in Hanoi . . .

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SO Trish and I have arrived in vietnam - the country which only opened its doors to tourism in the late 80s - with a little cultural shock, a little overwhelmed by the abundance of motorsays and having to head into the mob of the them just to cross the street. but other than a few minor details here and there about us having relatively little clue about vietnam compared to what we know about thailand, things are going well.
We headed out monday morning to halong bay, spent the afternoon and early evening on a boat around the islands and eventually made it to Cat Ba island where we spent the night in a pretty nice hotel. It was chilly and foggy but generally enjoyable. The islands were enough to make me relax and we met lots of nice people, some traveling for years.
We headed back to Hanoi this morning and are looking to spend the day here tomorrow heading out tomorrow night for Hoi An or something around that area.
We're trying to get a grasp of Vietnam and all is has to offer and wrap our heads around communism, but it's only been a few days so not much to report yet.The traffic in Hanoi is absolutely insane, much more insane than in Thailand and we've basically got to walk out into a swarm just to cross the street and they honk constantly; constantly being an understatement. I swear, some just drive with their hands on the horn. Most of the houses are a definite style than in Thailand, tall and skinny with french, maybe, looks to them. Also, I definitely thought the Vietnamese writing would use script like Thai, but it uses the Roman alphabet, with a lot of accents and stuff and their language is also tonal. We're staying in the Old Quarter of the city right not; it has 36 streets each specializing in a certain good. For example, there's a shoe, blacksmith, drum, salt, leather, fishermen, china bowls everything street. but i guess recently it's all sort of combining and isn't as distinctable.
I don't know quite what else to say about Vietnam just yet, I'm still trying to figure it all out; it's definitely not Thailand, some i'm a bit at a loss; but it'll be interesing to see how it goes and how things turn out.

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