With all the fun of Laos behind us, we moved on to Vietnam. Vietnam has mixed history with our nation and several other Western nations, and I came here wondering whether my expectations of a nation scarred with wars and the limiting constraints of communism would be upheld. Fortunately for me, a young American male, most of those ideas of people hating me for where I was born were not true, and in the month that I spent traveling Vietnam I felt nothing but hospitality, which was only sometimes dampened with a hint of suspicion or fear of me.

We traveled the length of Vietnam, from the mountains in the far north near the Chinese border down to the old capitol of South Vietnam, Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). The whole country was a beautiful mix of people that are still using water buffalo driven wagons and planting and harvesting rice fields by hand to the people taking advantage of Vietnam's fairly recent open economy and eagerly setting up shops, restaurants, and hotels to meet the growing amount of travelers and accommodate other budding businesses. It is an area that is thriving with life and people who are excited to have the freedom to choose their own fates and reap the fruits of their labors, but they also work extra hard for fairly low wages because the government supports that were there for them before no longer exist. For them it was a trade-off between personal freedom and the hope for success equal to how hard they worked or stronger control but much more support. There are mixed opinions about these trade-offs, but the bustle of Hanoi and Saigon's millions of motorbikes and thousands of shops and street vendors tell me that people are trying to move on past the destroyed country of their past and race towards their new opportunities.

Equal to the excitement and bustle of life that exists in Vietnam is its natural landscapes and historical places. Halong Bay and Sapa are in the North, while the quaint town of Hoi Ann, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and other places from the Vietnam War are in the South. Halong Bay is an enormous bay filled with thousands of tiny limestone islands that rise sharply out of the sea like peaks of large mountains. West of Halong is Sapa, which is a town set in the midst of many mountains near the Chinese border that were terraced hundreds of years ago to plant rice paddies. The people here still subsist here much the same way that they have over the centuries and have succeeded in maintaining their culture as well.

As we moved south toward the DMZ (17th parallel, marking the boundary between North and South Vietnam), we visited the ruins of the old imperial city in Hue, which is similar to China's forbidden city in Beijing, and also many of the sites of old bases from the Vietnam War. However, nothing of the bases along the Ben Hai River or the DMZ exist any longer, and all we saw of them was patches of land where plants do not seem to grow well. Fortunately, we were able to visit some of the Viet Cong tunnels at Vinh Moc on the coast near the mouth of the Ben Hai River. The tunnels were dark and damp, and there was barely a place where I could stand erect. I felt sorry for both the families that had to live in these dungeons as well as the Americans that were forced to venture down the dark corridors to snuff out the enemy.

Further south, we stopped off at Hoi Ann, which was one of the few places that was left untouched during the Vietnam War due to agreements on both sides to preserve the old city because it was the only city that has been untouched by wars in Vietnam's turbulent history with China and the West. The city is a quaint and retains many buildings dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. It was an important port for a couple hundred years before the river clogged the entrance to the harbor, and then the city transformed itself into a center for textiles, which it still maintains today. A person can have any suit, shoes, shirt, pants, dress copied from anywhere around the world and have it tailor-made overnight for an unbelievably low price.

After Hoi Ann, we stopped at Nha Trang for a few days on the beach before finally making our way to Saigon. Now, Saigon is the commercial capitol of Vietnam, and life moves much faster here than anywhere else. It does not retain the same charm as Hanoi or the smaller cities, but it's War Remnants museum was particularly interesting. I have never been to a place with such an anti-American sentiment. Regardless of the one-sided nature of the museum, it did teach me that war is a horrible event no matter which side or cause you believe you're fighting for and should be avoided at all costs. From here we will make another short trip through Cambodia to Angkor Wat again and then fly out of Thailand to Hong Kong. Till nest time, Cheers.