Gooood morning, Vietnam!

It's almost 10 pm here, but I couldn't resist the title. I should also note that it's International Women's Day here in Vietnam. They have two per year. Our guide was surprised that we don't have one in the US. We told him the closest thing to it must be our Mother's day. If any of our male relatives were here, including brothers, they would need to buy us flowers or take us out for karaoke. We'll let them make it up to us by doing that when we return to the States.

We've been so busy on days 1-5 that it took us awhile to get to this. It also took awhile to get to a hotel with a free business center, although Wifi is fairly prevalent. First off, no, the typhoon isn't expected to hit here. No, we aren't in central Vietnam where the floods are. And no, we aren't getting close to any borders we shouldn't.

The flight over here was looooong. We each dealt with it in our own way, although we all ate the two dinners. For Stephanie, that meant lots of activity, like 3 movies, 1 short feature, and about 6 hours of sleep. For Moira, there was a lot of playing of bejeweled, a couple of magazines and 7 hours of sleep (guess Ambien works better for her). For Cindy, it was 3 magazines, a little Bejeweled, a movie and about 6 hours of sleep. And last but not least, Lallande, although the busiest of all of us with 2 movies, 1 magazine, a few chapters in her book and endless games of Bookworm, never left her seat once during the 14+ hours in the air. She swears, however, that she practiced seat yoga to avoid any dangerous blood clots.

Hanoi (Sunday)
The trip started, really, in Hanoi. We quickly learned that everyone has a motorbike and they are all on the street at the same time. We also learned that rain came come anytime in Hanoi and it hit us right as we were starting to go out (but at least it's warm rain!). Along with our guide, Phuong, we hit these site our first day: The Ho Chi Minh Mauseleoum (spelled wrong, I know), the Presidential Palace, the Ho Chi Minh stilt house (which we all thought was pretty cool), the Temple of Literature, a few temples and pagodas, the lake where John McCain's plane was shot down, the water puppet theater, the Hanoi Hilton (the prison of course) and a crazy rickshaw ride through the Old French Quarter.

But enough with the touristy stuff, here is what we learned:

• You can fit an entire family on a motorbike. We've seen up to 5. And texting while driving isn't uncommon.
• In terms of traffic lights, green means go...yellow means slow...red is a freakin' free for all.
• Invest in plastics in Vietnam. Everyone has little plastic chairs and stools which sit out in front of their store fronts.
• Don't faint at the ATM when you withdraw a million dong. And more importantly, don't look to Stephanie for conversion advice. She gave Cindy a heart attack when she told her there were 1,900 dong to the dollar and Cindy thought withdrew $5000 by mistake. Stephanie's response, "Oh, that was in Seoul!" Note: there are about 20,000 dong to the dollar, so a million is about $50. We are walking around like millionaires here.
• We felt like high rollers when we spent 5.2 million for dinner at Restaurant Bobby Chin.
• The people water puppets are kind of like the Chucky doll in the movies...a bit creepy. We much preferred the animals. And those people who do the shows must have incredible upper body strength. But we wouldn't want to stand in that nasty, waist deep water all day.
• You can buy anything on the street, from food to lottery tickets.
• A rickshaw ride is sensory overload.
• What is considered a "long" cab ride (15-20 minutes) is about $4 US. Why can't we get this same type of bargain in NYC?
• Dragon fruit is our new favorite. Maybe we could make a side business of exporting this into the US.
• The four sacred animals are the turtle, the dragon, the phoenix and the unicorn.
• What we call the Vietnam War is referred to as the American war here.
• Ho Chi Minh is everywhere. He's like Ataturk in Turkey.

Halong Bay (Monday and Tuesday): UNESCO World Heritage Site #1 of the trip

After our busy day in Hanoi, we set off with our driver and guide to Halong Bay, a three hour drive (or so) north. On this drive, we learned that a motorbike can transport just about anything...from fishing net to bananas, from pigs to dogs. In Halong Bay (which means descending dragon), we stayed on a boat (junk) called the Halong Ginger. We cruised (sailed?) around the bay, enjoying the peaceful surroundings and the exquisite (to quote Lallande) scenery. There were two excursions from the boat. The first was to visit a floating fishing village. The second was to visit the Surprising Cave (Sung Sot) which required us to climb 700 stairs (much needed exercise) but was very pretty amazing, with all kinds of stalactites and stalagmites. Our boat only had 10 others on it, and we were the only Americans. Lots of Australians here, as well as some British and Japanese (more of those in Hoi An).

Things we learned:

• You can get a surprisingly good foot massage for only $19 US.
• Pho (kind of their national dish) can be eaten at any meal, including breakfast.
• Women do most of the work in the fishing villages, including rowing all the boats with tourists (meaning us).
• A junk boat is anything but.

Hoi An (Tuesday and Wednesday): UNESCO World Heritage Site #2

We arrived here yesterday around 6 pm. Interestingly, Moira almost didn't make it as the travel company here in Vietnam had her age as 8 for some reason and purchased her a child's ticket. Our guide had to buy her a new one to get her on board.

Hoi An is a beautiful place, much slower paced. And we are staying at a beautiful resort, the Victorian and have incredible ocean views. We all agree, though, that we should redo their website for them as it doesn't do it justice. Our guide here is Tang and he immediately earned points from us by whisking us from the airport to a place where we could get clothes hand made (more on that below). We had a half day walking tour with him today which included visiting the Old House of Phung Hung, which is where 8 generations have lived, and is amazingly architecturally, with influence from the Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese. We also saw the Japanese Bridge, visited an Assembly Hall and took in a traditional Vietnamese music performance...all in two hours. Which gave us the rest of the day to explore, shop and then chill out a bit.

Key highlights here:

• Hoi An is like Venice...both flood every year.
• Be careful for gekkos on the ceiling.
• Every clothing store must be required by law to display a purple dress.
• We never knew a two string guitar could play make so many different, beautiful sounds.
• It is possible to get a $1 manicure...although Moira feels it will likely result in $10,000 worth of medical bills down the road.
• You can buy an incense coil which will burn for a whole month.
• Some key numbers to note: One - the number of hours it took for us to get fitted for custom made clothes, immediately upon arrival to Hoi An. 24 - the number of clothing items we ordered as a group. 1 minute: the time it took a courier to come get the clothes that needed alteration when we went back to try them on. And again...24: the number of hours it took to turn around said clothing order. It was a frenetic experience but we've walked away with great fitting dresses, pants, tops and jackets...and added to the GDP of Vietnam.

A lot there but we can't sign off without talking a bit about food. Or a lot about food.

• Dragon Fruit is easy to peel.
• Dried ginger is available on the street...a big bag for $1. Dried bananas are too, and they don't even taste like bananas (even Cindy, avowed banana hater, agrees)...very sweet.
• The markets have incredible fresh food...from fruit to things like grubs (ew). We avoided the fish though, based on the smell, although we've eaten a lot of it.
• Regular white rice and sticky rice come from two different plants. Most of thought sticky rice was just white rice with something added to it. Sticky rice has more protein and fat.
• Pho is everywhere...and sold by everyone on the street. It's noodles with chicken or beef and quite yummy.
• Cau Lao (noodles with pork, garlic and chili peppers) and White Rose (a type of steamed dumpling) are specialities in Hoi An.
• The Hanoi airport domestic terminal doesn't have much food...but it does have Magic Fingers (a true lost in translation name for a cookie).
• Our lunch today was so good that we ordered it twice. And we felt guilty when we had 11 items for $16 US total.

That's a good summary of the first few days. It's off to Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon) tomorrow. We hear the traffic is more insane than Hanoi. The question is...is it is bad as Cairo? Time will tell...

Two final things:

First, props to the Vietnamese for how well they speak English. Our Vietnamese is, well, non-existent so this has been a huge help.

Finally, Steph's quote of the night, "Do you want me to dong this?" (in reference to how we would pay for dinner)

Until our next land line...