December 10-18
On 10 December, we crossed from Laos to Vietnam on the road that goes from Ponsavan, Laos to Vinh, Vietnam. Here is a
hut along the side of the road and
some kids on the side of the road. I met the guy in this photo on the bus and he
put his hat on my head (photo from screen of another camera). The women really do wear
conical hats. Here is what
modern Vietnamese writing looks like. We spent one night in Vinh and then headed north to Hanoi. It was a pretty hard couple days.
Hanoi has a big lake in the center and an island in the lake. Here is a
photo of the island and
a close up. There was a museum on another island in the lake with a temple. Here is
a horse sculpture and
a dog carving. We also went to see the
mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, but we couldn't go inside. On one day, we spent the entire afternoon walking around the lake, and on one side there was a sculpture garden. Here is a
guy with an axe, and
some kick boxers and a
woman picking rice. We also saw these
women by the lake. One evening, we went to see the famous and ancient art of Vetnamese water puppetry, which was invented by rice farmers long ago. Here is a depiction of a
king getting a sword back from the lake in Hanoi from a giant golden turtle. All around the town, women walk around selling stuff. Here is
how they carry their baskets. I had a stamp made for Rover the Bear. It was custom carved out of wood and has a picture of rover and his name on it. It took one day to get it and cost $2. Here I am with
the stampmaker.From Hanoi we headed east to Halong Bay. The scenery there was pretty nice. Here is a photo of
a boat similar to the one we were on. Here is our boat, flying the
Vietnamese flag. The base of each island
showed erosion. Here we are
chilling on the boat. The day we got there and the first night was Dara's birthday and we had a nice celebration with French wine and American whiskey. Her birthday cake was a cupcake with a red Buddhist prayer candle. We went back to look at the video just the other day, and it seems that something went wrong and it was over-recorded with footage of a not-very-exciting Jenga game. Not sure how it happened. But, we had a good time and met three English folks Alex, Albi and James, who we continued to see throughout Vietnam.
The next day was pretty hard. We did a two hour hike up to the top of Navy Peak. Paul has a great photo of the two of us sitting at the top. I think it is the worst photo I've ever taken.... I think I might be crying in it. Maybe I'll get a copy of it soon. The
view was nice, but no one was feeling very good and we didn't stay up there too long. Later that day, some people from the boat
went kayaking and we also went to see
a cave. Here is a
sunset shot from the last day.From Halong Bay, we went back to Hanoi for a few days and then headed south to Hue. We took an overnight bus and arrived about 50km short of Hue in the Demilitarized Zone, near the city of Dong Ha. Even though we were exhausted from the trip, we took a tour of the DMZ area. Most of the area had been hit hard during the war, but there were huge forests of rubber trees that had been planted. Also, they used to grow coffee there, but now the big crop is black peppercorns. It was pretty strange being American in Vietnam, but we didn't really have any problems, probably because we showed up with money. But, the DMZ tour was one of the harder things to hear about (the worst though was probably the war museum in Saigon, which was named "The American War Crimes Museum" up until a little while ago). Anyway, here is
Dara near some trees. We hiked up to a
US base and on the hike you could see canvas from sandbags and old
wrappers for rations. Then we saw
this bridge crossing the Ben Hai river. It was on this bridge that I remembered that my camera did black and white. Here are the
cables for the bridge. Here is
the two of us on the bridge. Here is a
house near the bridge. From there, we went and saw a US tank. Here I am
crouching on top of it, looking very American. Next, we went to the Vinh Moc tunnels. The Cu Chi tunnels, nears Saigon, are perhaps more famous, but the tunnels in Cu Chi had been destroyed and rebuilt, so seeing the Vinh Moc tunnels was nice since they are in their original state. Here is a
map of the tunnel system. Here is
Dara at the tunnel entrance and
again, inside the tunnels. Here is
a tunnel exit from inside, and
me sitting in a tunnel exit and a
view from that same exit. It was really hot inside and there was little air so it felt extremely uncomfortable, but it was a nice experience.
After the tunnels,
we had lunch.
So, that is the first half or so of our Vietnam trip. We have dinner plans so I have to finish later, but tomorrow we are heading from Siem Reap up in to Laos and there's no telling what kind of connectivity we'll have. We loved Laos so much that we regret not spending more time there, so we're going back. Anyway, until next time...
