On arrival in Bangkok we were both blown away by the weight of our packs. I'm not sure, but I think their might be lead woven into the thread for strength or something. Either that or I packed too many t-shirts. Our night in Bangkok was spent in a pretty lavish hotel room. I've never seen a bed that wide, and that about sums it up since we didn't do anything except sleep. A quick pre-sleeping meal in the hotel restaurant was nice, but we were both sad we missed the jazz band by all of 10 minutes; I was pretty psyched for a "Lost in Translation" moment.
Hanoi so far has been pretty intense. Its a bit sad we aren't going to get to go anywhere outside of town, and since I'm an idiot and forgot to confirm the train tickets, we now have to fly out to Hoi An tomorrow, meaning we leave town earlier than planned (and spend three times as much). But I really don't feel like busing..
I don't get the cyclo and taxi drivers around here. I get the people who heckle you trying to get you to buy their postcards/fans/fruit/clothing/etc, but the taxi drivers do the same thing. And it just can't work. Who's gonna be walking along the road minding their own business and then out of the blue, just cos someone asked them, hop in a taxi and go. Where are they gonna go? Maybe they're thinking we'd like to twiddle our thumbs for a bit in the air-conditioned comfort of the back of the taxi? As a positive, when you do want to get a taxi, its pretty easy to get one. All you have to do is stand on the corner of an intersection and keep your camera and backpack in plain view...
We've realised the wisdom of pre-arranging prices for taxi or cyclo fares. Although this evening even that failed us. We got totally scammed by a cyclo driver who rode us to the nearby marketplace. In a way we were pretty silly not to check the map for where we were, but anyway the dirty bastard rode us all around town and then dropped us off practically where we started from. Fair enough he got us to our destination, but it wasn't exactly the shortest route. And then he had the cheek to A) tell us that the pre-arranged price was for one person not two, and that we therefore had to pay twice, and B) refuse to give us all our change, claiming that he was sweaty and tired and needed a beer. I didn't have much sympathy for him; we gave him a pretty bloody decent fare for something that was 150 metres away, and it was his own dumb fault for getting sweaty riding us there in a manner that wasn't very efficient.
Its funny though, even on principle I had some trouble caring enough to argue over 35c. On a related note, I started laughing last night as I realised I was bartering with a 5 year-old magnet saleswoman over paying 50c and paying 44c for a magnet. She thought it was funny too, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because 50c was the most any sucker had ever paid for one of her magnets!
We've seen a bunch of really cool stuff. Yesterday we just walked around Hoan Kiem lake and looked at some of the shops before eating dinner at a reasonable rooftop restaurant that charged us 7 bucks for 2 mains and 2 (rather large) bottle of beer. Then we saw a waterpuppet theatre before checking out one of the night markets in the Old Quarter where we're staying. The end of the evening was spent drinking another beer overlooking Hoan Kiem lake and marvelling at the art of the motorcyclists below us (I can't believe I haven't seen anyone die horribly yet, and I'm only slightly less surprised that I myself haven't died horribly yet).
Today we went to the Museum of Ethnology, which had a really interesting exhibit on "life under the subsidy market" (from the start of the American war and the mid-80s). Most surprising was the level of discontent allowed to be recorded for posterity in a government-funded exhibition. I was actually really impressed. I wonder if they'd allow similar comments to be made about Vietnamese life today? The general flavour was that of "sure a policy mistake was made back then, but now we are in 'the renovation' and the improvements we've already made are just the start of a great change for the lives of Vietnamese people". Still, some of those people gave the government of the "subsidy market" period a fair load, which I figure must be pretty much the government of today. Or am I just wrong!?
After that we visited the "Temple of Literature" which was founded to honour the memory of Confucius. Interesting architecture, and another culturally fascinating place to visit. The Vietnamese have a big thing about honouring their ancestors, and they will go to these shrines and leave gifts in front of giant statues that symbolise important dead men. Its really cool to watch. I really need to find out exactly what's going on, because there are a lot of little things that they do which clearly have a lot of importance, but I have no idea why.
That's about it, so far. I've put some photos up here of the places we've been to, but I haven't had time to label them yet and its really late and we have to get up early tomorrow so we can go see the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. I've never been to a mausoleum before so that should be interesting/creepy/awesome. But its 2:20am and we need to be there by 9:30 so I'm really needing some sleeping.
How did I manage to write so much and yet say so little?
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