After leaving Hanoi and Hue, I spent two nights in Hoi An, and am headed to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

There are so many highlights from these past days, and I'm not sure yet, as I write, whether I'll be disciplined enough to condense, so either settle in or navigate away! As Mark Twain famously said, "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

The 30,000 foot view is that I have: met wonderful people, viewed fascinating sites that taught me about the history and culture of this beautiful country, enjoyed the most flavorful food, choked down cups of thick, strong,coffee, been in and on more boats, buses, cars, hotels, and airplanes than I can recall, and, predictably, gotten lost several times, even with map in hand.

After getting yanked out of the security line because I neglected to remove my ipad from my suitcase (though I had no idea why I was being led into a little room behind the ticketing counter, and got a little nervous), I flew from Hanoi to Hue, where I visited palaces, temples, and tombs. By the end of a long day, it had all begun to run together. My brain is saturated with images of dragons, phoenixes (phoeni?), tombs, statues and altars, and my other senses are are saturated with the aroma of incense,,, the sounds of motorscooters and buses' relentless honking and engine-revving, and the feel of people pushing, pulling, and bumping into me. The other thing we did in Hue was get dumped into a bustling market that sold ... everything. It was probably a full city block deep or more, and three stories tall. The pathways inside it were narrow and all the tables were piled high with produce, meat, candy, souvenirs, clothing, purses, wallets, animals, housewares, just everything. It was all super messy and disorganized and I felt like I had been shoved from my tour bus into an episode of hoarders. That is, if hoarders included human hands constantly pushing, waving and grabbing at you and voices shouting at you, "Madame! Look! Very cheap! Madame! where are you from? Madame! look!" It was up there among my worst nightmares, but I got an ill reasoned notion in my head that I needed to do this, because it is part of the experience. Not only did I venture far into the maze of stalls and weave my way among the aggressively beckoning vendors, but I even made a couple of purchases. We were given a time by which we needed to return to the bus. I had a few more minutes, and so I was digging in my bag for some dollars to give to a disabled woman who was begging on the landing of the metal stairs I had climbed. As I began to hand her the money, a rat climbed through the stair rail behind her, over her leg, and back off of the stairs. Then I either died or cried or both, it's all a blur. I basically threw money at a disabled vietnamese woman on the ground and started racing back down the stairs, but I could neither see nor find the exit for the market. I had no idea in which direction was the street, and as I was racing up and down "aisles," they kept getting more condensed, to the point where I was unable to navigate without getting pushed out of the way by vietnamese women either buying or selling or just being. I started to panic a bit but finally found my way to an exit, which wasn't too close to where I had entered, and when I finally spotted my tour bus, everyone else was on it, waiting for me, across four lanes packed with reckless motorscooters and cars. The whole bus watched as I tried to figure out when to step into the road and end my misery, but I somehow made it across, ten minutes late and traumatized.

The Hue highlights were the people with whom I toured. I met a dr couple from Oregon (whose names I never knew), an aussie lawyer living in London (whose name I never knew), and Luisa, a dr who was born and reared in Spain, but who has been living in Germany now for 20 years. We all shared a lovely lunch, after which our guide told us that we would recieve free foot massages upstairs. We eagerly climbed a flight, removed our shoes, sat in chairs in a semi circle with other tourists, and dipped our feet into tubs of warm water in front of us. The bottom of the tubs had rubber k*** about 6" tall and about 3" thick. Though no one explained, we eventually figured out that the "massage" was you rubbing the soles of your feet against those k*** for a bit. Then it was time to dry your feet and get back on the bus. It was the self service car wash of foot massages.

What strikes me as I speak with my fellow tourists is how well traveled they all seem to be, in terms of how many countries they've seen (overall and within one trip) and how long they stay away from home. I have a lot of non-work to do!

I was put in a private car from Hue to Hoi An, a 3 hour drive, even though the aussie lawyer was also going by private car from Hue to Hoi An, from the same hotel. The tour agency is super organized but perhaps not so efficient. The drive to Hoi An was on a winding mountain road, and we sat still for 45 minutes while the police cleaned up the mess from a truck vs. two motor scooters collision. Not pretty.

Hoi An is fantastically charming, with lighted lanterns hung across the streets and in all the shops and restaurants, even the small boats that bring you down the river. I went on an excursion to My Son sanctuary (pronounced Mee Sun and meaning "beautiful mountain"), a "cluster of abandoned and partially ruined Hindu temples in Vietnam, constructed between the 4th and the 14th century by the kings of Champa." -- Wikipedia. Our very entertaining guide told us that fifty of the 70 buildings there were destroyed during the Vietnam War (but they do not call it the Vietnam War, of course. They call it the US War of Aggression). My Son was repeatedly bombed by Americans, because that is one of the numerous sacred sites where the Viet Cong would hide after sneaking into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail.

On this day trip, I met a woman named Liz who I instantly liked for many reasons, not the least of which is that she is a doppleganger for my friend Meryl back in Boston. Liz is an ESOL teacher from Australia, but she lives in different countries for two years at a time, teaching English as a second language. Then she moves again. We talked and talked - sharing some portions of our respective life stories, acknowledging the challenge of building new connections as adult women, and sharing our experiences of growth through adversity. We also cracked each other up and laughed hysterically. We spent the rest of the day together, including afternoon coffee and later dinner, where we met up with Luisa (who I'd met in Hue). The three of us had a wonderful vegetarian dinner and made our way back to our respective hotels, dodging drunk, vuvuzuela blowing motor scooter drivers who were happy about a semifinal win over cambodia by the Vietnam futbol team. Even New England Patriots fans are not this zealous.

In the middle of my Hoi An day, Liz and I walked into a rice paddy, hoping to get a close up look at the water buffalos that were there. We did not get a close up look at the water buffalos, but guess what we did see? RATS! UGH! I was later told that the rats that live in the rice paddies are eaten by the south Vietnamese, and considered delacies that are more expensive than other foods. The guide explaining this to me told me that they taste a lot like chicken. He wasn't trying to be funny.

A few things I've noticed about Vietnam: that there seems to be construction everywhere, though not much ever looks very new or finished. There are stray dogs everywhere, and they don't want to be pet, even if you feed them. There is no consistency or predictability to the streets - you can have a dilapidated house of sheet metal and bamboo next to a very expensive looking cement home, next to a open air restaurant, next to a rice paddy. Life is lived primarily outside, no matter what you are doing. Evidence of the War remains everywhere, from indentations caused by machine gun bullets in the side of buildings to numerous bomb craters and destroyed monuments.

After leaving Hoi An, I flew to Ho Chi Minh City. I have a lot to say about my day learning about the atrocities committed by the US Army during the "US War of Aggression," but that'll be another post.