Hit the ground running

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**sorry, spell check inoperative. bear with me**


After checking in and getting started we set out for the days activities. The traffic in vietnam is absolutely mad, and walking anywhere forces you to interact with it. Yes there are sidewalks, but these are primerily for motorbike parking and street stalls. The key when crossing (or walking in) the street seems to be to avoid eye contact (which would put responsibility for avboiding collision on you) and to maintain a straight line at a constant, predictable pace.

Our first stop is Hoa Loa prison (better known stateside as the Hanoi Hilton). Originaly built by the French as "Maison Centrale" according to te exhibits it was mostly used for the keeping and execution of political prisoners. The exhibits of the colonial era deal primarily with the heroics of the captives and the cruelty of their keepers. The tone changes predictably when when the focus moves on to what is refered to here as the "American War". We read the crime confessions of downed pilots with nary a mention of how they were obtained and watch a video which concludes with "truly the Americans were lucky to be such well taken care of guests of Vietnam and must be sad to leave". I wasn't expecting any better, but it is still discouraging.

We haven't eaten in a while, so the next stop is deinfately lunch. What better introduction to Vietnam than Pho from a roadside vendor? Recharged we go on to the Army Mueseum.

The Museum is chock full of artifacts from the French and American Wars with English and French descirptions but they get repetitive- wreckage of downed aircraft and an improbable number of single action rifles allegedly used to single handedly down jet fighters and strategic bombers. There are plenty of maps with red and blue arrows, but they seem to be the only thing not labeled in English, leaving the exhibits heavy on artifacts and light on context. Interstingly I found no mention of the Chinese or Cambodian wars and Bulgaria was mentioned 3 times, compared to the Soviet Union's 2 (and neither mention so much as implied military aid).

We spent the afternoon and early evening walking by street stals and arranging our onward booking. Out Timing could hardly have been work. This year Reunification Day and May Day were at te end of the week, creating a 4 day weekend. After looking around for a while we finaly found a seat on an overnight bus that would almost certainly be full for significantly more than we would have paid for a bed on an overnight train.We have much more luck booking our tour of Ha Long Bay. We opt to slurge for the opulent top of the line one onboard a newish luxury junk. At a cost of $139 for two days it will be more than our combined hotel bills for the entire trip.

It is getting late, so we go for dinner, again at a street stall. There is no menu and no English spoken here. We are given beer but are unsure of what the food situtation is. Just as we are getting restelss they bring us two steamy bowls of Pho. The total for two bottles of beer and two bowls of Pho is under $1.40. This causes confusion as we try to acertain it is in fact a total, and not the per person cost. We cap the nigt off with a Bia Hoi stop. Bia Hoi is beer without preservatives that is shipped out daily. Sellers simply stay open until they run out for the night. We watch a chaotic intersection from ground level (literaly- we are sitting on children's plastic chairs on the curb) while sipping cold 20 cent beer.

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Photos

sold out
this sotre was full of clothes hangers and naked manequins (sp?). Either they'd sold all their clothes or they were a supply store for clothes stores. hmmmm. prolly the later

Pho!
Big meal, small chair smaller price