total dork

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Please excuse me for geeking out, but here are some fun facts I learned yesterday:

Only 2-3% of the pop. here is over age 62, b/c of the war.

houses are built vertically b/c they are taxed on the width

government tried to cancel our conference b/c they are having their party congress next month and were worried academics from foreign lands would rabble rouse. As it was, they disallowed vietnamese students from attending

I observed to someone that the practice of having a plate of greens to mix with each bite of food reminded me of Azerbadjan and Armenian/Georgian food there, and that person said that the silk route would have included Vietnam and places around Azerbadjan and so the practice might be a shared one.

Most of the country is Buddhist but the chinese looking graveyards I saw on the road are indeed, Chinese.

Where I was -- halong bay, is only a hop/skip/jump from China. In fact, part of the bay is part of china and they are building a bridge to china. This is not to be confused with digging to China, which we did when we were kids.

Otherwise, had this luxurious boat ride/lunch around the bay, which has about 800 rock islands that just straight into the air, with this academic from Australia who has been in charge of building an eco museum, which means an "open air" museum in the bay, basically protecting it and its islands. There are "floating villages" which are these floating houses, literally, that the fisher families live on. He got them to institute a law that all the tourist boats have to pay a fee which goes to the fisher communities. So it's all very PC and cool, and was fantastically beautiful. Photos later, hopefully.

Then back to Hanoi. Dinner at this place specializing in north hill country food, which supposedly includes camel meatballs w/mustard, pig testicles, snake head soup. hmmm...

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