotel was out of power and needless to say it got really hot really quickly. I was still happy to be let free. Just one of the little joys we face in Hanoi.