Ok, well today was relatively calm. The highlight of my day was a visit to the Hoa Lo Prison, which as I mentioned yesterday, was what US POW’s nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton.” The prison was originally built by the French in the late 19th Century, and the bulk of the displays related to the French [...]
Well, this is it….my last night in Vietnam. The title for this entry is the title of a song from the musical Miss Saigon which is sung the night before Saigon fell, or as they say here, was liberated. The world isn’t ending, but my trip to Vietnam is! Aside from losing my camera, this [...]
I suppose you’re wondering what that loss is…my camera! My wonderful camera that has the photo record of my entire trip! Gone! I believe I accidentally left it on the train last night and one of the cleaning people or someone probably picked it up. It made this morning quite hectic. But let me start [...]
For my last day in Sapa I decided to take it easy and relax in this relatively peaceful mountain village before returning to the chaos of Hanoi tomorrow, though I’ll just be there very briefly. The other part of the reason for taking it easy is that I haven’t been feeling too good. My calves [...]
Well, I was right…there’s really nothing to do here after sunset! I mean the restaurants are open, and there are a couple of bars, but the town is mostly deserted, except for the occasionally hill-tribe member offering marijuana and opium and groups of Vietnamese playing a game similar to hackey-sack (did I spell that correctly?) [...]
Well I survived the sleeper train and made it to Sapa, high in what the French nicknamed the Tonkinese Alps. Sapa is really nice, and much smaller and calmer than Hanoi. You can walk everywhere, but everywhere is also quite a steep walk! Sapa was originally settled by the French in the 1920′s and apparantly [...]
Alrighty…I started out the morning by packing and checking out of my room, before hustling on over to the Water Puppet theatre to see a performance. It was incredible!! The performance was just under 1 hour long and was comprised of maybe 15 vignettes. A traditional Vietnamese orchestra accompanied them and provided the voices. The [...]
Okay, so today was my first full day in the wondrous world of Vietnam. My room doesn’t have a window, and the one downside to that is that 9am looked exactly like 9pm in the room! Ah well, it’s cheap and quiet! The alleyway I’m staying on is quite popular among Vietnamese for food and [...]
