The streets of Hanoi were positively swarming with motor scooters, and the sidewalk was their parking lot. There was nowhere to move. We followed the gutter, stepping around piles of garbage and food scraps from a thousand different restaurants. We ate at one of the nicer looking ones--an upscale place named Little Hanoi--and walked away satisfied.
Next day, we set out for our 3 day/2 night cruise in stunning Ha Long Bay, which was less than stunning for us since it was overcast the entire time. Despite the slightly disappointing state of our ship, we did our best to make the most of it. After a half days cruise, we kayaked around karst islands that rose up from the foggy bay. Hyangmi had never kayaked before, but performed remarkably well, applying the necessary force to keep our tandem craft from being broadsided by a cruise ship, when the time came. At sunset, I jumped from the top deck into the water, something our guide assured us "most people did" even though I was joined by only one other. After dark, they fired up the karaoke. Of course. What better setting for karaoke than afloat in a perfectly quiet bay, under a tranquil night sky? The bartender, who jumped at the opportunity to go first, took to the mic with all the seriousness of a professional performer. He was terrible. From the deck, we looked enviously at the other ships, which apparently all had DJ's and dance parties in full swing. Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, a Vietnamese-American woman we had met earlier--whose speaking voice and various speech impediments made everyone wince when she talked--began crooning a rendition of "Only You". Hyangmi and I just looked at eachother. We might have laughed, had our eardrums not been rupturing on four different levels. After the bartender slipped in a second song, Hyangmi showed them how it was done; belting out a Korean pop song--in tune--complete with improvised dance moves and flair. She did so completely sober.
Day two of our cruise brought us to Cat Ba Island, where we climbed a mountain. Our guide, a local woman named Jiang, did it in flipflops. Afterwards, we boated through a floating village on our way to Monkey Island. The monkeys were in good form, playing, hanging upside down, pulling eachother by the tail, and generally causing shit. The highlight came when a particularily brave monkey ventured out of the trees, snatched a 2 liter bottle of water from an Italian man and, impressively, hauled it to the top of a tree, where he proceeded to bite and smash it, before throwing the empty back down at some tourists. The message was clear enough: this was thier island, don't fuck with them.
Later, walking around Cat Ba town, we came across a man, with a crowbar in hand and thin rope tied around his waist, standing on the side of a cliff, prying rocks loose. Below him, not two meters from a pile of boulders that had accumulated at the cliff's base, a man smoked a cigarette and watched. This is how they were removing rock from a karst in order to make room for a new building. Typical Asia.
That night, in our hotel room on Cat Ba island, I discovered that Vietnamese television is excellent. This came as somewhat of a surprise, since Chinese TV was complete crap. In Vietnam, though, they have it figured out: HBO, MTV, Discovery channel, NatGeo, movie channels, CNN...I even came across an episode of The Wire, a show I've never before seen aired in Canada. Most impressive.
Another thing that's a lot better in Vietnam than China are the trains. Compared to the Chinese trains we'd been on, Vietnam's trains were downright luxurious. Big bunks, clean sheets, a door on the compartment, and, most importantly, Western toilets. Trains in China come equipped with only the squatter-type toilets, the sort that have no seat but a hole in the ground, and require you to take your pants off and remain in a squatting position until you are finished shitting and wiping, an almost impossibly difficult feat for all but the fittest, fastest and most well-balanced shitters, even on stable ground. But to have squatters on a train, something that is constantly lurching from side to side and grinding to abrupt halts, is nothing short of ridiculous. They might as well install toilets that spin at random, or ones that drop live snakes from the ceiling the minute you sit down. I became convinced that the bathrooms (if they can be called that) on Chinese trains all contained hidden cameras, which sent a live feed to some sick reality show in Japan, since Chinese TV would never air anything so entertaining as people trying to squat-shit on a moving train. Give thanks for your Western toliet, a bowl you can sit on, in privacy, and flush whatever needs to be flushed down it, for it is a rare and wonderful thing in this world, it really is.
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