Vietnam, Part I

December 10-29

dara / My first impression of Hanoi --- there are motorcycles everywhere! There are few traffic signals, and motorcycles cross the intersections weaving around each other. It is crazy! It can take some time to cross the roads as a pedestrian. Better yet though, there are also markets everywhere. It would be a good place to buy gifts for the holidays. It is strange though, the same stores are selling the same items within the same couple of blocks. Business cannot be that easy when all your competitors are that close.

We went to the POW prison in Hanoi, the Hanoi Hilton. Most of the historic information is not about the American pilots that were kept in the prison. Most of the information focuses on how the French treated the Vietnamesse political prisoners. There is a small exhibit about the American pilots. A picture of John McCain. A glass cabinet display of John McCain's uniform, boots and flight gear. Lots of pictures of the happy lives of American prisoners here. I doubt if the conditions were quite as favorable as the pictures depict.

Jim took me to Halong Bay for the big 3-3 birthday. It was fun! We went on a three-day tour of a national park with 1,000s of rocky, uninhabited islands off the bay. On the first night, we toured around the island, hung out with our English friends, drank on the boat and finally, slept below in a cabin. Then, we stayed on the Cat Ba Island on the second night for some treking. The trek was brutal after a night of drinking and celebrating. But, in the end, the view was worth it!

After an overnight trip on the bus from Hanoi, we stopped in Dong Ha for breakfast. This town is located near the DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone), the 17th parallel between North and South Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the International Cemetary and the Vinh Moc Tunnels. We spent the day seeing all the historic sites where alot of the destruction occurred.

The Vinh Moc Tunnels are pretty amazing. It is my understanding that the locals dug the underground tunnels as protection from the U.S. air raids. There were 95 small rooms for families to sleep off of one of the main hallways. A hospital where 17 babies were born. A bomb shelter further underneath the three levels of tunnels. The tunnels were small too. I could walk, but in most cases, I needed to hunch down on the tour.

FYI --- we did not tour the Cuchi Tunnels which are much smaller. A person would need to crawl on their hands and knees. These tunnels were a complex network of levels used by the Viet Cong near Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

Our next destination was Hoi An. This fun little town is known for their tailor-made clothes. There are tons of shops everywhere. You walk into a shop, flip through current fashion magazines and design whatever you want for great prices. You can pick out whatever colors and material too. Jim actually purchased two suits with two sets of pants for each suit, three additional pairs of pants and six shirts. Can you believe it? :) He only owned one suit before then. My favorite purchase was a blue/gray jacket. :)

We spent Christmas with our English friends Lisa & Paul in Nha Trang, Vietnam. It is one of the beaches in Vietnam. There are a bunch of islands off the bay in the distance. We spent a couple hours each day hanging out in this restaurant, La Lousiane. The restaurant had grass huts, lounge chairs on the beach, and a swimming pool in the middle of the open air restaurant. If you cannot be with friends & family, it is not a bad way to celebrate the holidays.