Vietnam

Ok, so we've been in Vietnam about a week now, and it calls for an update.

The busride from Cambodia was long, and boring, and warm, and crowded... so all in all not too bad. We arrived in Saigon (District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City). Luckily we found a room right around the corner for $15 between the three of us with A/C warm water and a TV and fridge. Not too shabby. Dave had become sick, we assumed it was Dengue or something equally awful, for he spent the whole time in Saigon in bed, watching TV, going for short walks and then returning to bed. We did one full day of pure shopping, because you can find all sorts of worthless junk for a dollar, which makes it seem worth buying. I did reletively ok, since we had been to the exact same markets two years prior, and nothing seemed too needed. The food in Vietnam isn't the greatest, and we ended up finding some really good and cheap western places, to get sandwiches and salads.

Another day I did an all day tour out to see a Cao Dai temple, which is a religion infusing Catholicism, Daoism, Buddhism, Confucionism, etc...) The temple was really neat, with large pillars and dragons wrapping around them. It was pretty cool to see. We then head to the Cu Chi tunnels, where the Viet Cong fought during the Vietnam/American War. They are a serious of 250 km underground where the VC lived and fought, making it almost impossible for the American troops to see of fight back. It was really fun running around and crawling through the tight litttle tunnels in pure darkness and stuffy hot air... for about 2 minutes, then you want out.

A third day we went into Chinatown which ended up being the same as everywhere else with the people looking a little more Chinese.

We decided to take a sleeper train and stop over in the middle of Vietnam for a day or two before heading up to Hanoi, but once we got there, the train schedule was awful and would make us either stay 3 days there or leave immediately, so we jumped back on another overnight train hours later. It ended up being about 36 hours on the trains overall, but the sleeper cars are great when you just nap and stare out the window and read, so it went by very fast.

When we got into Hanoi we went straight to the Old Quarter, where the streets are narrow, packed with people, motos, and an unbelievable amount of buld goods from candy to shoes to chickens. One of the most little chaotic towns we've seen. It's crazy and all day and night you just hear people honking and blaring their horns. In Asia, unlike the US, a horn is a very liberally used instrument to say, hello, im right here, behind you, watch out, move over, im coming around you, hurry up, why are you stopped, go faster, im coming around the corner, anyone there... and anything else possible. Some of the riders have their kids in the front and sometimes you see a 2 yr old just sitting there holding the horn down, but the parents can hardly stop them for they need to focus on not hitting one of 102,938 other things in the street at the time. It's great for an early morning headache.

We did a two day one night trip to Halong Bay, where there are 1,980 islands shooting out from the water of the bay, many with caves and temples build on and around them. The trip was on an old junk (a type of boat) and we slept in cabins below. There were 11 of us, all 25 and under, from England, Canada and Japan, so it was a really fun trip. The next morning we continued a tour of the bay and then head back to Hanoi

Luckily our mail came through, to help us get the Non Immigrant B visa we need in order to legally work, so now we have to wait the weekend to trun it in on monday and get started on the visa before we head out, either into Laos, or up to Northern Thailand. There are many horror stories of the busride to Laos, taking from 12-38 hours so we will probably end up flying somewhere instead... but we're not too sure.

Just today I got to go and see Ho Chi Minh's body, in a mosuleam, where it has been preserved and put on display. It looks like he's just slepping peacefully in a comfy little bed. It's interesting because you can't talk, or use your phone or camera, or put your hands in your pockets or stop walking... the gaurds just push and shove you right through to make sure the hundred and hundreds of people each morning get to see him. Now it's a couple days to try to enjoy the chaos of Hanoi and check out the sights while we wait for our Visa's to let us back into Thailand. Let's hope it's not a huge pain to get everything checked out and legal... but who knows, it's SE Asia, and nothing is as easy as it should be.