Hanoi Proper, Vietnam

...and still diarrhea-free!

This city has a lot of rules, and a lot of signs. Big, red, Vietnamese signs. In most cases, the signs instruct you not to proceed forward. Chances are, if you're close enough to read the signs, you're already dong something wrong.

The multitude of guardsmen with automatic rifles and banana clips serve as a friendly reminder that there are repercussions for legal infractions.

The best-guarded national treasure is the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, or as the children of Hanoi address him, "Uncle Ho". His body is embalmed and openly displayed in glass within his mausoleum. He looked peaceful - as we walked along the velvet ropes surrounding his glass casket, he seemed to move his hand!

Well, actually, this was only due to accidental flaws in the thickness of the glass, changing the index of refraction. Guess you had to be there. No pictures allowed; x-ray scanners, metal detectors, and armed guardsmen yelling at you to keep your hands in plain sight made it nigh impossible to get a candid snapshot of Uncle Ho.

We also attended a traditional Vietnamese water-puppet-show. Yeah, we paid to watch an aquatic puppetry performance - you got a problem with that? What a gas. The live music to which the puppets danced was well-composed and performed, and the puppets were maneuvered in whimsical, munchkin-like gestures (they even included some simple pyrotechnics) that had us laughing the majority of the performance. The rest of the audience chuckled too, so we weren't blatantly mocking their traditional culture.

On our last Vietnamese morning, we dined at a joint that served Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup, a popular winter dish in our household), which completed our Vietnamese cuisine experience, in our opinion.

Now we jet off to Laos with the Axners in a propeller jet - no napping here.

'Nam

Our guide, Mr. Tinh ("Ting") met us at the Hanoi airport to expedite our visa service. The fifteen minutes we spent separated from our passports seemed an eternity, but we really appreciated having a native to help us through the immigration bureaucracy, for a change.

We ran into two bums in our hotel that looked and smelled a lot like the Axners from Minneapolis, so we agreed to travel with them for the next twelve nights. We walked through the "Old Quarter," a district full of native markets, motor scooters, and colorful refuse in the gutters.

The next morning, we drove three hours with Tinh through rice fields to Ha Long Bay, stopping at an embroidery factory to see the craft in action. Of course, we walked out with some lovely examples of the artwork, too.

Ha Long Ba looks like some "Lost World," with densely-forested peaks jutting out of the saltwater into the foggy, cool, air.

We're spending three days on a "junk boat" - it can house twelve passengers, but for three days, it's just the four of us and five attendants (three cooks, a navigator, and an English-speaking guide).

Each meal is several courses of rich, fried, seafood, artfully-presented cucumbers, and some of the freshest rice we've ever had. Thus far, we've kayaked to a floating school and to a quiet bay, and we've crawled through two seaside caves. In these mountainous islands, they predict that there are over 140 undiscovered caverns.

The coffee is not to be missed - rich and almost chocolaty, with dollops of condensed milk lumped at the bottom of the mug. Stir vigorously and enjoy the tastiest eye-opener in Southeast Asia.

The weather for the entirety of our cruise has been a bit overcast, but it only adds to the mystical ambiance of the Ha Long region.