VIETNAM

I am in Hue, Vietnam right now waiting for my bus to FINALLY leave again at 1:30pm. We were on a bus all night from Hanoi, and then apparently it went too slow and we missed the bus we were supposed to jump right on at 8am. Go figure.

After calm Laos, Hanoi was a slap in the face. We arrived in steaming heat, with motorbikes flying around us every which way, about 15 men on motorbikes vying for our business-i was not able to hop on the back with my huge bag, which they didn't seem to notice, and honking galore. The driving in Hanoi is hopefully the worst in the world. There seems to be no real system for driving except for if you honk at someone they better move out of the way. Honking seems to mean, well I warned you, even if I was two inches behind you, so now it's your fault if i hit you. The way of crossing the street is to slowly inch out and slowly walk as motorbikes continue to zoom around you.

There are fruit ladies everywhere with a pole over their shoulder, on each side hangs a basket. It's actually pretty heavy and I know this because one woman threw hers over my shoulder as I passed and would not take it off until I had John take a picture of me with it for which she then wanted money---ooohhhh. At least I got to wear the pointed hat that everyone thinks of when Vietnam is mentioned. These hats are definitely allll over the place here, not so much in Laos or Thailand. The Thais just had huge circular ones.

The book sellers are incredibly amusing. They go around with a box of copied Lonely Planet's and other books travellers would want. The books are wrapped in plastic so you cannot see the quality of the copy. They try to charge what it says on the back of the book. Yeah right. The funniest book seller zoomed by us on the back of a motorbike and stuck the books out to us "Book??" he said as he went past. Hah they never stop! It's actually incredibly amusing when you stop to think about it.

We stayed in a room in Hanoi one night that John alikened to the ones in Saw, which I never watched because I can't stand horror movies. After that one night, we escaped to Halong Bay, which was quite beautiful. There are more than 3000 islands in Halong Bay. Many are too small to live on but beautiful nonetheless. We went for a trek one morning, which was verrrry hot, think sweat pouring off of everyone and not stopping even when we sat for a good 10 minutes. It again was pretty however. We stayed on Cat Ba Island at a hotel the first night and then on a boat the second night, which was cool. One of the workers on the boat was not so nice. She got very angry very easily. I got yelled at for buying a drink from one of the women floating by on row boats selling things-how was i supposed to know!! She also had a hard time understanding why i did not want the hot tea or hot coffee that was free in the a.m. I had to say no a couple too many times-again providing amusement. I have found Vietnam thus far to be incredibly interesting, at first a big culture shock even after having already been in Northern Thailand and Laos. Until later, Brittany