Dispatch #16: Organized Chaos

First things first: I love Vietnam.

We've spent the past four days in Hanoi and Halong Bay and I'm smitten. Halong Bay is easily one of the most remarkably beautiful places I've been. We took a junk boat from Halong City into the bay and then explored a huge cave, kayaked, swam and hiked around and on the limestone islands.

And Hanoi? Crazy, but in a way that is not at all overwhelming or frenetic like Bangkok. The traffic is terrifying, but we've slowly become adept at stepping into the street and trusting that the hoardes of motorbikes will simply stream around us (rather than killing us, which is what four girls used to walk signals would expect). We're staying in the Old Quarter and on most of the corners there are bars selling draght beers (bia hoi) for what we've calculated to be 12.5 cents a glass. One of the guidebooks described beer as the "new tea" in Vietnam and considering the number of people nursing a glass right now (it's 9am), that seems about right.

If you have a few minutes, google the Ho Chi Minh Museum. We went there the first day and it's now my favorite museum, ever (yes, it beats out the Spam Museum). We also saw HCM's embalmed body this weekend. Bizarre.

Early each morning, loudspeakers blast what I'm assuming to be government announcements into the streets and that's kind of annoying. Aside from that (and really, it's a communist country, so the announcements shouldn't be a huge surprise), I really love it here.