Hanoi

Happy New Year one and all--We spent the New Year on Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay. It was a lovely place and a great place to relax and cap off our 3 day tour at this amazing World Heritage site. Jesse and I rented a motorbike for US $5 to explore and hopefully he'll tell you about that in his next update. We all had 60min. massages which cost US$10--imagine! Jesse and I were laughing so hard because they had us put on a little set of cotton shorts and a wrap jacket and I have to say we looked pretty--deer in the headlights! prancing up the steps to our little chambre de massage. Anyway---after the boys played more soccer on the beach with some Brits', we took the hydrophoil boat back to Haiphong which is the third largest city in Vietnam and then got into our little bus back to smoggy Hanoi. I noticed the air change immediately. I was surprised to see trash and plastic bags burning on the sides of the road, disappointed for the planet and helpless to imagine the Vietnamese making any progress with this in the near future. The classic scenes of everyone on a motorbike, zooming around prevails. They don't drive fast, there's just a lot of folks on the road! Coming into Hanoi was complete sensory overload and chaos, but no one seemed to be stressed out about anything--it's just the way it is. Jesse was a bit freaked by the stimulation navigating th streets and  I think and has had some very interesting things to say about it. A woman in Haiphong approached us to buy 8 postcards in a package and I wasn't interested in buying them at that point--she was persistent--petite, one bad eye--poor. Later on the bus, Jesse said--"Mom, you know you should buy a few things from these people when they ask you, I think they really need it and we could help them". I told him they were nice postcards and I wish I'd gotten a few and he was right we should try to do that. Dinner of Pho was intensely delicious and flavorful. Today we explore Hoi Kiem Lake adjust to this very different and wonderful place.