Water puppetry, cheap beer and the 49ers in Hanoi

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Team,
A quick post without photos I'm afraid. As soon as we can we will provide graphic evidence that we are indeed where we say we are. Normally we would never try and pull this sort of a stunt, but the fact remains, we will likely be away from a computer for the next week.
We are in Hanoi, having arrived two days ago on the first, and will be leaving town tomorrow morning to chug around Ha Long Bay on a "superior junk." Thus far Vietnam has not failed to amaze; we have drank fifteen cent glasses of beer, seen Ho Chi Minh as he lies preserved in his mausoleum, learned just how difficult Vietnamese is after a two hour lesson, stared in amazement at traditional Vietnamese water puppets and revelled at the warbling, resonating sound of the amplified Vietnamese Dan Bau, a musical instrument which, until recently, only men were allowed to play.
I will be the first to admit that we have hardly spent any time here in Vietnam, but the fact remains; Katie and I love it here. There is an intersection here in Hanoi in the Old Quarter which has a beer stand on each corner selling Bia Hoy (fresh beer) for 3000 dong, or twenty cents. The people we have been able to communicate with are so incredibly friendly and helpful. This evening as we looked searchingly at a wall menu in Vietnamese a Hanoi-born reporter for the San Jose Mercury News approached us and told us to sit with his reporter comrades at their little plastic table along the street. They treated us to ice-cold plastic-wrapped towels and two Bia Hoys. He was adamant about the fact that the 49ers are the best, and who was I to disagree? After telling us that we were at a corner restaurant owned by the mafia, and that, while we were rookies in Vietnam we had stumbled onto a grand slam of a beer, he, his friends and his sports analogies took off. We left hungry shortly thereafter, as we couldn't cough up 1,600,000 dong for fried cakes of who knows what the chef was offering us, and shortly found ourselves seated in front of a sterno fired pan in which we fried anything and everything the new place's owner brought us. Incredible.
Little animosity has been directed our way, even though I have cruised around Hanoi, in my "Fargo the greatest city in the world" T-shirt twice. Our reporter friend summed it up well saying, "We forgive, but we do not forget." Thank goodness for that. At the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum we were firmly but calmly ushered/pushed into twos before we passed by the preserved president of Vietnam by white uniformed, heavily armed soldiers. At Ho's museum we were led to believe that there is absolutely nothing Uncle Ho wasn't good at, from textiles to farming to fighting to cooking. He was a trained chef. This afternoon we tried out vietnamese in a two hour lesson. It is unclear whether we will ever be able to pronounce the most common surname in Vietnam, Nguyen. We left clear on how to tell aggressive bike-taxi drivers, "No thank you," so the lessons were well worth it. Crossing the streets is by no means an easy feat for us westerners, but nor is it as harrowing as we have been led to believe. You just start walking, and keep walking, and before you know it you are on the other side of the street. Mopeds and taxis whizz around you, honking with their insistant and sometimes ululating horns, and yet time after time we emerge unscathed. Wild as it may sound, it seems like someone with their nose in a book or newspaper would be the most successful at crossing the street, as the mopeds seem to count on you walking at the same steady pace across the street, and manuever accordingly.
I currently have many million dong in my pocket. Our budget calls for roughly 666,000 dong a day. Tomorrow we will be sleeping on a superior junk. Giggles abound in Vietnam.
Talk to you all soon,
Tucker and Katie

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