Chilled in Hanoi

As per usual, it's been a long time since I've written and so I'm just going to hit the highlights of what I've been up to in Hanoi. Because Jurre, Annika, and I wanted to do New Years Eve in Hanoi, we had to stick around town for quite a while. This means that some of the days we didn't have much planned and would just wander around the old city, take in a movie, or nurse a hangover. We were staying at the legendary Hanoi Backpackers Hostel as before, so we always had plenty of friends.

One of the first trips that we did after Christmas was to the Temple of Literature. It's a small collection of reconstructed old buildings sitting on the site of Vietnam's first university. The university was founded in 1076 on the site of a Confucian temple that was built a few years earlier. The students studied the philosophy of a few scholars, including Confucius. I think that most of it dealt with issues of morality and at several levels tests were given to see if the student could pass on to the next level. To become the head of different levels of government, it was necessary to pass different levels of education and the final test was administered by the king himself.

Besides the buildings which are mostly gift shops and shrines to Confucius, the most interesting thing were the stone steles which sat upon carved stone tortoises. On these stones, the names of every scholar who passed the highest test were recorded. Only 82 of the original 116 survive, and cover a period of 600 years ending in the 18th century. There wasn't really much written down in English about the place and it's hard to be terribly interested in any of it unfortunately.

On one of the other days, we visited the Hoa Lo Prison in downtown Hanoi. It was built in 1896 by the French and was mostly used to hold political prisoners, or at least that's all the current government has chosen to highlight about it. It's pretty small and has about a dozen small rooms for solitary confinement, though they each had several iron racks in them so I guess it was flexible. Also there was a single large cell room where a couple dozen prisoners were chained to the floor. A lot of famous revolutionary literature and poems were produced there and it's now celebrated as an important think tank for the communists. The prison also held a guillotine room and had some gruesome photos of various victims.

As much as the documentation plays up how cruel and unsanitary the prison was, they do exactly the opposite when describing how the US POWs were held here during the war. There are loads of photos of POWs making Christmas dinners, playing volleyball, and meeting with journalists. Also on display are written orders detailing how well the prisoners are to be cared for and pictures of foreign demonstrations against the war. One cell is highlighted as having been home to John McCain and his flight suit and personal belongings are on display. Yea, it was pretty skewed politically, but overall a very good museum.

What else did we do... oh, yea, one of my most anticipated activities was the tour of Ho Chi Minh's tomb. Like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao before him, when uncle Ho died in 1969 we was embalmed against his wishes and enshrined in a large marble tomb in the middle of town. It's only open for a few hours a day and no cameras are allowed so I've just got some pics from the outside. Suffice it to say that security was high and we went through several checkpoints before getting to parade through the tomb in a large group surrounded by elite guards. I was lucky enough to be in the front of the large group and I felt like I was walking somewhere very special as I went down narrow hallways past icy guards staring into eternity on either side. It was a lot more formal than Lenin's tomb and that one's pretty over the top too. The body looked waxy but warm in the yellow lights and had a pretty impressive beard for a Vietnamese guy. Those communists knew the value of good facial hair.

Also in the complex was Ho's summer and winter homes, a small collection of cars that he drove, and a huge and tacky museum that we could enter unlike everything else there. The museum was dedicated to the changes that communism had brought to the oppressed Vietnam, but was really confusing and light on anything of substance. I don't think that I learned anything there. Later that day we met up with my German acquaintance, Elena, but let me tell you about her.

She's the gf of my friend Jason, whom I lived with for a month in Camarillo and ultimately pushed into backpacking Central America for 3 months a few years ago. He had an excellent time, and ended up meeting Elena and has kept in contact with her making several visits to Germans and Vietnam since to keep their relationship alive. She's currently working in the Hanoi Womens Museum for a year and agreed to meet me. At first, she met the 3 of us for dinner at a good local place of her choice and told us about her life in Hanoi, what it's like getting around, and how hopeless her coworkers are.

I think the lack of initiative that some people have here drives her mad... I hear that a lot in Asian countries. You see, it's the culture here and elsewhere to defer to the decisions of people higher up even if the decisions are stupid and inefficient. That also means that for anything to get done, someone higher up has to command it. That's just how things are done, and it has some benefits like occasionally increased satisfaction and social order. Mostly it's a hindrance though. One other custom that comes to mind is how when you invite a local to do something in the future, they will always say that yes, they will do it even when they know they won't because of some conflict. At the last minute they will call to tell a lie about why they're not coming (child has a fever is popular) and refuse to decline an invitation even when pressed by someone who know how this works. The only way to get around it is reading subtle facial movements when they accept, but it's tough for foreigners. She's upset that she has to take classes about local customs when the people she works with don't have to learn anything about her culture. I'd go nuts.

Anyways, dinner with her was nice. The next day after seeing the tomb, we met her at the Women's Museum and she freed up some time to give us an excellent tour of the place. The museum focuses on marriage and childbirth practices, women in history (as rebel fighters), and a section for ethnic costumes. The documentation was great and we really liked the museum. Elena works to train the local museum operators and to improve the condition of the displays. Her work is funded by a German government cultural venture that's helping to pay for the whole project. She's there to oversee where their money is going, and the locals seem to appreciate her in general though on many such projects that would not be the case. Anyways, it was great having such an informed guide but she eventually had to go back to work and we were on our own again.

Another activity that we partook in was the mildly famous water puppet show. It's an old old thing and started as a puppet show in the rice paddies (supposedly) where the actors would hide the mechanisms of control under the water. Nowadays they also hide behind a screen while wading in the water and cover rural topics. That's about all I can say of it because the plot was pushed forward by some actors speaking Vietnamese and the scenes didn't have any connection so far as I could tell. I've met a lot of backpackers who have been to it, most say that they fell asleep at some point (I did too) and at least it's super cheap and just 45 minutes long. I still found myself recommending it but I don't really know why... is there anything better to do at 9pm for $2? Good enough.

Most of our time was spent wandering around town looking at souvenirs and eating. The souvenirs here are pretty nice... there's lots of lacquer products, embroidered tote bags, tasteful jewelry and hats, flags and tshirts, and propaganda poster shops. I kept thinking that I should get a poster, but the more I look at them the less I want to hang them up. The coolest ones usually cover defeating America (as opposed to beating AIDS and improving agriculture) and I just don't feel right hanging them in my home even though I would take a tongue in cheek attitude about it. Many streets deal with specific issues, like a handyman street, dog meat street, doorknob street, socks street... it was pretty silly but I like that it's organized at all.

Finally we reached New Years Eve and while wandering around that day we impulsively decided to dress like idiots to ring in the new year. That's just what people do at parties I suppose. Nah, I got really into it. We decided to go as bees, so we bought as much yellow and black stuff as possible including yellow tights, ties, armbands, headbands, and sunglasses. I got some weird looks when I knocked the lenses out of my newly purchases yellow Raybans. They're so cheap out here that you can do whatever with them. It was a crazy night. The hostel opened it's roof bar at 5pm and we started drinking. We were the only group in costume and got a lot of attention as you might expect, for better or worse. Around 10 the hostel moved to a new bar where we stayed until 1:30. The police kicked everyone out of the bar so we had to find a new place. The police are always like that here... they let every bar stay open exactly as late as the bar pays them to let them. Confused? The police get a cut of everything here. A dozen Vietnamese people worked the crowd when the 60+ of us got onto the street and half a dozen women felt me and Jurre up to find what they could rob us of but we wisely didn't bring much of anything. We manages to fund the 10 hours of drinking with $20 we each stashed in our underwear. I had my camera hanging from a strap and a foot down the inside of my tights so it was safe. We got home at 3:30 and went to bed exhausted.

The next morning I had an epic hangover and proceeded to drink a lot of water from the sink. I've done this everywhere in the Middle East and Europe but just a couple times in Asia and this was the first time I got sick from it. Even eating all the strange street food like this stuff I was fine. I was laid up in bed for the next 2 days going to the toilet every 45 minutes day and night. Not too fun, but at least I had a lot of TV downloaded on my laptop and some friends to bring me food. Sadly though, I had to skip out on the bus tickets that Annika bought us to go to Sapa and I came up a day later to meet her and Jurre.

Sapa is a popular mountain town North of Hanoi at 1900 meters elevation. Most of the year it's a great place to escape the heat of the capitol but at this time of year it's foggy and cold. Ugh, and I thought I was cold in Hanoi. Anyways, the Sapa area is home to many ethnic villages and the popular activity is to hire a local guide to go hiking with for a few days to visit some of the more accessible villages. Jurre and Annika did this for a day before I got there but when I arrived in the morning after taking a night train up (more expensive than a bus, but I wanted to have a bathroom handy) I found the place to be intensely foggy and far too cold to handle. These are two pictures that Annika took of the girls that led them around. I was wearing 2 thin jackets, gloves, a warm hat I bought, and I still shivered every minute of the day. We ended up hiring a van with a few other backpackers and riding to a Tuesday market way out in the countryside. By the time we got there in the afternoon, it was mostly closed and we made our way back to town to warm ourselves by a fire in a restaurant. Not the most eventful day.

In the morning we researched our options and decided to head back to Hanoi. It took another day in Sapa and an overnight bus to make that happen. The funniest thing was that in the night the bus stopped at a restaurant with not a single thing that I wanted to put in my mouth... and that says a lot. On all the walls there were jars of rice wine, and not the usual stuff with scorpions and snakes, but some really strange stuff. One large jar had a huge cat in it and another had a baby horse! Some others had monitor lizards and huge geckos. It was really horrifying. The cat is in the lower right of the picture. For a while we thought that we'd go to the park that Jurre and I visited a week or two earlier on motorcycles and spend a couple nights there, but there were logistical problems and we were intensely sick of the cold weather. In the end, we decided that the best thing was to send Jurre and Annika off to Laos on a night bus since it's 10 degrees C warmer there and for me just to wait a few days for my plane to Saigon. When they left later that night I was sad to see them go. They were good friends to me... accepted and loved all my quirks, and I them. I really hope that I get to see one or both of them again some day.

From there, I used the next couple days to write this blog, download a mess of stuff to my laptop, and finalize the camper van plans for New Zealand. After crunching on the math, I think that it makes more sense to rent than to buy since it's just for a month though the difference in money is pretty close. If it was 2 months I'd definitely buy. I'm wholly focused on the New Zealand trip and seeing Diane again and I'm so sick of Vietnam i can't describe. The people here are just too pushy in their sales and generally very rude. I can't say that I've really liked any of them but most have been good enough I suppose. I'm also very tired of the food and have eaten western food every meal for the last 3 days. I need to get out of here and I can't wait for some Kiwi hospitality I guess.

Christmas in Halong Bay

It was a good night that we had in Hanoi, but we wanted to do something special for Christmas so we booked a tour of Halong bay with a nearby hostel. It cost about $80 for a 3 day 2 night tour including everything but drinks. The hostel that we were staying at offers a competing tour that costs more, but will surely have a younger and louder group. I guess that we thought that if we went with something else we'd end up with the same thing anyways. We mostly did, but we ended up being the loudest and most gregarious on the boat... so I guess we could have done that with just a rowboat instead of a small cruise boat.

Early in the morning, like 7:30am and that's insanely early by our standards, we got onto a shuttle bus and traveled for 3 hours to the coast while trying to sleep through as many of the potholes as possible. When there the group leader picked up a boat from a huge marina where we walked past a parade of beautiful wooden boats until we reached our comparatively modest new home. The boat was of dark wood, rather flat at both ends, and had the bunks on the bottom floor and a large dining room above. Jurre and I shared a room and it was pretty comfortably appointed with 2 beds and a clean bathroom.

When people finished arriving we found out exactly who our group was made of. We had an older family of 4 from Finland, a young and strangely quiet British couple, a solo woman from Bangkok who found a way to be negative about everything, and a female monk from Korea who didn't speak any English. I'd say that I really liked the Finns best but hey, the 3 of us are a mobile party anyways so I knew we'd have a good time.

We made our way through the fog shrouded karsts to a particularly large one with a sizable dock. We hiked half way up the spire to a cave entrance and paid the additional $0.50 for a ticket that was probably supposed to be included in the tour price. Eh, not worth the brutal fight that would ensue. I know people who fought these fights and told me about it... I just think it's pathetic on both sides. The cave blew me away. It was probably formed as the limestone rose out of the sea and carved out a huge hollow cavity with a roof that flowed like water trapped in stone. The whole of it was dramatically lit and had a lovely path that looped through. I also liked the view of the boats from the cave entrance.

Before getting too far away from the cave, the boat stopped again to let us take some kayaks out around the bay. It was a bit of a tourist madhouse and Jurre and I shared one so that we could paddle around in our Santa hats shouting 'Merry Christmas!' at people. It got a lot of cheers. We never did find the sea cave that was rumored to be in the area.

After a very good dinner on the boat, we got the night under way with some beers and free time on the roof of the boat. It was kind of cold, but not too bad, and I relearned and performed Merry Little Christmas on the ukulele for as many people as would listen. Who can resist a live Christmas song? The rest of the evening was dedicated to karaoke in the dining room. The lot of us sang for a solid 5 hours and drove our guide crazy. She hears these same songs every night of every week of every month so I guess that I can sympathize, but she doesn't have to sit around clapping all night... she could just go read a book.

The next morning the boat dropped us off at Cat Ba island for some bicycle riding. The island is the largest in the area and has a few thousand people living on it but is mostly empty but steep jungle valleys. We got dropped off in an area that was virtually flat and rode around for a couple hours before going back to the boat. It wasn't too great and I didn't take any pictures for some reason.

From there half the group departed and the rest of us were taken to our next night's stay at Monkey Island. It's a rather small pile of rocks with a piece of beach on either side of it. One of those two beaches had a group of bungalows as that's where we stayed. The rooms were really comfortable but the weather still wasn't with us and the clouds remained. Still, we fit in a dip in the ocean which isn't too cold, and several games of pool. Also, we hiked over to the other side of the island to try and find some monkeys.

They are famed as being extremely aggressive and thankfully we didn't find any that day. The one couple staying on the island when we arrived told us how they were assaulted while laying on the beach. A monkey ran off with a sarong so the guy gave chase until reaching the edge of the jungle and catching hold of the now dirty cloth. After getting it back, a large group of monkeys counterattacked and chased him down the beach. Meanwhile, a few others were investigating a backpack laying next to the girl. She quickly grabbed it but they sensed the cookies inside and proceeded to vigorously chase her down the beach as well. The both of them escaped with no bites and no need for rabies shots thankfully. Those aren't too fun.

Later that night, the English couple joined us for dinner and cards while the aforementioned couple (South African) joined us for cards as well. We all played a game that I brought with me (Bang!) and though I had to teach its rather complicated rules to everyone, they all quickly grasped it's awesomeness and we played for 4 hours while polishing off 4 large bottles of vodka between the 7 of us. We all had great fun though most of the group ended up throwing up when they got back to their bunks. I didn't though. That was a hell of a Christmas day.

The next day we awoke with just awful hangovers and made a slow return to the boat where we slowly made our way back to Hanoi. We didn't do much that day when we got back to the hostel. I think we napped, had dinner, and went to be early. That was a messy Christmas, and I didn't even get to call home from Monkey island since there wasn't any internet. Oh well, I'll do better next year.

Backroads of Northern Vietnam

Sorry I haven't written in a while... it seems like these posts get further and further apart. That usually means that I've been having a great time, which I really have lately, but sometimes I'll admit that my energy is sapped by a period of boredom and lethargy. This seems to set in when I'm not around people that I can see regularly. I think that when I was in Mui Ne and Dalat I felt that way but I'm very very pleased to say that I'm back on top of things now and having a grand time with my new travel partners, Annika and Jurre (pronounced like yer-ah). They've been good company and I'm going to stick with them until I leave for New Zealand in January.

Ok, so the last post had me traveling to Hue with Annika to meet up with Jurre. I don't know what I said about them, but here's a summary. Annika is a 20 year old German student taking half a year off to see SE Asia. She spent 3 months volunteering at an orphanage in Phnom Penh and eventually set off for Saigon where she met Jurre and went north with him for a week or two before I met them. Her mother raised her and a few sisters with a bit of a feminist attitude (not that it's a bad thing) but she's a good sport, has an even temperament, and a great laugh. Annika is really easy to get along with and puts up with a lot of crap from me an Jurre I'm sure. She must like our company because Jurre and I talked her into extending her visa and staying with us longer in Vietnam. Incidentally, she claims that in Germany, Erika is an old lady name.

Jurre is 19 and Dutch. He works as a chef to support his training as an actor in Amsterdam. I think that the long hours of work and school burnt him out and he went on this long trip to unwind. He's been at it for a couple months already visiting Sri Lanka and then Vietnam and I think that he's going to travel for a few more. Jurre is bursting with energy and likes to talk a lot. He brings a fun and casual side out of me and I like him for that. Despite the age difference, I get along really well with these two and I know that they appreciate my experience and travelers wisdom as much as I appreciate their company and sense of adventure. I think that I've developed a sense that I can do anything these days, and I hope to keep that in the future.

I had the name of the hotel that Chris, Stefan, and Pierre had checked into so when we got off the bus in Hue we decided to get some single rooms for $6 rather than go with the $5 dorm rooms down the street at the lone hostel. Though I love dorms for the socializing, I don't need them if I've already got friends. It turns out that Chris and Stefan had left a couple hours before I got there and I wasn't to see them again, but Annika and I ran into Pierre at the hotel and a little later we met up with Jurre who had gotten into town that day too on the last day of his Easyrider tour.

We got some dinner and tried their home made beer... I think it was Bir Noi. Some time in the past, Czech people introduced the process of making fresh beer with a short shelf life to Vietnam and that's what you're getting when you find a $0.20 beer. Unfortunately it was godawful at this place but we had plenty of other stuff on tap and soon we had an arm wrestling competition that I handily won despite all of Pierre's sessions at the gym. I guess lugging a heavy backpack around for a year is a workout. Afterward we went to a popular late bar called Browneyes and one of the waitresses played a couple epic games of Jenga with the lot of us. I took a nice fuzzy photo of Jurre making out with some girl on the dance floor and we all had a good laugh in the morning.

The next day was a pretty hellish rainstorm for most of the day and so we stayed inside nursing the hangovers, smoking cigarettes (not me), and watched Napoleon Dynamite and Inception. Good times. That night we went to Browneyes again and danced for ages.

Despite being cold as hell and overcast, we went out the next day to see the Hue citadel. It was the seat of power for the last dynasty before WWI and was a pretty impressive palace complex in its day. Unfortunately it was largely destroyed in fighting with the Japanese, French, and Americans. What's there now is being restored slowly through grants from Korea. You get the sense that it would have been a great set of buildings but most of it is flattened and overgrown now. Still, it was good to get to walk around for a good long while chatting and seeking out hot coffee.

I also had to search around town for someone to change a $100 bill from my emergency money since I had a cash flow hiccup thanks to Paypal. I've been using Paypal to transfer money between my banks so that I can get it out of ATMs here at a good rate, but they decided to fire me as a customer since I raise too many security alerts since I use IPs from all around the globe. That sucks but even worse they're holding $2000 of my money and say that it takes up to 6 months to get a refund. Cute.

I think that we spent the rest of the afternoon writing and I made my last post then. We found a restaurant with an English menu that made the best food that I've had in Vietnam. Not only was it good, but it was also dirt cheap so that I could enjoy a kind of friend duck cake with a great dipping sauce for just $1.50 and I stuffed myself on 5 such items. Amazing service too and I went back to the kitchen to thank the woman that made our dinner. We didn't drink too much that night thankfully.

We got up at a reasonable hour the next day and rented motorcycles for a visit to the DMZ. Well, we got scooters for Annika and Jurra since they had never driven them before but I got a shifting motorcycle since I think it's more fun. They picked it up quickly and we drove about 120 km to reach the Min Vinh tunnels just to the north of the DMZ. Oh, for anyone who doesn't know, the DMZ was the dividing line drawn between the two halves of Vietnam by the allied powers after WWII. See, they agreed that the Japanese soldiers in the country would surrender to the Russians in the North and to the French in the South. Despite the treaty saying that there would be no political separation of the two halves, the French and Russians decided to try and keep their two halves for their own and thus started what would become the Vietnam war.

The tunnels here were built because the Americans were continually bombarding the fishing village for several years and so the people took to living underground for protection. They were in much better condition than those at Cu Chi and also were larger since they weren't really used for fighting though they didn't cover such a vast area. A def guide insisted in leading us through the admittedly confusing tunnel complex. He was hilarious because he didn't speak any language and thus emitted a series of gurgling shrieks when he wanted your attention and sounded exactly like Frankenstein's monster or maybe an agitated zombie. We gave him a good tip. Some giant group of school girls mobbed us and took a good 10 minutes getting pictures with each of us on their phones and cameras. I haven't gotten that treatment since Jordan I think.

To get home before it got too dark we had to drive like madmen passing every truck and other driver on the road. I guess that we did the same thing on the Easyrider tour and I'm just used to that now. That night we met some people at the backpacker hostel and 7 of us came up to my hotel room for beers and music. We checked out early the next day and headed to the train station.

Since Jurre and I have got a lot of time to kill before our flights out of the country, we're taking our time and hitting up every town that sounds good in the guidebook. The next one to the North was called Dong Hoi and it took 3 hours by train to get there. It's a true tourist backwater and had just one hotel where they spoke a touch of English but the three of us wanted to see how cheap things could get and we found a triple for $10 after an hour of searching. The first place had haggled down to $11 but we thought we could do better. We really haven't got anything better to do with our time in the late afternoon. That night we wandered around the neighborhood searching for motorbikes to rent but could only secure them for the next day. Dinner consisted of noodle soup at an outdoor stand where we met some local guys who invited us to share some rice vodka with them. I slept very well.

Early the next morning we picked up our bikes, had a small meal, and set off driving to some big cave in the area. None of us can recall its name, but it's a world heritage sight for some reason. It was also my companion's first time on bikes that had manual shifting but they picked it up easily and we raced through the countryside with a hand drawn map that the hotel made for us. Once there, we had to rent a boat to follow up the river to reach the cave. We didn't want to spend $10 on a big boat for the three of us so after another hour's wait we found a large group of local tourists that invited us to share their boat. A couple of them spoke decent English and were really friendly.

The cave was sort of interesting. The slow and wide river actually comes out of the mouth of the cave and the boat takes you a ways in before dropping you off. The water was pretty high though in this season and we were lucky it was open at all. There were some nice formations, but nothing blew me away. After riding back to town, we searched for lunch and settled on an upscale looking floating restaurant moored in the bay. When we tried to get a seat, a couple local guys that were sharing the otherwise empty restaurant with us invited us to join them for lunch. They also offered to pay for our food and beer and in exchange felt free to hit on Annika for a good hour in the most drunken and annoying ways. They sang to her, wrote love notes on napkins, quizzed jurre and I why we weren't in love with her too, and offered to make her a fourth wife. It wasn't in the worst of taste and was usually pretty funny and after a couple hours we set off with some good stories and lingering laughs. A short trip to the beach was in order in the late afternoon. That night we caught a sleeper bus to Minh Binh, just south of Hanoi.

The sleeper bus was very crowded and not super comfortable since Jurre and I were much too tall for the beds, but still we got some good hours of sleep. The bus was supposed to let us off at 4am but when we woke up at 7 we found out that we were in Hanoi. I guess they just forgot to stop for us. Anyways, we vowed to take another bus to get back to our original destination. With that in mind we took a cab on a short ride to the bus station whereupon he hit us with a ridiculous $20 fare. Of course it's BS but I played it cool and offered him $5 to get lost and then said that I was fetching the police. I think that we settled on a still grossly overinflated $2.50 each for the three of us but we were really tired and not in the mood for a bigger fight. No worries, that's small money. The 2 hour bus ride that followed was $2 each.

Minh Binh is a rather gritty small city that has a single hotel with a dorm. It wasn't very nice, but at $3 is made a fine place to meet other people and to visit the local sights. Tourists flock here to see the famous limestone pinnacles (called karsts) that jut up from the otherwise perfectly flat rice fields. Most people do it as a day trip from Hanoi to a place called Tam Coc. We got some motorcycles and drove a short ways to a village that sells boat rides through the area. First we visited a temple there that had stairs running up the side and through one of the karsts and it was really quiet and atmospheric. I loved it.

Next we took a row boat ride through the rice paddies in a rather narrow canal. I think that most people do it from a different spot that was really thick with tourists but we though we'd be smart and save a couple bucks by hiring some ladies in a different spot to row for us. The canal went through a couple caves and into some isolated and overgrown valleys. It was occasionally beautiful but I think that the main route might be prettier. Trouble is, the boat owners are supposed to be extremely aggressive hawkers on the side and if they're among the worth in Vietnam, then that's pretty impressive since Vietnam is among the most aggressive in the world. Oh, when we were negotiating the boat ride, we got to try out some betel nut that an old lady was enjoying. it's a kind of chewing tobacco made of a leaf wrapping up a small nut and spice package. I've seen a lot of it in India and some places in asia too. It stains the teeth red over a long period of time but we didn't get much effect out of it. It tasted pretty decent though.

That night we visited a restaurant in town that's supposed to be famous for its roast goat. I didn't think it was particularly good, and certainly not very fresh, and to top it off they don't have Saigon beer anymore... just the inferior Hanoi beer. We had a few more on plastic stools in the street and then called it a night at the comparatively early hour of 10pm. Annika went off to Hanoi the next morning to start the visa extension process but Jurre and I stayed to do one more day of motorbike exploration.

We got two bikes and set out to find a particular national park but after driving the main 1A highway for an hour we decided that we were lost and asked a lot of locals where we could be but of course nobody speaks English. Still, we managed to figure out with their help that we were way off course and we had to backtrack for a long time and finally got some good directions from a taxi driver. When we were close to the first turn that the cabbie had mentioned, we found and started to follow a tourists bus.

That bus led us to the first place mentioned in the guide book, a nature reserve. We explored the village area for a while but declined to do the boat ride through the nature reserve and so we set off to carry on to the national park. We reached it at 4pm after a grueling drive and got to explore it for just 20 minutes before we had to turn around and race home so as to avoid as much night riding as possible. We made it home in 2 hours since we knew the way this time. I guess that we didn't really accomplish much of what we had set out for, but it was fun trying. That night we had chicken and rice stew for dinner at a small outdoor restaurant and shared drinks with an ancient English guy and a group of soldiers that were celebrating something. It was a funny night.

Ok, so upon arriving in Hanoi the next morning after a bus ride, I wasn't really expecting much since everything I'd seen was rather dirty, poorly built, and lacking in frills. Jurre and I braved the public bus system since we were a long ways outside of the old town where the travelers stay and I was able to track our progress with my guidebook map and compass. As we got closer to the center, the town started to look nicer and nicer. We got dropped off at a small lake in the middle of town and hiked to the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel that Annika was staying at and I've got to say I really liked the look of this town. The streets were narrow but still had good sidewalks, large tree linings, big glass windows and vaguely reminded me of Boston with all the red brickwork. That's a hard comparison to accept, but I guess I just liked the look of it. It's much prettier than Saigon.

The hostel was just great too... large dorms with free breakfast and a rooftop bar. I'd heard good reviews of this place for the last 2 months and I can see why. There's a lot of new dorm competition in the neighborhood and the dorm price has dropped to $5 from the $7.50 that was listed in LP. That's a rare event. Annika introduced us to some new friends and once more we ran into Pierre. I like that guy. Jurre and I shared a cheeseburger pizza (I'm so sick of noodle soup and stir fry) and got some free beer for befriending the manager.

The weather was nice and balmy considering it was a couple days before Christmas and we walked around town that night chatting and searching for a cheap bar. Oh yea, we had a few free beers, and a funnel, at the rooftop bar before we set out. That night Jurre hooked up with an English girl but I just had fun chatting with the others and met a nice Russian girl named Tatyana. I don't meet many of those.

That night we also booked a boat tour of Halong Bay that departed the next day on Christmas eve but I'm going to save that for the next post. This one is already crazy long. I get really distracted traveling with Jurre and Annika because our humors really mesh up. Today I made a joke about the Chalula that I'm carrying (It's like there's a party in my mouth, and Mexicans are catering) and Jurre laughed for a solid minute. It was kind of awkward but made me laugh too. These are good days.