good morning vietnam

we finally got into hanoi after altogether too many hours in hong kong, where the people were TOO PUSHY. a woman actually tried to WALK INTO THE STALL in the bathroom when i was trying to exit. man, i hate people. lady, do you really think you're going to pee THROUGH me? jeez.

we got here, went through customs (no questions asked, again!) and got a taxi into hanoi which might have been one of the more memorable experiences of my life. driving in vietnam (or, at least driving here) requires a certain amount of skill, bravery and sheer insanity. our driver would switch lanes with no notice, dodging motorbikes and other cars, and using the preferred mode of passing, which is to creep right up behind the person in front of you and then flash your lights, and if he doesn't move in 2.3 seconds, start honking madly. hanoi driving makes boston driving look like a piece of cake, and it makes sibyl and dewey look like mere amateurs in the world of road intimidation. there are motorbikes everywhere here, and i mean EVERYWHERE. bikes with parents holding onto kids with one hand, bikes with young girls wearing face masks, bikes with parents with kids holding onto their siblings as their little legs hang off the side of the bike. and while it is impossible to describe (and perhaps even to contemplate, unless you've seen it), it is absolutely manic. at intersections, the bikes all line up as if they're in a race, and then BAM! they're off, honking and weaving around cars and other motorbikes, and cyclos and pedestrians. honking and honking and HONKING.

crossing the street is another unusual experience. the first day we were here, i told tim we would just walk on the same side of the road the whole time, but he made me cross the street (he is so mean!). crossing the street usually entails waiting for a break in the traffic (which usually means the flow slows to only 4-5 bikes) and then sprinting for your life. of course, now, we're master experts at the art of hanoi road crossing, and we casually stroll across, hoping they will dodge us (which they usually do, but we just saw a woman get hit by a motorbike). of course, the best is when tim starts to cross the road, and i follow him, looking for traffic on the other side, and then i get halfway across and realize he's back on the curb and i am staring down 4798398287549874353827 bikes. another attempt on my life? i think maybe so!

this city, though exhausting, is wonderful. the first day i told tim i didn't think i could ever live here, but now, after a few days, i'm not so sure. once you get used to the pace of life and the incessant honking, it all starts to look different. the first day here we were wildly ambitious and we did a walking tour of the city (guided by our lonely planet book, carried through hanoi by literally every tourist in town). the walking tour took us through a maze of streets in the old quarter and was a little overwhelming. we had lunch at cha ca la vang ( i think that's right), a little restaurant that specializes in a fish dish. sure enough, when we walked upstairs in the restaurant, the waitress gave us a note that said "this restaurant only serves one dish: fish cakes for 70,000 dong". we think the tourists pay more ($4.50) for the cakes, but whatever. she brought over a bowl of noodles, a bowl of herbs, a bowl of greens, a bowl of chilies in oil and a bowl of peanuts. we sat and stared at it all for a minute, wondering what to do, until she brought over a clay oven with a pan on top with sizzling fish cakes. she dumped some of the greens in, stirred it around, and left us. it was delicious. of course, while we were eating, we noticed the restaurant's cat jumping up on the counter and eying the greens suspicipiously, but at this point, as long as a roach didn't jump out of the greens, i was happy.

the second day, we spent a bunch of the day jerking around (i noticed that my idiot pharmacy only gave me 30 days of malaria pills instead of 110--THANKS, HIP!!) and running around the hotel, and then we took a cyclo to the temple of literature. the cyclo drivers are all over the city, along with the motorbike drivers, calling out 'sir, madame?' and pointing to their bikes. they are usually just lounging around languidly, and they take the news that you're not interested pretty well. $1 each got us across town to the temple, in one of the more bizarre travel experiences of my life. the cyclo driver sits behind you and cycles you around town, and you, like the motorbikes, weave in and out of traffic, around buses and cars, and you wait at the stop lights along with the rest of the crowds. it's a little intimidating at first, but soon you get over your fear of dying in an accident and start to worry about death by asphyxiation. since you're right in the thick of the traffic, you are right in the thick of the fumes from 74897897598237589375 other vehicles. i spent about a quarter of the ride covering my mouth and trying not to breathe. the rest of the time i spent feeling my white girl guilt about making this nice man cart my giant thighs across town for $1. the driver was sweet and when i told him i was american, pointed proudly to the hanoi hilton (the prison, not the hotel), and pointed out several other landmarks along the way..."train station!" "school!" "pagoda!" "lottery!" all the while trying to get me to book him for the whole day. i told him to ask the boss, and he thought that was hilarious. the boss, of course, said no, which was great because it meant i didn't have to!

at the temple, while tim was paying the drivers, a postcard seller popped out of nowhere and greeted me with 'you're beautiful. want to buy postcards?' man, how can you argue with that? of course i made tim buy them, although he made a point to add that the kid was probably not going to school, as he said, but just selling postcards. killjoy. the temple of literature is beautiful and is a very tranquil place in this crazy city, and we encountered another kid who gave me the same greeting: "you're beautiful. you fill out my survey?" of course i did, and then it turned out he was also raising money for the blind (we gave him $3). damn, my immense beauty is sure costing tim a lot of money!!

after the temple, we went over to the hanoi hilton (i keep forgetting the real name. hua lua prison?), which was a profoundly troubling experience for me. i have been to old prisons before (dublin and alcatraz), and i am not usually disturbed by it. then again, most prisons have not have extensive displays about the torture the prisoners endured. as tim said, the prison is a heroes' prison, where vietnam's revolutionaries suffered at the hands of the evil, wicked french. i won't go into it, but there was a room for the prisoners sentenced to death, and walking through, i got the creepiest feeling i've ever had, and quite literally felt sick. again, as an american, you don't think much about what the vietnamese endured to become communist (apart from all the fighting they did against the americans and the french and so on). there was a section for the enemy prisoners, in which there was much propoganda about how well american prisoners were treated (they got to exercise! they got delicious meals! they got to write to their families!) and then all kinds of info about john mccain and "pete" peterson, who are the prison's most famous american inmates. the whole place was very depressing (duh, allie, it's a prison) and the worst part is that they tore down 2/3 of the prison to build AN APARTMENT BUILDING. now, i don't know about you, but would you want to live on the site where hundreds of people were tortured or killed? not so much.

that night, we walked through the shopping district (silks! bags! jewels! hooray!) and then found a cafe called little hanoi where we stopped for a drink. then we went to the water puppet theater to buy tickets, and then we went back to little hanoi for dinner--nice french baguette sandwiches. the water puppet show was great--totally touristy, but worth it, i think. the music was wonderful (live musicians play and sing and talk during the show) and the puppetry was amazing.

yesterday, we went to the perfume pagoda. somewhere between the hotel and the pagoda, tim lost his red sox hat! sadness. this of course meant he had to buy a rad straw vietnamese-style hat at the jetty. also at the jetty, there were two tiny children, a little girl (about a year old) and a little boy (about 3). their mother had a little stand where she sold some kind of concoction that involved greens and noodles (it could be anything--lots of food uses those ingredients). so there i was, checking out the kids (sorry, chad) and laughing at the little girl playing with the greens. then she eats the greens. then she drops the greens on the floor and runs off with her brother. then her father picks the greens up off the floor and puts them back in the basket. YUM! (and tim wonders why i made him buy so much hand sanitizer--as if that will save us!)

on the way to the boat, a local woman came up and put a conical hat on my head and then jumped back. 'you buy! you buy! very cheap!' i gave it back to her and kept walking. bam! back on the head. this happened about 4 or 5 times before she got the hint and stopped. persistence will get you everywhere in life, but it will not get me a straw hat. then we got to the jetty and a little boy with the most amazing eyelashes comes up to us with some hats. we said no, he walked away. but then tim started to think about it. it's hot in vietnam, and we would be outside for 6 hours. did he really want to fry like a chicken? so he calls the little boy over, and eyelash kid sells him a hat for $1. it is a fine looking hat, but i miss the sox hat, i'll tell you what.

the ride up the river took forever. ok, only an hour, but sitting on a piece of wood for an hour ain't too comfortable. but oh, how i longed to be sitting on the wood when we got off the boat. we had a 3K (2 mile) walk UPHILL, as in UP A MOUNTAIN to get to the pagoda. let me tell you it was not fun. it took 45 mins to get up and about the same to come down. our guide was on fire to get us to the top, and it was hotter than hell. not only was it hot, but it was sunny AND humid. i will tell you: i barely survived. the pagoda was blissfully cool and interesting when we finally got there (though worth the hike? i am not sure). every year, thousands of vietnamese go to the pagoda to pray. it had all different natural altars, like if you want a son, or a daughter, or lots of money. on the way down, we ran into the woman from the jetty who had told me to buy stuff from her. her approach was to come up next to me and say 'where are you from? what's your name? AT THE TOP, YOU BUY FROM ME??' i said yes, not quite knowing what i was getting into, and so, after i had already gone through 3 bottles of water en route to the pagoda, we bought another from her on the way down. the little trickster tried to sell it to us for 3x the going rate for water, and then when we said no, she told us she had to carry it up and it was very hard (all true). so we only paid twice as much. i'm a sucker, i know. the best part about the pagoda was the dogs. it was the first time in asia we've seen healthy, western-style dogs (in hanoi, it's all yappy chihuahas and in indonesia, they were the furless creatures, and in malaysia, they were bizarrely small). at the pagoda, they had big, beautiful german shepherds, and a bunch of tiny puppies. but tim wouldn't let me touch them. rabies, you know. KILLJOY!

last night we went to a restaurant across the street (after 4 hours on the bus, 2 on the river and 2 hiking, we were too tired to walk any further). it was called diva and it was beautiful. i had bun cha (pronounced boon chow, if you're interested--it is officially the only vietnamese word i can correctly pronounce, and i spent a lot of time practicing. bun cha!) and tim had some kind of claypot eggplant/pork dish. it was so good, and the restaurant was lovely. we sat outside, next to the pianist/violinist duo who played all kinds of music, and soaked it all up. after a while, you can start to understand why they call it the paris of asia. there were all kinds of tables of people, and the lights were dim, and the music was great and it was just FABULOUS. also, i had the best milkshake i have ever had in my life. hands down. no question. and it wasn't even chocolate.

today we've just been wandering around aimlessly, since we're officially homeless, having checked out of our hotel. the other day, we stopped at a travel agency to burn a cd, and the guy there played us guitar music for about an hour while he burned the cd. i think tim is officially in love with him, so we went back today to get a return ticket from sapa and a ticket to hue. while we were there, he was entertaining an israeli father and son, and we all sat in the office while he played the guitar and talked to us--in english and hebrew. this morning, we walked south of the old quarter (which is where i think i want to live) and had camembert sandwiches and orangina at a little cafe called hanoi gourmet. again, perfect. the street cafes look interesting, but they don't speak english and there are chickens running amok in lots of them. I HATE CHICKENS. they gross me out to no end, and with the avian flu, i ain't taking any chances. ew, chickens.

so tonight we are taking an overnight train to sapa, and then we will be there until the 18th when we get an overnight train back, and then we spend another night here and then we kick it in halong bay. more from sapa!