High Highs and Low Lows

Our first day in Hanoi, we checked out of our room with the intention of taking a bus to Nin Binh, but our late departure and our hotel receptionist held us up just long enough to make traveling that day a waste of time. So, when a taxi was called for us, we took it to the train station instead and bought tickets on the local train to Sapa, where hilltribes are settled in the north. We went to the Temple of Literature, set up by a Vietnamese king in 1070 to honor Confucius and was soon after converted into Vietnam's first university. Here, stone turtles hold the names and birth places of 1306 men who were awarded doctorates from the triennial examinations held here at the Quốc Tử Giám ("Imperial Academy") between 1484 and 1780.

We had lunch at KOTO (*Know One, Teach One), a nearby non-profit restaurant that trains street kids in the culinary arts and helps them to get jobs all over Southeast Asia. Then, we caught a cab to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and spent the afternoon looking at model houses, costumes, tools and handicrafts of the various hilltribes and subcultures of the Vietnamese people. We managed to catch part of a water puppet show outside, which I'll elaborate on after I've seen a proper show tonight.

We tried to get to Hoan Kiem Lake to see Ngoc Son Temple before closing, but the rising taxi fare and traffic forced us to bail early, and we ended up at a Botanical Gardens park. We watched the runners with some amusement...a video alone could describe their unconventional dress and form. We saw a cage with peacocks and another with monkeys. At one point, we realized my sunglasses were no longer on my shirt, and we searched after them for a half hour in vain. A few tears (on my part) and a serious rest on a park bench brought us some perspective. We were tired and thirsty and frustrated...one of those times when you hit your limit but you're nowhere near any place that can make it better. So, we caught a cab to JoMa, a favorite cafe from our time in Luang Prabang, and stuffed our faces with milkshakes and pizza. We washed our feet and brushed our teeth in the restroom and drank all the free water we could get our hands on. We had carried our things with us, on our backs, all day long, and it was so nice just to sit away from the traffic and the people, if only for an hour.

After a hurried day of covering all the "must see" spots in Hanoi, we purchased sleeper train tickets to the northern city of Lao Cai, a border town with China. Our sleeper was a very tight fit, to say the least, and the Vietnamese family that shared the car with us was amused and a bit irritated that we would be joining them. Since the train left pretty late, we went straight to bed, but not before snapping some pictures of our cheap predicament.

Some time around 8 am, everyone started unloading, but no one mentioned which stop we were at. We have struggled here more than in any other region with communicating with the locals. Most often, no one attempts to help you, and they laugh when you ask questions and sometimes just walk away. It's a very frustrating cultural "lesson" to learn. Here, we caught a minibus into Sapa, and we held out on our lower rate of 30,000d when they threw prices like 150,000d at us - we were groggy and sleep-deprived, but we knew we were too stubborn to bend to their demands, and we got what we wanted.

The drive up takes about an hour and a half, and most of the way, we just gawked at the beauty outside the windows. The mountains were almost all cultivating rice, down steep slopes of the greenest green you've ever seen. We were blocked at times by massive water buffalo that sauntered along the skinny roads without much care for our schedule. We sped along, barely missing massive busses coming from the other direction, and never really sure which side of the road we were "supposed" to be driving on (they drive on the right side, like in the US, and like in Laos). Hilltribe women and children sat alongside the road in their colorful costumes - a preview of what we were sure to see in town.