the journey begins...

---

hello from Hanoi. We've been in Hanoi, the last few days. Hanoi combines the Vietnamese and the French, quite different for us. We're staying in the old quarter, narrow streets,motorbikes, small shops. Like in China, similar shops group together, so there's a shoe street, a lock street and even a street specializing in items for home alters. A fair number of museums and monuments tell how Viet Nam first pushed out the French and then the Americans (what we call the Viet Nam War they call the American War). It's interesting learning about the war from their perspective.

Viet Nam's Communist government is letting Capitalism take hold. This is clear at the local, or street, level. They appear to us to be about 10-15 years behind China in opening up their economy and thus things hear somewhat resemble China when we lived there. The people are very nice and generally seem to have the view that they should concentrate on the present and the future, leaving the recent wars as something to be forgotten. We've been doing a lot of walking and exploring.

We love wandering the streets,watching a woman fruit seller (two baskets on a stick over the shoulders) push her fruit on the woman manager of the modern tea shop we were in...or folks unloading red wooden furniture parts for their shop late at night (only time you can get a van down the street, if you have a van)...Hanoi is relatively dark at night, except for right downtown, and low to the ground for a major city. On the major highway to town, vendors ride motorbikes loaded with onions and flowers for the morning markets.
lots of pics to come but we have not yet got the hang of all the gadgets!

---