SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM

Hello from Northern Vietnam where communism has been the lotus of life since 1930. In the capital city of Hanoi we find ourselves in an enormous mausoleum gawking at the embalmed body of Mr. Ho Chi Minh, who is on display in a glass case. Thousands of people pay tribute to him there everyday. Uncle Ho, as he is fondly referred to here, looks great for being 30 years dead. One would never guess by appearance alone that he was responsible for the loss of million's of lives.

In Sapa, we trek further and further into the cold and misty mountains until we finally reach the hilltribe villages of the Black Mhong and Red Zhao Tribes. Here sustainability is the way of life rather than a trendy buzz word. On an average day oxen are ploughing the fields, women dressed in bright costume are planting rice and snot-nosed hilltribe babies are playing in the dirt mounds. These tribes are constantly evolving and changing despite the tourism industry which tries to keep them encapsulated inside their fascinating and highly marketable "old way" of living.

In Halong Bay, our house boat pulls away from shore as the rolling fog disperses to illuminate giant karst formations rising out of the water. We are swarmed by a pirate fleet of 5 year olds rowing bamboo rafts who are yelling at us to buy their gum, chips and beer. We quickly find out that these rogue rugrats live on floating villages way out in the Golf of Tonkin. Their parents are likely fishermen or working the salt water pearl farms. Travis takes a particular liking to these little entrepenurial muggers.

In the ancient city of Hoi An, a young man stands on a mountain of garbage sorting for plastic bottles. His house is built on top of the city refuse dump. Not too far away, laundry hangs out to dry on piles of bricks which are remnant rubble from buildings that once stood tall. An elderly lady squats on the ground, breaking up the rubble by hand with her hammer. She will then try to sell her homemade gravel to a construction company. In another part of the city, a girl rides her bike home from school with three friends perched on the back seat. She drops off her friends before arriving to her family's thatch-roofed mud hut. Her family's hut consists of only one room. But like many poor Vietnamese, they have rigged a sattelite dish made from tin foil and soda bottles to the thatch roof. They now enjoy the luxury of watching television in the evenings.

Our journey on the train is like visiting a never-ending graveyard. Cemetaries line both sides of the "Reunification Express Railway" (you history buffs will appreciate the symbolism here). Gravestones dot the landscape like pixels on a computer screen: each individual grave seems miniscule compared to the size of the whole cemetary. We stop to walk through one of these cemetaries only to find out that it is full of deceased teenage boys who fought in the "American War". Later we meet one gentleman who tells us the story of his leg being blown off by a land mine while fighting along side the Americans, against the Viet Cong. He is proud of his stump and proud to be alive. Another man in his 30's named Tony has very light skin and speaks excellent English. He explains that he is the genetic legacy of one night's passion between an American soldier and a Vietnamese woman. His only experience of America is the stories he hears from his Vietnamese family, and his encounters with tourists.

Vietnam is quite a change of pace from Thailand, The Land of Smiles. Indeed it is our observation that many of the Vietnamese people we've met come off as brash, quick-witted hustlers. Both toward travellers and to each other. Suppose your country just exited from one hundred years of war with China, and then Japan, France and America. You might be edgy too.

With this sobering experience we continue to journey southward. Our final destination: Saigon.