It seems like just yesterday that we were dragging ourselves out of bed in Redmond and heading to Vancouver for our flight to Bali. Yet here we are, sitting in the Ho Chi Minh airport, waiting to board to go home. Where did the time go?

The feeling is bittersweet, as we miss family and friends, but staring out the hotel window one last time, the urge is strong to let the flight go without us. Life is simpler here, and while we live in bigger houses, drive nicer cars, and eat in fancier restaurants, maybe, just maybe, these cultures that have been around much longer than our own, know a few things we don’t.

The desire to try and fit in a day trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels faded last night, so this morning we just slept in (some of us more than others), finally leaving the hotel around 10 am. We have worked up the courage to try another massage, and find one a few blocks away that seems worth a try. There are no short skirts (Ang and I agree to disagree on whether this is a feature or a flaw) and the price is right – $7 for 75 minutes.

What we don’t know is whether we are in for another round of the dry rub, so are pleasantly surprised early in when it actually turns our to be a pretty good massage, restoring my faith that there are good massages to be had anywhere in Asia. Once again, we also learn that foot massage really means full body massage. Now that I found a place that seems legit, if I had one more day, I’d have to try the full body massage to see what that includes that this one doesn’t (at the last place, I had a pretty good idea).

Most people here like to ask questions, and besides the common “where are you from?” and “how many children?”, a popular one is “where are you staying?”. The goal of course is to determine how much money you might have, and because we’re never prepared with the name of some run-down backpacker hotel, when the masseuse asks the question, “Sheraton” automatically pops out. This seems innocuous enough, until it comes time to pay and they tell us the tip is extra.

OK, my bad, so I dig into my pocket and come up with about $1.25 for each (which isn’t really that much, but for a $7 bill is getting close to 20%). To that we get “oh, in Vietnam, tip bigger”, and “we only get tips, no pay.” Sheraton indeed. Back into the pocket for a 100,000 dong note (about $6), which we tell them they need to spilt (50,000 each). The try to milk us for one more, but we draw the line there, and leave disappointed that what was really a good experience ended up so tainted.

For our last meal in Asia, we decide to treat ourselves a little and have the Sunday Brunch. Its not really much different than we would get at a nice hotel back home, but its a nice change and should mean we can enjoy the flight home and not have to worry about pushing old ladies out of the aisle to get to the lavatory.

The inevitable question is “how did this trip compare to others you have taken?” Unfortunately, there is no better answer to this than “they are all different”. For pure relaxation, Thailand and Indonesia are tops. Malaysia had the best food. China the most history. For me, Vietnam remains a bit of an enigma, as we saw enough to really only know that there is much more to see. Having been to both the big cities, if we come back, I’d spend time in the mountains at Sa Pa and Dalat, as well as in the Mekong Delta and on the islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Three weeks sounds like such a long time when we plan these trips, but on the ground, it is only ever enough time to scratch the surface.

Back to the grind tomorrow, and the countdown begins all over again. We have some thoughts for next year, but who knows where we’ll end up.

Our last full day in Vietnam today, and fortunately, the weather was quite nice despite the forecast for more rain. By the time we have checked in with the kids and are leaving the hotel (around 10 am), it is already getting hot. By noon, we both have a good case of the sweats, that sunscreen only makes worse.

We have no set destinations, so mostly wander around the 1st district, where our hotel is. There are some art galleries nearby, so we look a bit through those of course, but that budget is already stretched a little thin, so we come away empty handed (so far anyway).

Around lunch time, we find ourselves near Reunification Palace, where the first North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates to mark the fall of Saigon. Apparently, everything has been left exactly as it was on that day in 1975, but we don’t get a chance to see inside as it’s closed until 1:00, and we’re not interested enough to stick around in the heat for an hour.

Fairly close by is the War Remnants Museum, so we figure we’ll give that a try. We haven’t gone out of our way to focus on the war sites while we’ve been here, but I think it would be interesting to see how the same events are interpreted from the Vietnamese perspective. This is not to be though either, as we arrive to find the museum is closed until 1:30.

Tired and overheated, we decide to just head back to the hotel for a break. I try to convince Ang to hire a motorbike taxi to take us, but she’s not up for riding sidesaddle, so we hoof it instead. The Chelsea – Barcelona game is on the TV, and while I don’t watch much soccer (little people being the exception), in an air conditioned room I find it pretty engaging.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We wandered the streets some more, and after walking a couple of miles looking for a restaurant for dinner, ended up about a half block from the hotel. The good news is that it is close to a bakery we found (and have hit a couple times already) so desert is only a few steps a way. We figured there would be more great bakeries like there were in China given the French influence, but they are actually few and far between.

Tomorrow evening we catch our flight back to Vancouver through Hong Kong, so are debating how best to spend it. There is a tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels that takes about 5 hours that is on the list, but sleeping in and doing a whole lot of nothing by the pool is running a very close second. Its hard to believe that by this time tomorrow Vietnam will be behind us. We are able to see that the weather is good in Seattle, so at least there won’t be any big shocks to the system.

We’re definitely in the home stretch now, as today we pack up for Ho Chi Minh City. In some ways, we feel like it is the end of our vacation since the hustle of the big city will feel too much like our normal, hectic lives. Aside from getting to the airport, our only destination today is My Son, some ruins from the Cham civilization that are about an hour from town.

We take special care checking the room before we leave, as the hotel has made very clear it frowns on items making their way into guests luggage. From the card left in our room:

We are very sorry to stick the notice down, it is due to damages and lost facilities which may occur. To restrict further missing, The Management would like to offer some quoted prices that our Guests will be charged directly to your personal account for any cause of missing.

Below that is a list of items and the prices they charge, including $4 for the door mat. I can’t decide which surprises me more, that a mat in Vietnam costs $4, or that they have a problem with the ugly things going missing in the first place.

With a few hours to kill before out car leaves for the ruins, we head back into the Old Town one last time. Of course, our plan is to have a last lunch at the Friendship Restaurant, but rounding the corner, we are devastated to find it closed for the national holiday. We settle on a different place a few doors down, but its just not the same.

According to our guide book, the best time to visit My Son is early morning or in the late afternoon as that is when the fewest tour groups are there. Given that, we’re a little nervous heading out there just after lunch, but the plan is to leave from there directly to the airport in Da Nang so its the time that works best. The weather is overcast with showers again, so we hope that keeps things at least a little quieter.

What we find when we arrive though, is that the place is almost deserted. There are only a few cars in the parking lot and not a single bus. As we walk through the ruins, there are times when we feel absolutely alone, which makes the experience that much more enjoyable. It rains off and on which is a bit of a pain, but you can buy plastic ponchos everywhere, so we take two for a dollar.

The ruins themselves date back to the 7th century, and regarded as one of the most important Hindu temple complexes in Southeast Asia. They took a bit of a beating during the Vietnam war (apparently the area around the complex is still has unexploded ordnance), and the jungle claimed back a fair number after the Viet people defeated the Cham, but like the Citadel in Hue, work is slowly under way to restore the site.

Finished with Hoi An, we head to the airport for our final flight. We arrive quite early and fortunately are able to change our tickets for an earlier departure (without a single fee or service charge!). This gets us into Ho Chi Minh City around 7:00, so by the time we get to the hotel and check in, it is still early enough to get out and see a bit of the city.

We’ve been told that Ho Chi Minh City is like Hanoi on steroids, with bigger streets holding even more motorbikes. Around our hotel it seems pretty controlled though, not much different than any other big city like Vancouver or Singapore. Part of that may be the holiday, as many people would have returned to their towns and villages, so we’ll get a better idea tomorrow and Sunday.

We went a little bit local today, renting bicycles for the day to get around Hoi An. A dollar doesn’t get you the sweetest ride out there, but the terrain is pretty flat so its not too bad. The biggest drawback is they are made Vietnamese size, so our legs are a little packed up, kind of like riding a bike in the circus. It definitely speeds things up though and the plan is to cover a fair amount of ground today.

Our first destination is China Beach, before the day gets too hot and also while there is still some blue in the sky (the forecast calls for rain). The ride ends up being about 10 km, which is further than our guide book says, but it gives us a good opportunity to get used to fitting into traffic where things are as busy. The general philosophy of just going where you want but doing it with conviction seems to hold as true for bicycles as it does for pedestrians, so we get the hang of it fairly quickly.

The beach itself is amazing. It is wide, white sand, and goes on for miles in either direction. There aren’t many beach hotels in Hoi An, so for the most part, the place is pretty deserted. There are a handful of restaurants, and the touts come flying across the beach like guided missiles as soon as they see you coming. There are also the obligatory trinket merchants, covered from head to toe to keep their skin from getting dark, even though it is over 90 degrees. We pick up one small gift and then pack up to head back to town.

Given that we are a little more mobile, we get away from the main tourist part of town and bike into some of the residential neighborhoods. On streets full of stores and restaurants, its sometimes easy to forget how much poorer countries like this are than our own, but seeing where they live reinforces how good we have it. Despite all that, the people always appear happy, with the little kids screaming hello and waving whenever we ride by.

Today is the start of the big national holiday, and as we return to town, we find it is much more crowded than yesterday. Fortunately, I have a cool bell on my handlebars so I can let people know they best get out of my way (in their wise judgement, the rental folks apparently determined Ang wasn’t worthy of this responsibility as she has no such bell), particularly around lunch and dinner time when we set out for our favorite restaurant.

Otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful day here. The rains came off and on, so we were able to break for a few hours in the afternoon, and then finish up finding a few final items at the market. If the weather is okay tomorrow (the forecast doesn’t look promising once again), we plan on driving out to see the ruins at My Son before going to the airport for our flight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). We’ll be thankful to finish up our last domestic flight as we have accumulated a fair amount of luggage the past weeks.

We’re on the move pretty much every other day now, so nothing out of the ordinary to be up early for some more travel. The hotel we’re staying at in Hue doesn’t exactly meet Westin standards, but for $40, its quite nice and includes breakfast. This is the high point because it includes all the Wagon Wheels you can eat. For non-Canadians, these are like Moonpies in the US, and were the high point of any brown bag lunch in elementary school. I haven’t seen a Wagon Wheel in twenty years, so its hard to resist one now.

We leave Hue around 8:30 in transportation much more comfortable than the Halong Bay bus. We’re getting a little smarter ever year we come here, and this time, instead of just reserving a car, we also had them show us the actual one we would be riding in. The certainty cost an extra five dollars, but seemed worth it to not have a rusted out old pick up with chickens in the back pull up to the front door.

The drive from Hue to Hoi An takes about four hours (there is a shorter route, but we opt to go over the mountains and along the coast) through scenery far closer to what I had in mind of Vietnam before I got here. There are plenty of rice paddies and the occasional small village that, so far, hasn’t been overrun with new construction. Compared to Hanoi and Hue, its like stepping back in time, and even Lionel Richie signing Hello on the car stereo seems a little avant-garde.

As we near Hoi An, we pass through Da Nang and can see first hand how popular Vietnam is becoming as a tourist destination. Da Nang sits on part of the 20 mile long China Beach and is being heavily developed as a world-class resort. In one continuous strip, we see six mega-hotels going up including a Hyatt, a Crowne Plaza, and a Raffles. The economy has likely slowed things down a bit, but clearly Vietnam ten years from now will be quite a bit different than it is today.

In Hoi An, we found a hotel that is right on the river across from the Old Quarter. If we do decide to check out the beach, it is about 3 km away on a shuttle bus, but with overcast skies and periodic rain, that doesn’t look promising. The Old Town is what we’ve come to see anyway, as anyone who has recommended Hoi An says it is the place to be. In many respects, it is like the street we stayed on in Hue, but goes on for blocks in every direction. Most of the streets are closed to cars and motorbikes, which makes it that much more pleasant to walk around.

As we wander through the market, we are approached by young girl who speaks reasonably good english and asks us to come and see her mother’s clothing shop, where, of course, they have “very good prices”. Of course this is a scam, but my big-hearted traveling companion soon has us engaged in conversation with her and her friend, who surprisingly also has a shop, where they do foot massage. Now, I figured we learned our lesson in about massages in Hanoi, but apparently not, as soon we are weaving through the market stalls, headed for Dao’s place.

The good news is that when we arrive, the place is very open air, so likely not a “special menu” kind of outfit. The bad news, is that it’s actually just a 6′ x 6′ stall in the market where they normally sell silk scarves, but clear some space to put down a small plastic chair and stool for massage customers. Trying to repay the kindness Ang showed me with the smoothie, I offer to pass on this one and just let her treat herself, but she talks me into staying so they shuffle a few more things and squeeze in another chair.

Something about this whole setup rubs one of the nearby vendors the wrong way, as she goes off on a tirade, screaming in Vietnamese while doing laps around our small section of the market. The space in front of our stall quickly fills up with other vendors who have come to see the two, big pasty tourists crammed into this tiny space (I can’t even straighten my leg out) who have caused such a fuss. Without understanding a word of why or how, we find ourselves in the middle of an international incident, but emerging unscathed (and with happier feet), we move on in search of dinner.

In general, the food in Vietnam has been good, but it was definitely one of the things I was looking forward to when we came here, so felt a little let down that it wasn’t great (the food on the boat being the exception). In Hoi An though, we hit the mother lode. Our lunch was so good that, after looking at a few other restaurants, we decide there’s no point risking it, and go back again for dinner. We’ll see what happens tomorrow, but I’m guessing this won’t be the last time earlier.

With the early start, it’s been a fairly long day, so we head back to the hotel, where hopefully we’ll get some internet to check email and catch up on a bit of work. We are keeping our fingers crossed that things will clear up tomorrow since our time is short here and still a few things we’d like to see.

Since I left our arrival in Hue out of yesterday’s post, let me start there. The city (at least the part where we are staying) is pretty much everything Hanoi was not – namely quiet, and not very crowded. As we arrived quite late, we stay fairly close to the hotel, but the streets are full of stores and restaurants, and we can pretty much walk wherever we want since motorbikes and cars are few and far between. We find a good Indian restaurant just a few doors down, so have a nice dinner there before turning in for the night.

Today is the only actual day that we have set aside to see Hue. From all we have been able to gather from those that have been here before us, it is a very nice city, but with only a few must do items. Given that, we plan on cramming as much as we can into about 12 hours, and then hit the road again tomorrow to Hoi An.

Like Hanoi, there are cyclos everywhere, and we decide to take a driver (two actually, as while the seats may accommodate two Vietnamese, they only hold one North American) up on his offer to pedal us around for 5 hours for the princely sum of $5. It turns out to be a pretty comfortable way to travel and let’s us cover ground quite a bit quicker than we could on foot. Knowing how the kids like to ride bikes, I get the mental image of them taking me to work while I read the paper. Can’t imagine why they would object.

Hue is the old capital from when Emperors still ruled Vietnam, and from that time, the most notable sight is the Citadel – the walled compound where the Emperor and his court lived. Most of it is gone now, due in large part to bombing from the Vietnam War (or the American War as they refer to it here), but work is underway to rebuild it. Based on the number of workers on site, less those that were laying down sleeping, the project looks to be on schedule for completion in about 400 years.

We also see one of the old Pagodas on the edge of town and spend a little time at the central market. Both are good, but after 4 years of traveling to Asia, we find one temple blurring into the next and the cramped stalls of hanging carcasses less and less novel. The lady cutting her toenails right next to the food she was selling was a bit of a new twist though.

By the end of the “tour” we are pretty beat, so head back to the hotel for a break. We forgot the sunscreen in the morning, so a paying the price a little for that. It was mostly overcast, but the sun poked through enough to burn my nose, and I look a little like Toucan Sam as a result.

Once things cooled off a bit, we headed back out for a walk and to find some street snacks. The fruit smoothie stand seemed promising, so we pointed at a few things that looked good and let them go to work. The recipe looked pretty simple, as everything we picked just went into a dirty blender. To that, they added a shot of water from an old Tupperware jug. Ang’s eyes grew two sizes at that, so when they asked about ice, she tried to wave them off. But you can’t get a little a bit pregnant, and since the water was already in, the ice wasn’t going to do any more damage. All this they pour into a plastic bag and snap a rubber band around the top to keep it shut.

On an unrelated note, Ang is learning to be a really good sharer this trip, and she let me drink most of the smoothie.

The one stop we didn’t get to make was the royal tombs outside of town. If we had one more day here, there is a boat you can take down the river to see them. But we’re a little too beat to try and cram such a trip into the late afternoon, so add it to the list of things to see if our travels bring us this way again. Same for the DMZ and Khe Sanh, which are about an hour out of town.

We make arrangements through our hotel for a car to take us to Hoi An in the morning (a three hour drive or so), and head off for dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant across the street. We’re definitely in the home stretch now, and in many ways, Sunday is coming much too quickly (although we are both very anxious to see the boys).

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Well, that may be overstating it just a little, but like all good dichotomies – yin and yang, good and evil, East Coast rap and West Coast rap – today was a day of juxtapositions (and big words it seems). It started off much as yesterday ended, comfortably laid out on the deck of the White Dolphin without a soul around to ruin the moment.

Our crew has grown by one, as late in the evening a small group of staff from a nearby boat came on board for some drinks, leaving behind a young lady when they returned. We speculate that she is the girlfriend of one of the crew on our boat dropping in for a little late night bible reading, but we never find out for sure. Nevertheless, she is still with us when I wake up and has put together a table full of overpriced souvenirs, anxiously awaiting my trusty sidekick (who, to her credit, doesn’t buy a single thing). A short time later, another boat from the same company rafts onto ours, and just like that, our new crew member is gone.

In the exchange, we do get one of our burning questions answered, as the family on the second boat is from Australia, and, as it turns out, they have been talking about their next vacation being to Mexico. Go figure. The rest of the morning we spend slowly cruising back to port, enjoying the solitude and adding yet more pictures to our collection (I think we have taken more photos in the last two days that we did in the preceding two weeks), including Ang’s best impression of Kate Winslet.

We finish our boat trip with a nice lunch (fresh seafood for the most part, which is great for me, not so good for Ang) before dropping anchor back at port.

Fast forward 30 minutes, and we find ourselves crammed back into the minibus for the return drive to Hanoi, this time so full the luggage is wedged in every open pocket to get it all in. Our flight to Hue leaves a 5:45, so we have quickly shifted from a state of total relaxation, to one of anxiety, wondering if we will make it to the airport on time. Assuming we don’t go any slower than we did on the inbound trip, we will be cutting it close, but should make it. That knowledge does little to keep me from wanting to grab the wheel every time the driver falls in behind a dump truck going 30 km/h.

The drive itself is pretty uninspiring. Once out of the big cities, I expected to see lush countryside, with acres of rice paddies, like we have in Thailand and Indonesia. At least between Hanoi and Halong Bay though, it is mostly just a series of buildings, fairly equally split between residential, commercial and industrial. They hug the road, rarely more than a few layers deep, rather than clustered together in villages and towns. It’s interesting to see the style of construction, but all in all, it makes for a pretty dull landscape, adding to the monotony of the trip.

The good news is that we do make better time, and a little under four hours later, we are scrambling to unload our bags from the bus and into a cab for the drive to the airport. As we get to the outskirts of Hanoi, we finally start to breathe a bit easier, comfortable that we’ll make our flight to Hue and the next stop on our journey (and since talking about it here would be three cities, ruining my clever title, I will leave it until tomorrow).

The wake up call comes pretty early this morning, so much so that I contemplate ordering a coffee at breakfast (and I never drink coffee). While this is mostly because I am having trouble keeping my eyelids open, I have also read that the Vietnamese make a mean coffee. I manage to make it through without though, and am even on time for our bus pick up. Unable to think of many things better than being in a van full of people I don’t know, I am looking forward to the next four and a half hours.

It is the slow season right now at Halong Bay, but even so, the harbor is full of boats, all built to look like Chinese junks. We know that none of the people we rode up with are on our boat, but we are very surprised when we board to find out that we are the only passengers. In seems the travel gods are one again out to spite me, as this will only make it more difficult in the future to get Ang on a regular boat.

The White Dolphin is about 80 feet long, with a crew of 5. They say that the boat is new, but in practice I think that just means some new cabins built on an old hull. Either way, it is still pretty luxe accommodation for what we paid (about $120 each for two days, four meals, transportation, and entry to the two islands we will stop off on). The room is air conditioned, with its own bathroom (not that it really matters in retrospect since there is no one else here), hot water shower and two-person jacuzzi tub. It’s as over the top as anything we have experienced (total boondoggle), and its hard not to reflect a bit on just how lucky we are in life.

We have lunch (a five course affair) on the way to our first stop, which is a huge cave carved out of one of the limestone islands that populate the bay (the thousands of small islands are what Halong Bay is famous for and the scenery is unlike anything we have ever seen). The air in the harbor is pretty smoggy, but gets clearer the further we get into the bay. Even so, visibility is never great, and we feel like we are missing some of the experience that you would get on a clear day. We have taken dozens of pictures, knowing that when we get home and look through them we’ll wonder why since they won’t possibly do them justice.

The cave is fairly interesting, in large part because it is so massive. There are all kinds of stalactites and stalagmites, which have been enhanced with the placement of different colored spotlights (it sounds pretty cheesy, but in practice seems to work). The guide points out all kinds of formations they have named for things they resemble like dragons and buddhas, and this adds a bit of extra flavor, but the experience would be just just as impressive without them.

We make a second stop on a nearby island where you can climb to the top for a view that on a clear day would be spectacular. It’s still pretty good today so another dozen or so photos get added to the collection. Afterwards, the boat sets anchor and we swim around a bit in the ocean while the cook prepares dinner (six courses this time, with much of the food bought fresh from the armada of small rowboats circling the bay selling all manner of things).

As night falls, the sea gets very calm and we can see the lights of all the nearby boats. It is a very relaxing setting, and its hard not to just melt into a deck chair and watch the world go by.

Our last day in Hanoi and we’re off to a little less than auspicious start. In general, we’ve been quite good about getting out of the hotel room in the morning, but today it just wasn’t meant to be. By the time we talked to the kids, booked some airline tickets to Hue, and got ready, it was quickly creeping up on 11 o’clock. We argue a bit with the front desk since we have prepaid for breakfast, but they close the restaurant at 10:30 to change over for lunch and say they can’t cook us anything. By the time we give up and grab a cab, it is close to 11:30.

By starting late, we skip seeing Ho Chi Minh, as you have to be there by ten to get in. Since we also missed Mao Tse Tung in China, we are quickly running out of waxy, dead people to look at. Lenin is another possibility I suppose, but no plans to travel to Russia any time soon.

Instead we head back to the Old Quarter to look at a few of the paintings we saw yesterday. We’ve narrowed the list of favorites to just 3 or 4, but unfortunately, they are at three different galleries, so hard to compare. We also stop to buy a couple of knock-off backpacks (either that, or North Face is having a really big sale in Vietnam), for some unknown reason choosing to do this early in the day instead of on the way back to the hotel, ensuring that for the rest of the afternoon I have to walk around with a big empty pack on my back.

The other big mission for the day is to book our trip to Halong Bay and figure out how were going to get to Saigon in time for our return flight. There are literally dozens of travel agencies, and each seems to have its own mix of boats they represent, making it difficult to determine which is the right choice. This process we drag out until after 8 in the evening, finally settling on a 2 day, 1 night trip on what they call a 4 star boat (I let Ang flip a coin between that and a cheaper 3 star boat, and while she denies it, the “toss” looked more like a flop, with the outcome somewhat predetermined). In practice though, it actually works out better, as we get back to Hanoi a little bit earlier and are already cutting it very close for our flight to Hue.

We also have the same agent book some tickets from Da Nang to Saigon, as we are a little nervous that if we wait any longer, we won’t be able to get any at all. Unfortunately, the only ones we can get are on the night of the 1st, so it turns out we will be spending a few days in Saigon, where the original plan was just to fly in the same day our flight left to Vancouver. It also means a little less time than we hoped for in Hoi An, but I think there will still be enough to see what we wanted to see (albeit in a bit more rushed fashion).

With all the planning out of the way, we resign ourselves to the fact that it’s too late to really see the French Quarter, so skip that and head back to the last gallery to buy our picture. That mission accomplished, our day is pretty much complete, so we grab a couple of gyro/french bread sandwiches and head back to the hotel. Our bus to Halong Bay is picking us up at 7:45 in the morning, so definitely no sleeping in tomorrow.

For us, Hanoi is like a splash of very cold water in the face. The time in Bali/Lombok was so laid back that we kind of slipped into a bit of lazy island lifestyle. This is MUCH different. The city is hectic, noisy, and constantly on the move.

Because we only have two days here, I am anxious to get out the door fairly early, much to Ang’s chagrin. She is a good sport today though, so we actually headed out at a pretty reasonable hour, with the goal of stopping at the gallery our hotel told us about, and then just wandering around the Old Quarter of the city.

The Old Quarter is the original heart of Hanoi, dating back over 1,000 years, and is still the center of activity for shops, markets, and restaurants. The layout has no rhyme nor reason, so we spend most of the morning weaving around the warren of streets, getting lost once or twice, but not too far off the beaten path, and I find that whenever I stop for a beer at a sidewalk cafe, it does wonders for my map reading skills.

The other challenge that took a little getting used to is simply crossing the street. There are very few traffic lights here and traffic itself is a constantly flowing mass of motorbikes and cyclos (bicycles with a seat in front of the tire that serve as short distance taxis), so waiting for a clear spot to cross is basically pointless. Instead, we learn from watching the locals that the trick is too just start walking, and as long as you keep a consistent pace, the drivers will adjust and part around you like the Red Sea.

In between shops and galleries, we sample a wide range of different street foods. Some we recognize, like Pho, spring rolls and doughnuts, but a whole lot we don’t. Fortunately, even the strange looking ones don’t taste that bad, and by the end of the day we’re still going strong, so nothing seemed to make us sick. There is a local beer we have read about that sells for about 15 cents a glass (it is unpasteurized and only lasts a day so they price it low to make sure it sells out) that seems like it would make a good pairing for a skewer of unknown meat, but so far I haven’t found a good place to try it yet.

Towards dinner the heat and noise are starting to wear down my trusty sidekick, who is looking for the first opportunity to get back to the solitude of the Sheraton. As I wanted to see the night market before calling it a day, I bribe her with promise of a foot massage. This turns out to be easier said than done, as unlike Thailand or Indonesia, finding a massage place actually proves very difficult. We finally find a hotel that advertises a spa on the second floor, so pop in there and settle in for some pampering.

What we end up with is easily the world’s worst massage. The two ladies show up in very short skirts, and while this doesn’t really bother me, we start to wonder if this might be one of those other kinds of massage parlors. Our suspicions are only heightened when a foot massage really turns out to be a “dealer’s choice”, with some rubbing of the feet, a lot of work on the knee, a bit of arm and hand, and finally some face for good measure. It seems that when we didn’t start the session asking for the “specy specy” menu, they didn’t really know what to do, so ended up throwing together whatever came to mind and running out the clock.

By the end of the hour, my “masseuse” is behind me in the chair with my head laid back against her chest, rubbing my head and shoulders. I struggle to remember the last time I was in a similar position, but figure it must have been somewhere like Las Vegas, and probably cost a whole lot more than $7. As strange as it seems, my description here only scratches the surface, so for anyone interested, feel free to ask about the Frank Costanza, the dry rub, or the Chinese noodle when we get back.

Back out on the street, and desperately digging through our bag for the Purell, we find the night market open and wander a bit through the stalls. We also find a few new foods to try, including a great sandwich they make with a small loaf of french bread and gyro meat. At about 70 cents each, they prove to be one of our favorite finds.

By 10pm, we are pretty beat, so finally call it a day and jump in a cab back to the hotel. Tomorrow we have no specific plans, but have talked about stopping into see the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh and visiting the French Quarter. We also need to make some travel plans for Halong Bay and also flights to Da Nang and Saigon. We have come to learn that next Friday is the start of a very big national holiday, so most flights are already booked. Since we fly out of Saigon, its not really optional that we get there, meaning the only question is whether we can scrounge up a flight or get stuck with 30 hours on the chicken bus.