Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Hanoi II












Photos: Bridge to small island in lake of Old City Hanoi. A day trip which requires a two hour drive out of Hanoi brings us to a place referred to as 'Halong bay without the water,' which is more karst formations having a 3 kilometer canal running thru them, which tourists are paddled along in a genuinely serene and lovely tour. Our guide was trying to tell us some history while standing in front a water buffalo in its tiny pool of water/mud with face even Joan Rivers would envy. This flower seller on a bike in Hanoi actually shows the area behidn that should be sidewalk, but it is covered in motorbikes and merchandise, so pedestrians have to dodge traffic to walk. Because Lunar New Year was a week away, flowers were for sale everywhere.
It is somewhat surreal that you can be in a beautiful place out in nowhere and see a hole 35' deep and as long and realize it is the hole remaining from a single bomb from a B-52 and that after almost 40 years of slowly filling in, the hole is still that big. Pilots who expected to be promoted never returned to base with napalm, bombs or shells on board. They just dumped them anywhere. One pilot had a load of napalm which he was not able to drop on the intended target, so he looked for a secondary target (means: whatever - just get rid of it). He spotted a cave in the side of a mountain with a good sized opening and shot the weapon into it. Inside were hundreds of frightened civilians hiding from the planes, and they were all burned to death in this one pointless and fatal gesture.



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