Greetings from Hanoi, Vietnam
Mood:  happy
Topic: Asia Trip
Greetings from Vietnam.

We arrived to the northern part of Vietnam five days ago and we are already enamored with the Vietnamese people and culture. Before we arrived, I (Marisa) was a bit nervous. This is the first non-democratic country that I have traveled to and I was unsure what to expect. Perhaps also the knowledge that America fought a long war here and eventually lost -- ceding to the communist north which reunified North and South Vietnam into a communist country. But after just a few days, it is so very apparent that not only is Vietnam a socialist country (not communist) but it is a bustling and prosperous country. Sure there are signs of communism -- the basics: the flag is red, the police and many other "official" people where army green uniforms which have a very military look to them, and the more significant: people don't own the land that they farm, they must rent it from the government and pay a portion of their profit to the state, and finally the most interesting...each day at 6:30 AM, the government run news agency broadcasts the days news over a speaker system through the streets of Hanoi - it includes domestic and international news, and the weather report. But each morning when I hear the broadcast, I can't help but imagine what this city-wide broadcast system has been used for in the past -- communist propoganda, war information etc.

These unique differences aside, we have noticed in our days traveling around the northeast region of the country that this nation is bustling. Everyone seems to be going somewhere, on their way to work, transporting goods, working on new construction projects, farming the fields, running shops -- Vietnam in summary shows a drastically different view than our experience in India, where day after day we saw hords of people simply standing around with nothing to do while the country seemed to barely be standing on its feet in terms of infrastructure and basic services for its people. Their is an odd sense of efficiency fostered by the communist background in Vietnam that seemed to be totally lacking in democratic India.

We spent our first day in Hanoi taking a self-guided walking tour through the old quarter. The small streets are bustling and overcrowded with motorbikes constantly screeming by with their horns blaring. It is not easy to walk in this city -- even though there are sidewalks on most streets, they are used as parking lots for all the motorbikes. Each street in the old quarter is named after the item that is currently or historically was made on that street, for example shoe street, sweater street, metal street etc. There is virtually no English except for on the menus and numerous tourism offices selling packaged tours -- however, because Vietnamese the language uses latin letters, and not characters, it seems as if we can read every sign and so we feel less lost trying to find our way around.

We spent three days in the famous Halong Bay -- a huge bay witb thousands of limestone grottoes as their called -- basically jagged, tall rock islands that jet out of the water like pinacles with no seeming connection to any other grottoe near by. It is a totally different type of mountain structure than anything I've seen in the west. Incredibly beautiful! The Bay is very touristy. When we arrived to the port town, there were hundreds of other tourists boarding dozens of traditional wooden boats -- called "junks" -- and it seemed as if we would be on a cookie cutter tour. We were pleasantly surprised when our boat seemed to be on its own route, seeking out quiet, more remote parts of the Bay. We docked up to a floating house in a floating village where each family sells fish from a series of floating docks attached to their tiny floating house. We also had the opportunity to hike deep into a village nestled among the mountains of Cat Ba island in the Bay away from all the tourism and all the people. We hiked to the top of one of the mountains and had a simultaneous view of Halong Bay and the tiny farming village nestled in the middle of this island. We booked our tour with EcoTours in Hanoi and we recommend them!

Tonight we will take an overnight train to Sapa in the mountains. There we will trek and visit some remote moutain villages. We had planned to visit Hue and Hoi An -- two of the most famous parts of Vietnam on the coast -- but the typhoon that desimated the Phillipines also took its toll on Vietnam and these towns have been under 3+ feet of water for several days now.

We hope you are all well and we will write more soon.

-Marisa and Molly