Looking into the heart of darkness

N 10 46.041 E 106 41.461 3m - Saigon - 13 December 2008

In Saigon. Waiting for another mission. It can drive a man mad. Yeah ok, maybe trying to book a cruise up the Mekong can do that too. Saigon is ok and all, big cities kind of feel the same after a while and traffic is maddening and I've seen most of the sights I felt I needed to see. I'm still confused about the US Embassy. We go past it a few times. I have in my head that iconic photograph, the fall of Saigon in 1975 and everybody trying to get to the helicopters, as well as the pictures of rocket damage during Tet 1968 attacks and I can't find that building. There were models of it in the city museum too, that concrete building with the concrete lattice work on the sides. There appears to be one like it next door to the embassy, maybe that's it. Being somewhere that History has happened, I like the connections it creates, but sometimes it is hard to figure out where they actually are.

But tours, our next stop is Cambodia and the Vietnam visa runs out in a few days. There are buses to Phnom Penh, but that seems a bit dull. For just a little bit more, there are 2 and 3 day tours that cruise up the Mekong, cross the border, then take the slow boat to Phnom Penh. Or so it seems. There are about a million travel agencies in Saigon and every hotel and restaurant has one too. They all have Mekong cruises, but with slightly different options (although I think there are only about 2 companies who actually give the tours, each of the others resells that with a similar writeup in their brochure) that don't really tell you much about what you will do and how. One sounds pretty cool, lots of hands on stuff, staying with families, hiking, biking, all that, but it is $140/person. Wow. The rest are like $40-60, seemingly dependent on how much you are actually on a boat.

You get them to describe the tour and you have to be very specific, ok, we go to the rice paper factory on a boat and around these islands then we get on a bus to go to the other town? Even then, they are not entirely correct (lying?), our boat that was definitely going all the way from the Cambodian border up the Mekong would take us all the way to Phnom Penh and drop us off at the waterfront. Somewhat true in reality, however a bus took dropped us off at the waterfront (or at a office a few blocks inland, with tuk tuk drivers surrounding the bus, clawing at the door to get at us as we stopped) from where it picked us up at Neak Loung, 50 km downstream. And other things on our itinerary seemed to have been dropped too. Maybe they hadn't paid off the tour company that month and were being shut out.

So, our first package tour on the trip, a bit scary that the next three days will be completely managed (except for the short periods of free time we will be alloted) but it will also be nice traveling with a group again. Some fellow travelers who we can commiserate with about things and have longer relationships with than just passing conversations in restaurants. But it wasn't much more expensive than traveling the distance on our own and it is three days we don't have to decide what to do.

First day then, up early, too early since the bus is late. It is a Sunday and traffic is horrible and we might have been the last stop to get picked up. Our first bit of excitement is a guy in the aisle across from us ended up on the wrong bus. A bit stupid but I can also see how it happens. When the bus pulls up, they point and say, there's your bus, over there, and point at three buses across the street. He was supposed to be on the one day city tour of Saigon, his dad booked the tour and he wasn't paying much attention. They make lots of phone calls, lots of discussion of extra money, trying to find him a way back to town. It also seems that he is supposed to sit on the bus from like 10 to 3 while we are off doing things. They relent on that at the last minute however. I guess he comes up with the extra $12 somehow.

Dong, our tour guide, is sort of chatty but doesn't give us much actual information about things. When we go through Districts 7 and 11 on the way out of Saigon, he mostly goes on about all the new apartment complexes going up and how they are just for rich people, $300k USD for a 1000 m2 apartment, blah blah. We finally get on boats at My Tho, transfer to a smaller boat to head down the canals to our first sight, a coconut candy factory. Surprisingly, there are opportunities to shop here, not just the candy which we see made but other things. Who would have thought. We have to linger here for a while, I think our group was being punished because we never really bought much of the merchandise on display, we are not leaving until at least X number of things are bought, I suppose. The factory is mildly interesting but I like the boat ride on the canals.

Lunch is another boat over to Tortoise Island. Somehow, during the day, the number of islands we visit is mysteriously shorter than on the brochure, as well as the sights. Maybe just going past them, silently, counts as a visit. They tease us with our one free included lunch of the trip. Dong parades around an amazing looking fish, huge, on a wooden rack, and says we can have that for only an extra 150k (about $8 USD) or we can have the crappy noodles and vegetables. We have the crappy noodles and are still hungry afterwards. We make a note to have backup food supplies after this. On the way back, we take tiny little 4 person canoes. Ours has to go super fast because a few of us got lost after lunch. Dong disappeared and we thought we went back the way we came. He tracks us down and we get our first demerit of the trip. They are rowed by two persons, one front and one on the back. They are pretty cool and sleek boats. Every boat that comes back the other way, empty except for the two rowers, every one of them waves and says hello and "please give money". Huh? Isn't it all inclusive? Must be their not so subtle way of generating extra tips at the end.

Out of the water, done with boats for the day. The group splits, the one day group heads back to Saigon and the 2 and 3 dayers get on a smaller, less pretty bus to go to Can Tho. Every time we got on a new bus after this, it got smaller and crappier. Our 2 hour ride to Can Tho was more like 3 hours and we are a bit grumpy when we get there. The hotel is a bit squalid, but I guess with constant inflow of tour groups, they don't have to care much.

N 10 01.757 E 105 47.215 39m - Can Tho - 14 December 2008

We are up in the morning (aack, 3 days in a row of 6 am wake up for a 6.30 breakfast and 7 am leaving), but Dong still knocks on everybody's door to make sure. Bus to the market and past the stalls on the way to the boat. Lots of pretty vegetable displays and a few not so pretty ones of fish, older ladies chopping up still moving fish. We crowd onto a boat and head out a short distance to the Cai Rang market, a floating market. It is pretty cool and seems like a good idea. Farmers bring their stuff on boats, sell it to stationary boats who then sell it on to boats coming out from the market to take to shore. Each of the boats generally sells just a few things with a bamboo pole on the back of their boat displaying what they are, pineapples or sweet potatoes, or whatever.

We head down a canal and stop at a place that makes rice paper, or rice noodles, or I'm not exactly sure. It is a sort of interesting technique, rice starch and tapioca mixed together to make a sort of paste which is spread in a circle and steamed and then put on racks to dry. Maybe they are cut up later into noodles or are rice paper and are shipped down to the people wrapping up coconut candy, or I don't know. I mostly wanted lunch by now.

But we make a mistake, getting back onto the boat, we get on first and are stuck in the back of the boat with the noisy engine for the next 2 hours. We head up to see the Phong Dien floating market, which we got there too late and is a bit boring. There are only like a dozen boats there, not much to see. A few boats come along side, grappling hooks, or nearly, trying to see drinks. We head up a tributary of the Han River and it is hot out by now (not a covered boat) and the engine is loud and it is a little miserable. The river back there is ok but a bit dull after a while.

Hurray, back to the main river and it can't be long until the bus and lunch. We are switched to a smaller bus, with no A/C on this one, or it doesn't actually work, and are ferried back to the hotel, lunch at the hotel. Must have been some kickbacks paid to the tour company there. Ok, the meal wasn't unreasonably priced and was sort of ok, but still.

We are supposed to have a few hours then on the bus to Chau Doc. We stop at a crocodile farm after 2 hours. It is sort of interesting but also rather depressing. It is sort of a factory farm for skins and meat. There are signs all over saying not to torment the crocodiles but a group of local youths gets great pleasure out of throwing rocks at them and just laugh when we scold them. They also balance on the walls and I'm slightly ashamed to say that I thought maybe it wouldn't be bad if they fell in. The crocodiles seemed pretty dopey but I imagine they could move pretty fast if they wanted to.

Another 2 hours then to Chau Doc and a stop at Sam Mountain. We climb up some steps to the Cave Pagoda. Dong the tour guide didn't seem so great most of the tour but here he actually gave us a pretty good lesson about Buddhism and the different versions in Vietnam and Cambodia and other places. The temple was only sort of interesting and the cave seemed a bit silly, snakes with light bulb eyes. There is some legend about snakes being converted and blah blah blah. The terrace was quite cool and probably the highlight of the day. It looked out over the rice paddies and Cambodia off into the distance. There were nice birds circling (ok, swifts were everywhere but there were a few that looked like birds of prey that we couldn't quite identify) but we were rushed a little bit to go see the silly cave.

The Chau Doc hotel was a little nicer. The city wasn't so exciting. We eat in some random restaurant we run across wandering around, pork ribs were nice, the sour fish soup was sort of good but a little strange, and fried morning glory is always nice.

N 10 42.556 E 105 07.163 11m - Chau Doc - 15 December 2008

Another early morning. These 7 am starts are really early. And there is a loud gecko (barking like sounds) in the room as well as annoying barking dogs outside the window. It will be nice to sleep in again someday. We are scheduled to visit a fish farm and a minority village today as well as take the boat to Cambodia. Apparently it is all on the way so there is no way of skipping them and just sleeping in late. Dong disappears back to Saigon and we are handed off to a new guide. I never get her name but she is nice and enthusiastic.

We make our way down to the water and load our bags and stuff into the boat. This one should take us to the border. On the way, we stop at a floating house. There are loads of these around, each of them has a netted in area underneath where they raise fish. Apparently these farms account for a huge percentage of the fish production in Vietnam. It is surprisingly interesting there. The front porch area has a hole in the middle and our tour guide takes great joy in throwing in handfuls of fish food and watching them go nuts, splashing and going crazy trying to get it. It is funny too, there is nothing to buy at this place, I wonder how they make their money back from the tour group?

The Cham minority village is just further up the river. They live on land but the shore is covered with racks of drying fish. Their houses are also stilt houses. The one we go to has markings on the front showing the water levels during the wet seasons. Generally it was 1/2 to 3/4 the way up the bottom floor but in 2000 and 2002 it went up over the 2nd floor and they must have had to live in a foot or two of water for a few months those years. They do weaving there and have plenty of things on display for purchase. Local kids hang around and all have plastic wrapped cakes they try to sell for a dollar or two. A sign is posted outside the house warning not to buy from them since they sell old expired goods and you might get colic (ok, just saying what the sign said). Not that I would be tempted, they looked pretty nasty. The constant children selling is pretty depressing all through Vietnam and Cambodia. If they are out selling things to tourists then they are not in school and will probably need to continue to sell to tourists when they have grown up.

Back on the boat, we settle down for a long ride. We have a few hours until the border. It is quite nice, just sitting and watching the land roll by. The fields are still quite flooded and parts of it look like gigantic lakes. The landscape will probably be drastically different in a few weeks. We see a few exciting birds, mostly terns and other things.

Then we arrive at the border station, a floating building on the side of the river. Cambodia is just slightly further down the river. We pay our visa fees (I have to pay an extra dollar, a fine for not having a photograph. It seems that the photograph isn't important, just not having one since they don't bother taking one of me) and have an hour or two to wait until those are sorted out and the boat arrives to meet us on the Cambodia side. The food is super expensive (ok, $3 for a bowl of cup of noodle soup) but where else can you go eat?

We load our backpacks back on and walk up the dirt path over into Cambodia and our tour guide shows us some fruit from the trees, sweet but a bit sour, and gives us some to suck on and try. She was pretty enthusiastic about lots of things. Then we are handed off to the boat crew and settle in for a few more hours on the boat heading to Phnom Penh. Again, this ride is also pretty pleasant and relaxing, like 4 hours slowly cruising up the river, looking at the new pointy style of temples on this side of the border, the small subtle changes in housing or fishing boats, and occasionally some nice birds.

Despite what the tour company told us, we don't arrive in Phnom Penh but are dropped off in Neak Puong (maybe better known as the village that was accidentally bombed during the secret bombings and that set off the action in the Killing Fields) and have 90 minutes more on a bus to get there before we have to face the gauntlet of tuk tuk drivers and touts. They were actually clawing at the bus doors when we arrived trying to get it open. We find a guest house, $8 for a double room, seems fine.

N 11 33 397 E 104 54.988 21m - Phnom Penh, Cambodia - 16 December 2008

Our first real package tour (well, maybe Mongolia was one of those too) of the trip. It had a lot of tacky "sights" and the tour company totally lied about a lot of what it would involve, but you know, for like $40, three days of entertainment and transportation to where we intended to go anyways, it seems like it was good. It wasn't exactly a cruise up the Mekong like the companies promised but it was a nice look at some of the Mekong and they way it works and the way people live and work on it in Vietnam.

Next up, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and temples by the thousands and bleak bits about recent Cambodian history.

Too much monkey business

N 11 25.270 E 107 25.780 125m - Cat Tien, Vietnam - 9 November 2008

Ok, I'm really struggling to keep up with all of this. I went back and started writing about China, but haven't finished much yet. Then I also started about Vietnam but haven't gotten very far with that either. I might just make a list entry and a quick summary.

China we had come over from Mongolia to Beijing (Great Wall, Forbidden City, hutongs), to Pingyao (Raise the Red Lantern town and incredibly touristy, lots of touts with megaphones shouting at you, not my favorite city), to Luoyang (to see the Grottos - amazing cliffs filled with carved Buddhas), to Xi'an (terracotta warriors), to Chengdu (starting point for our bird tour of Sichuan which went to Moxi, Kangding, and Tagong), to Kunming, and finally to Yuanyang (super famous rice terraces), and out of China to the border at He Kou (the bus journey from hell, covered in vomit) and across to Lao Cai, Vietnam.

Then in Vietnam to Sapa (old French hill station) to Ta Phin (home stay with a Red Dao family), on to Hanoi (lots of scooters and yellow buildings and crazy bundles of power lines and mobile phone numbers spray painted everywhere), then to Hue (the old imperial center of Vietnam, the Citadel and scene of much fighting during the war), to Hoi An (the southern part of China Beach, yeah, great beach), then all the way to Saigon (ok, Ho Chi Minh City, even more scooters) and a bus journey to Cat Tien (which I'll try to write about).

We had a few choices for Cat Tien. There isn't much information in any guidebook about it, which seems surprising considering it is a fairly important national park in Vietnam. It has like 800% (ok, I can't remember the exact number) of all the animal and bird species in Vietnam in it. But all the books just give vague things about try taking this bus, tell them to let you off at this stop, and then try and find somebody on a motorbike to take you the rest of the way. Hmm, ok. Or you can go on an organized tour, treking, bird guides, transport there and back, blah blah blah. For only $150/person for two days. Hold on, let me catch my breath there. Vietnam is a little more expensive than the guidebooks are saying, but it still isn't crazy expensive like that. Maybe we will take our chances with the bus which costs a few dollars.

Well, it was an interesting bus ride, I'll say that. The guy running our hotel helped us with the arrangements. Well, actually helped, not just booked a tour like most hotels and charge a big commission. He got two buddies to take us on their motorcycles to the bus station (the north one, 5 km away from the city center), 50,000 each, which I guess is sort of reasonable. And the bus should get us to the town, and there should be motorcycles waiting, and he tried calling the park to see about accommodations, but nobody answered, so we will just take our chances.

We are up really early on Tuesday morning, we need to be packed, have breakfast done and be on the bikes by 7 am. They wake up a little early and make us eggs and baguettes for breaksfast and we finish up as the motorcycles arrive. We have a rather breathtaking, invigorating, or a ride that jolts us awake. Hanging on the back of a motorbike, he is weaving around traffic, tearing across bridges when he has a clear space in traffic, wheew, I'm happy to make it there intact. One of the guys comes in and helps us buy tickets, make sure we have the right ticket window then makes sure we find the bus we need to get on and waves us on our way, baby birds being chucked out of the nest.

Seems like an ok minibus, about 15 seats or so and only a few people there so far, a grandfather and granddaughter. The woman beside us has a huge bag of bread and two boxes full of clucking chicks which she puts under the seat and checks them every time we stop for something. After we get about 10 passengers, we set off. Ok, this seems promising. The ticket says Cat Tien, so it should get us at least close enough to find a ride to the park.

Ahh, minibuses, you always hope it won't happen but it always does. We slowly head north, I think we do. I don't know the way, but I assume we just didn't circle around in Saigon for 90 minutes looking for more passengers. Maybe we did. I have to hope that we did make some sort of forward progress during that time. We stop for about 20 minutes somewhere, the driver and the conductor disappear for a long time and eventually return with 3 new passengers in tow. We keep going, driving slowly, the conductor (don't know what else to call him, the guy who gets people in, collects money) keeps shouting out the window at anybody standing on the side of the road. Sometimes we stop and he jumps out and grabs people by the arm, getting them into the bus. I have to assume that they did want to go to Cat Tien, or in that general direction since even though they seem reluctant at times, they don't deck him, or try to run.

It starts getting crowded, we are up to like 20 passengers and all the seats are full and stools are put down in the little remaining floor space for more to sit. And he keeps shouting out the window and keeps finding more and more people. He yells at us to scoot over, hell no, there isn't any room already. Somehow a few more people crowd into our seat. At the peak, I counted, I think, 28 people in that van. People are standing, sitting on each other, just crazy.

It is then like an hour or so before we start getting nearer and a few people slowly start getting off. Somebody shouts, I assume it is 'stop now', and the door opens and they jump out and the van almost stops for this transaction. The lady gets off with her chickens and then there are only a few left on the van. One last lady gets off in Cat Tien village and it is just the two of us. We ask, here? No, further. Then we sight water and probably can't go any further than that.

We stop at a little roadside cafe (a shack) and get out. The driver and the conductor park and get out and lie down on hammocks. The cafe suggests it might be a few minutes before the ferry guy gets there and offers some food. The noodle soup is pretty cheap (instant cup of noodles with a few extra vegetables) so that will have to do, and a coconut to drink, and a few beers. (Vietnam beer has been nice, I should put together my list of different ones I've tried. I could give away the surprise though, LaRue has been the best.)

The ferry arrives, and so do three coach loads of school kids. They get the big ferry and we wait for the small one after that. We didn't take the bus we thought we were on, apparently this one goes right to the entrance. No motorbikes needed. We walk a few hundred meters and find the visitor center. They have room, a small bungalo (wooden house on stilts) for $20/night. Hmm, prices have gone up, but ok, about what we were paying in Saigon. It is a national park, hopefully the money goes for good things.

There is a small sort of village here. Walking down the main street, it looks like a small urban suburban town. There are little guest houses all along the road, set back with lawns in the front, lit by street lamps. There are two canteens where the food isn't great, one seems worse than the other. Sometimes the food was a little icky, sometimes it was fairly good. After a few meals of all meat things, we try to pick more from their limited vegetable selections which they mostly don't have in stock (I will miss morning glory when I leave Vietnam) leaving mostly fried cabbage or boiled cabbage.

The park is quite amazing. It is a variety of forests, from tropical rain forest to evergreen and semi-deciduous forests. Quite a lot of it was sprayed with defoliants during the war, so those sections are dominated by bamboo, which grows quickly. Sitting on the back porch of our shack, we look out over the river and chestnut headed bee-eaters sun themselves on the roof of the shack next door.

We set up two tours to see some birds. We meet a German couple and decide to share with them. They are reluctant at first, since they have set up the tour first with the guide, but since we have our own bird books and binoculars, they think maybe we won't be annoying and ruin it for them. Both days have a 6 am (!) start. We walk the first day and have a truck the second day, so we can go a little further in the park. The guide is this greying haired Vietnamese, speaks ok English, although the accent is confusing. He totally knows his birds, there are only a few warblers that he can't quite figure out but the rest are instant.

The first day, we walk a few miles, mostly up the main road, stopping every few feet to look at something in the trees on either side. Starting at 6 or so in the morning, it is pretty cool out and the birds seem pretty active then. We see tons of things, lots we have never seen before. By 10 or so, it starts getting much warmer and there isn't as much activity. We end up trying a jungle path about then, he want to show us pittas, tiny ground based birds, rare, hard to see, hopping on the ground. He sees one but none of the rest of us ever see one. Stupid pittas. I enjoyed the walk through the jungle though, and there were a few groups of gibbons moving in the trees overhead.

The second day, we have a truck and a driver and head down the same road. When he seems something, he bangs on the roof and we stop and look. We cover a lot more distance and have a nice walk on the far side of the park in a small farm on the river's edge. In between, we again go through the jungle looking for stupid pittas. This jungle is much denser and there are so many things, so many things hanging everywhere and sounds coming from all over. A really wild place. We don't see much on this walk (I see a small snake) except a camera crew who won't go past us, they want to take footage of us and make lots of noise for a while so that we are guaranteed to not see anything. Grrr. I didn't sign a wavier, but I suppose they don't care so much about things like that here.

In the afternoons, we nap and sit on the porch watching our backyard, or rent bikes and ride looking for hornbills and peafowl. We are a bit disappointed on those, we see neither but we see other things that are just as nice.

Maybe the funniest animal highlight was in the cafe. They have a patio that looks out over the river with lots of trees just beyond the patio that usually have a few monkeys in them, long tailed something or other, somebody said. Most of them sit in the bamboo eating stuff there and minding their own business, but for a few of them, the lure of scraps on tables and especially a tree with some ripe jack fruit (?) which they sneak up and try to rip pieces out of, alternating between being absorbed in that (upside down, face buried deep in the fruit) and looking guilty with an eye out for the waitress who wields a broom and a stick and chases them off. More entertaining to watch then the tv set on the other side of the cafe, mostly showing badly dubbed films (no sounds except for dialog narration) or loud sports.

So, a nice three days in the park. It is good to be away from crazy big cities and it is nice to just have settled somewhere for a few days. It would be nicer to stay a little longer, to see more and not have to move again for a while, but maybe we can plan to stay somewhere for a week or more maybe in Thailand. Excellent. So, back to Saigon and then quickly on to Cambodia, probably taking a three day cruise of the Mekong and then across to Phnom Penh. Some boring lists to round things out:

Cat Tien animals - 10 December 2008
yellow cheeked gibbons
long tailed something (monkey)
samber deer
barking deer
loads of geckos

11 December 2008
Tortoise
boar and three babies
small black and white snake

Cat Tien birds - 10 December 2008
chestnut headed bee-eater (probably my favorite)
Black drongo
Vinous-breasted starling
striped throated bulbul
black crested bulbul
ratchet tailed treepie
black naped oriole
black winged cuckoo shrike
common tailorbird
common flamebacked woodpecker
Swinhoe's minivet
Asian fairy bluebird
Asian brown flycatcher
common iora
red breasted parakeet
scarlet backed flowerpecker
spangled drongo
two barred warbler (as well as some unidentified warblers)
besra
ashy drongo
olive backed sunbird
vernal hanging parrot
crimson sunbird
ruby cheeked sunbird
needle tailed woodswallow
blue winged leafbird
copper throated sunbird
purple sunbird
white rumped shuma
green billed malkoha
bar winged flycatcher shrike
orange brested trogon
black and red broadbill
Malayan night heron
pale blue flycatcher
large tailed nightjar
oriental dwarf kingfisher

11 December 2008
Green imperial pigeon
black naped oriole
grey wagtail
red junglefowl
stork (oriental, black ?)
shikra
red headed drongo
Saimese fireback
Oriental pied hornbill
Indian roller
chestnut headed beeeater
white throated kingfisher
vinous breasted starling
golden fronted leafbird
common iora
little spiderhunter
puff throated babbler
white rumpted munia
red collared dove
chinese pond heron
common kingfisher
greater coucal
pied kingfisher
scaly breasted munia
either a black eagle or black kite - guide wasn't completely sure

Maybe white crested laughing thrush
Maybe crested myrna and hill myrna
(No bird guide for these, best guesses.)

12 December 2008
a stork (I think, need to find a Vietnam bird book, it was circling like a vulture which seems strange)
some sort of falcon (need to look up also)

I ride a G S scooter with my hair cut neat

N 21 02.238 E 105 50.913 13m - Hanoi - 30 November 2008

Ok, more recent pictures now too. Finished uploading this directory which starts with our near Tibet birding trip, and this which starts with the end of Kunming and our journey out of China and into Vietnam, and here which has the end of Sapa, Vietnam and down to Hanoi.

And I've sort of updated the route map (it does seem to be off, like everything is skewing too far south, I'll have to correct it later). Strange looking at that map, we seem to have covered the majority of the vast distances we will go on this trip. We have half of Vietnam left, Cambodia, Thailand (hopefully Thailand will have calmed down by the time we get there, we weren't planning on flying anywhere from there though), and probably a quick run through Malaysia to get to KL where we have our flight booked on January 12th to Australia. So, the flight will cover some distance but our future overland distances won't be quite so substantial.

Anyways, Hanoi then. We arrive really early in the morning, after a sleeper train (didn't sleep so well on this one and we are both a little crabby) from Lao Cai. There is the inevitable gauntlet of touts to greet the train. We can usually get it to work in our favor, pick one who is in the center of a lot of cheap hotels, let them pay for your taxi to take you to theirs, then look at it and then wander off to the other hotels in the area to comparison shop. Today it is 5.30 am, it is early, we are sleepy, no hotels will really be open to show us rooms, so we just get past them and to a taxi to the place we had a business card for from somebody who stayed there before.

It is still super early when we get there and the front door is open but the night shift guy is asleep on the couch and tells us there are no rooms to show us until 7.30 (meaning, I'm sleeping, come back when the day shift arrives), so we have a early morning to walk around the Old Quarter as it is just waking up. It is amazing how things transform. There are only a few people about, a few stoves cooking things on the sidewalks and doors half opened. Most everything is shuttered. When we come back an hour or so later, we don't recognize anything with all the shops open and stuff put out on the sidewalks.

Each street in the Old Quarter was controlled by a certain guild, metal pipes, fish, woven baskets, rope, packing tape. Ok, maybe not so much now since every other shop is some sort of travel agency, but there is a remarkable consistency to different blocks. The street around our hotel seems to be selling Christmas decorations. Weird, I forgot Christmas was that close, as well as weather that doesn't seem very wintery. There are nearby streets (like every shop on the street) that sell bathroom fittings, or the one I really liked was the entire street of packing tape.

I'm not sure I'll write so much about Hanoi. It was sort of an unfocused few days there, tired mostly and wasn't so motivated to see all that many things. There are a few things that will remain in my memory to represent Hanoi. Ok, the constant background noise of "hello, motorbike", "where are you from?", "cyclo?", blah blah blah. I flirt with different strategies, either waving back at them, saying hello back, saying I'm from America, or most of the time just head down, pretend I don't hear them and keep going. Although if you don't hear them, sometimes they will follow you and keep yelling, tapping you on the shoulder to make sure you hear. The "where are you from" question really gets tiresome, 100 times a day. Stopping to answer just hooks you into their sales pitch. Better to just keep walking.

At least America seems to have redeemed itself by finally nearly ending the embarrassing Bush years. Obama seems popular here. I suffer a bit of guilt or a strange mix of something a few times here. We find a shop that has old propaganda posters, hundreds of different ones from mostly the 60s and 70s and a few 80s. Stylistically, they are pretty beautiful. I really like the public posters I see all over town, most have some sort of Ho Chi Mihn picture leading his people into a prosperous and harmonious future, or whatever, but they just look amazing. Flipping through them, the "Grow more soybean" or "Towards better pig breeding" or other things like that, they are just amazing works of art. The ones from the war years, glorifying the 4000th American jet shot down, understandable giving the circumstances but also hard to stomach. Or a lot of anti Nixon ones, also understandable, but, ok, Nixon was pretty horrible. On the train then from Hanoi to Hue, which was just south of the North/South border and DMZ area, the area of the fiercest fighting during the war, towns have burned out tanks on display in the center square and the cyclo driver yesterday informs us that his father was killed 35 years ago, machine gunned. Gosh. So yeah, Vietnam.

Hanoi though, I think it will remain in my memory as yellowish fading buildings, vaguely French colonial, thousands of phone numbers stencil painted on every available wall surface (I assume they were phone sex numbers or something like that), and just crazy powerlines, massive coils and stray lines, a maze of them barely able to fit on the poles. And then the traffic, sadly not bicycles but thousands of beeping motorcycles and scooters with too many taxis and cars mixed in. Here crossing the street isn't so much like in Ulan Bator where you just have to walk and run or anything to not get run down, here you just start walking, steady pace, don't look, and they will go around you. It is maddening walking after a while, it is so noisy and you just feel so hyped up from all the noise and movement, but it does also kind of make an amazing symphony of movement.

A few days then of that, walking around the Old Quarter, lots of shops and street side food stands. I go see the Ho Chi Mihn mausoleum one of the days. I finally give into a motorcycle ride after walking everywhere else and ignoring them. Some say you should get the price first, another thing I read said that's silly, that length ride should just be 20000 (a little more than 1 USD) and just give it to them at the end. I try this getting there. He says he wants 100,000 which makes me laugh and I say is crazy (which it is). (I can't wait to get to Cambodia where they don't bargain.) He argues how far it is, eventually 50,000. I should have just stuck to 20 but I give him 30 and walk off and end it.

I didn't see Lenin when I was in Moscow or Mao in Beijing, I needed to see at least one frozen communist leader, so Uncle Ho has to be it. It was quite an experience, about 90% of the people there were Vietnamese. The line moved fast and the security was tight, not just explosives and all that but making sure you didn't have your hands behind your back or in your pockets or anything less respectful. You got about 20 seconds, walking around him, strangely lit, looking really white, in a fancy sort of glass case with carved wood. It is rather bizarre experience. Then walking around his old stilt house which maybe he lived in. (The guide book does point out that if he had been there all the time, it would have just been a matter of time before a B-52 would have dropped bombs on it.) The guides are giving tours to other people, he woke up early every morning, walked on stones to massage his feet, clapped his hands to get the fish in the pond to come over to feed them, etc. Maybe some of it is true. National myths, I guess. You know, George Washington chopped down a cherry tree too and then couldn't tell a lie.

The Ho Chi Mihn museum then is just incredibly frustrating. It seems like an interesting art exhibit, lots of funky sculpture, like giant tables and chairs with giant bowls of fruit on them. However, as a source of information or insight into his life or Vietnam or really anything about the various time periods, I get nothing out of it. One part of the exhibit, says it is the cave where he spent some of the 1950s planning the resistance to the French, but the cave is "represented as the human brain." Huh? And I couldn't even figure out how the thing looked anything like a brain. I don't know, maybe if I had known lots of stories about him before I got there, maybe some of it would have made more sense.

Maybe my favorite part of the stay there was seeing the water puppet show. It really was pretty mesmerizing. The story is that it started in rice paddies way back, entertainment back in the countryside. It takes place in a pool with a background and the puppeteers hide behind that and use long poles to move the figures around. They are short skits about fishing or planting fields or a college graduate returning to his village. Most of the stories were simple and it was mostly pretty just watching the puppets zipping around the water and dancing and swimming.

Next stop then, the sleeper train to Hue, down in central Vietnam. Better known as the DMZ area.