Hanoi, Uncle Ho's House, Halong bay

Explanation of photos starting at top: The tiny 2 room house on stilts Ho Chi Minh lived in the last 14 years of his life. He always refused to live in the big yellow palace - shown down 4 pix, but he had lived in a small house which had a bathroom and was attached to the garage with his cars (the bright sign over the garage reads "Ho Chi Minh's Used Cars"). Then he moved into the tiny house without a bathroom - altho he did have a bomb shelter next door- which only has a small bedroom and a room with a desk upstairs and a dining table on the main floor. Agter garage are Halong Bay pix with cave opening at tips of sails in 2nd photo. Two thousand people hid in that cave from 1949-1969 to escape the bombs. The only fresh water available seeped into the cave through the limestone. As a result, the heavy content corroded their internal organs and most died miserably until the govt moved them out and created a tourist cave.

Arriving in Hanoi even more than 30 years after the end of the war was somewhat emotional for me. My own nation perpetrated one of the most barbaric, idiotic and criminal wars in the history of mankind, was defeated and learned nothing at all from it. To visit Vietnam now is to ask constantly 'The Communists won, and here we have an apparently happy population in a nation that has become an industrial powerhouse actually competing with China, and we wonder what was the point of the war? Where are the horrors of Communism?" In fact, much of the horrors remaining are the millions of unexploded bombs and landmines which will still take another century to completely remove.

Most Asian cities are architecturally hopeless and chaotic mazes. But old Hanoi retains some French style in buildings that make it more attractive than most cities. It is also a city of several lakes large and small and the relieve the congestion and create some serenity. Until about 1990, Hanoi was a pretty quiet town mainly packed with bicycles. But about that time, China (initially) began to build a much cheaper motorbike that Japan had been selling (but the Japan version lasts much longer). As a result, people bought motorbikes so rapidly that there are now almost as many of them as there people in the city. The result is traffic chaos, noise and pollution. Plus there are no parking lots so drivers park them on the sidewalks, which means pedestrians are forced to walk in the street alongside traffic anarchy. The noise is so overwhelming that few tourists stay in the city very long. The way to do that is to take day trips out of the city - or even 2-3 day trips out and then come back. We come back because Hanoi has nice restaurants, coffee shops, and hotels and life is inexpensive.

Of course, everybody going to Hanoi goes to Halong bay. It is a 3.5 hour drive out there, then an overnight stay on a pleasant boat, together with cave visits and water activities. Many people really enjoy Sapa which is an overnight train ride north to the Chinese border. But some leave Sapa by riverboat and end up in Luang Prabang - a very nice idea.