Vietnam Continued!
Here are more pictures of Vietnam...the first are from Hoi An

The market in Hoi An
Chelsea and I had shoes custom-made...of course we picked the same ones!
On the railroad tracks...

Women selling food in Halong Bay

On our journeys in Sapa we crossed paths with lots of waterbuffalo in the rice terraces...

We broke out the poppers for New Years Eve On our trek with our three H'mong friends

"Buy something from me! Buy something from me!"

Christmas in Vietnam!

When we told my mother we were going to Vietnam for Christmas she said, “why would you want to go there?” – Americans from her generation desperately avoided going there. And I didn’t know how we would be perceived – how can you spend so long fighting against a nation of people and then drive them around in your taxi? But the overwhelming feeling that I got from the Vietnamese was “buy something from me!” – no, just kidding. The American War was but a blip on their radar of conflict – Vietnam was ruled by the Chinese for over 1,000 years before regaining their independence. The French came in and had their turn and were also beaten back – but not before their passion for baguettes rubbed off on the Vietnamese – bread and cheese is as prolific as pho! Then the Americans came in to try to stomp out communism and yet another super-power was defeated by a small developing country of rice farmers.

Gathering Point: Ho Chi Minh City
Chelsea (my lovely sister who made the long trip from Seattle with an 18 hour layover in Seoul), Bree (who has traveled practically the entire world and grew up 20 miles from my home), Spencer (who managed to travel with 3 strong-willed women without pulling out any of his hair) and I met up in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on December 21st.

My initial impression was Soviet-Union-meets-Thailand. A definite Soviet influence in the thick coats people wore and the hardness on their faces. Everyone drove scooters and most women wore designer face masks (even in less polluted cities), some even wore long gloves up to their armpits with short-sleeves. Shops in town were similar to Thailand – most being tiny closets with no glass on the fronts. There seemed to be thematic streets – 1 street full of zipper stores, 1 street with wedding dress shops, 1 street with only mannequins.

Most people spoke English and the US dollar was accepted almost universally. The ATM spit out the other national currency – dong. At 16,000 dong/ USD it was a treat to withdraw 1 MILLION DONG from with my ATM card and know I had millions more in the bank! We tried the staple foods – pho (beef noodle soup) and fresh spring rolls (with mint – to die for!) and the national beers. Made the mistake of buying a lot of onion flavored ice cream (turns out it was durian…) from a street vendor. We took the bus the following morning to Mui Ne.

This is a cyclo driver - you sit in the front like a big sofa as he bikes you around town (kinda scary!). Many doctors, lawyers, dentists who sided with the Americans during the war were forced out of their jobs and are now cyclo drivers - talk about reeducation!

Mui Ne to Na Trang
Mui Ne is a small beach town 3 hours from Hanoi – a wonderful spot to spend a few days relaxing on the beach! We rented scooters and checked out a giant sand dune in the middle of dry land – kind of strange – and went sand sledding with a couple of 9 year old locals (I’m still picking the sand out of my ears!). The next day Spencer and I found a magical, empty beach with *good* waves and the tiny Vietnamese restaurant on the beach just happened to have 1 surf board we could rent. So we went SURFING IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA! It was amazing.

That night we caught a 1 am bus to Na Trang. The bus didn’t come until 2 am and we sat in the last 4 seats available – lined up across the back of the toilet-less, aircon-less bus and tried not to go crazy for 5 hours. We were supposed to catch the morning train to Hoi An, but realized the guy mixed up his AM’s and PM’s and had to spend the day in Na Trang. The beach town wasn’t so bad – we got knocked around in the giant waves for hours and had a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner at an Italian restaurant. The Christmas Eve train to Hoi An was a sleeper train – we commandeered 4 bunks in a little compartment and slept the whole way. Kind of like Christmas Eve while growing up -sleeping all together in the same room, staying up late and being silly.

Hoi An
Hoi An was not my idea – we got suckered into going because Chelsea wanted to see the architecture at this “World Heritage Site”. Turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip! On Christmas Day we discovered the best little café in town – the serve amazing fruit lassies and wonton soup (which Hoi An specializes in) and then headed off to the market. Bustling with people selling plucked chicken, scarves, chopsticks, necklaces… “Buy from me! Buy from me!” We each went off in our own direction and bought little presents for each other. Then reconvened, concocted a huge jug of mojitos, rented bicycles, and headed for the beach. We spent Christmas under the palm trees, sipping from a big plastic jug, listening to the waves crashing, and unwrapping all kinds of fun gifts. The night went down hill after that (as you can imagine) and we didn’t actually have Christmas Dinner until about a week later!

The next couple of days were spent wandering around Hoi An, which is a small, quiet town filled with scooters and beautiful old French- and Chinese-inspired buildings. Most buildings were painted a light mustard. Lots of shops filled with art, and more tailors than I have ever seen in my life. You could get anything made in Hoi An in about 8 hours. The most beautiful, unique coats I have ever seen for about $10, interesting pants, suits…we were all overwhelmed and didn’t actually have any clothes made (something Bangkok is also known for…) but Chelsea and I did have some great shoes made! Of course we ended up picking the exact same style and color (out of 1,000 styles and buckets of leather samples)…we may live far apart, but our tastes stay the same!

Hanoi --- Halong Bay --- Hanoi

On the night of the 27th we took the train up to Hanoi (bunks on a train is the ultimate way to travel). The very next morning we booked it to the Lonely-Planet recommended travel agency, Handspan, intending to organize a 2 day trip to Halong Bay. They looked down their long noses at us and said they were booked until January 4th and they were pretty much our only option. A bit perplexed, we walked 30m down the road to another agency, and in the course of 5 minutes the woman made a phone call, we handed over some dong, a van pulled up and we piled in.

One would prefer exploring the exquisite beauty of Halong Bay’s karst topography in relative solitude, but they actually make it quiet difficult to go there without a group. So we played the tourist, let ourselves be herded around a bit, and hung out on the roof of the big wooden boat watching the mammoth rocky islands pass by. We did get a chance to go kayaking around some islands, and had a first-hand view of the floating fishing communities built in the quiet bays by Vietnamese fishermen.

Sapa!

The night we came back from Halong Bay (I admit, it was a bit of a rushed trip), we hired a car (complete with it’s own non-English speaking driver) and started off on the 8-hour trip to Sapa, northwest of Hanoi. We intended on driving all the way up there, but our driver stopped at an extremely sketchy deserted hotel – with 4 pushy men standing around waiting trying to make us drink their tea from dirty thimble-sized cups and demanding twice the amount we were promised. I dreamed the Nazis came in the middle of the night and took Chelsea and Bree away – I woke up scheming how to escape out the back window before they got us, too! The night stop-over turned out to be for the best, because the rest of the trip was *very* bumpy and *very* beautiful.

The last hour was all up hill, very foggy, with glimpses of mountains and rice terraces and people dressed in unique, matching outfits. After finding a place to stay and bundling up in all our clothes (cold and damp with no internal heating – think Seattle) we headed off to the market and me the Montagnards – the hill tribe people who travel from their surrounding villages into Sapa to buy supplies and sell their goods. Very fascinating to see the mix of tradition and modern technology (women in traditional wear with a Mickey Mouse t-shirt poking out the top). Each hill tribe has its own traditions, beliefs, and language. We mostly saw the Dzao and H’mong people. They make very beautiful blankets in deep blues and vibrant greens, hand-embroidered. Lots of scarves, jackets, embroidered traditional belts, pillow cases, purses. In the market we also saw buffalo legs (raw and oozing blood), dead chickens with their feet to the sky, live ducks in baskets. Everywhere, women wandering around “buy from me! Do you want opium? Do you like this purse?”

On New Years Eve we went trekking to local hill tribe villages. Immediately when we reached the first village, Ta Phin, we were greeted by an entourage of women and young girls – “What is your name? Where are you from? How old are you?” – and they followed us on our walk to the Lao Chai, the next village. All were very nice, teaching us simple words in H’mong language, talking about their (huge) families, and asking us to…you guessed it…”buy from me”. The villages that we walked through were pretty small – a couple of houses with thatched roofs, one had an old 1 storied hospital building (although nobody knew the word “hospital” in English), we also walked passed a school with bare floors, a few wooden desks, and a chalkboard hanging from the wall. We also saw a perpetual rice desheller built into a small stream.
This is a picture of Spencer getting a call from his family on Christmas Day - ah how fine the invention of cellular telephones is!

Most of the women wandered off, but 3 little girls followed us all the way back to Sapa – no food, no water, no parental permission. They told us their parents didn’t care as long as they were “with tourists”. They walked the whole afternoon in little plastic sandals and traditional wear and took turns carrying a basket-backpack. These 6 year olds were fiercely independent - spoke Vietnamese, English, the H’mong language, some French, and knew to how tell time, extorted tourists for their money, and handled money better than I could.
Chu, with the basket backpack on the far left, walked with us the whole way.

We started out the evening (New Years Eve) with massages and a dusty bottle of Champagne which turned out to be so flat the cork fell out! Wandered into a fun English Pub (who would have though?!?) had some beers with a bunch of westerners, and brought in the new year at a big Victorian Hotel – listening to a live Vietnamese band playing Beatles cover songs and playing Jenga. A New Years not to forget.

Chelsea left early New Years Day to fly back to Seattle. I am so glad she came – it was nice to spend some time with her, and she is the happiest I have seen her in years. I am also glad she made it back to Hanoi with the crazy driver – he ran over 2 chickens and a dog in our trip alone!

Spencer, Bree, and I spent our first day of 2007 trekking around the villages north of Sapa. So beautiful! This time we hiked alone, passed little boys standing in doorways – “hello! Hello!” – and children walking down the road, carrying their baby siblings on their backs.

January 2nd, we rented ancient Russian Minsk motorcycles and toured the mountainsides via road. The road was paved, but pretty rough in a lot of areas – very sharp turns around mountain edges. I was almost creamed by a bus around one corner! But the view was outstanding – the clearest day yet – and we could see the mountain tops on the other side of the valley. We rode up up up to the tallest pass in Vietnam (at some point we stopped seeing houses and rice terraces), and then coasted all the way down the other side (and started seeing the terraces again). Goats, buffalo feeding on the roadside, people hiking down to the road from who knows where.

On the night of the 2nd we took a train back to Hanoi and spent the day in the Museum of Ethnology and wandering around the city – hot, dazes, and dehydrated – before finally catching a plane back to Thailand. I was quite impressed by how close together these countries are and how truly different they seem – both the landscape and the people. I actually returned to Bangkok thinking – “wow, back to a stable, developed country!” only to find that someone had let loose 8 bombs in downtown Bangkok on New Years Eve!

more pictures to come soon!