Moving, Moving, Moving

Current Location: Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.

I can't remember where I last left off. Vietnam has been a whirlwind! My visa runs out on the 20th or December, so I am deciding whether to stay a few more days in Hanoi or to head off to Laos. Will sleep on it and decide in the morning.
Hanoi and Saigon are considered to be counterparts, north and south. Despite the fact that they are the two largest cities in Vietnam, they have a distinctly different vibe and atmosphere. Saigon is much more modern, intense, high energy, and fast paced. Hanoi on the other hand has a much more laid back, less Western, more Vietnamese, a pinch Chinese, and older feel to it. The streets here in Hanoi still teem with motor bikes though.

A bit of an update (sorry if there is any overlap from previous posts):
Hoi An: Already wrote about Hoi An, but it was my FAVORITE (top 2) place in Vietnam. Pretty much a place you would imagine in some ancient fairy tale book. After Hoi An it was off to Hue.
Hue: Hue is famous for being the ancient capital of Vietnam. The most "interesting" thing to see in Hue is supposed to be the Citadel where the royalty used to live centuries ago. Honestly, I was not too impressed. I prefer to wander through the crazy markets, streets, and observe other daily life activities than to see these sorts of things, although it was pretty nice. I enjoyed the ornate Chinese archways, doors, and walls. Otherwise, I found Hue to be relatively unspectacular. Although, it did have a fantastic market along the riverside. After Hue, we were off to Hanoi (current location). Paula and I took a sleeper bus. (Can't remember if I already wrote about this.) Unfortunately the driver felt it necessary to blast horrific Vietnamese karaoke music the entire 13 hour ride. Oh dear. Pretty much every passenger was infuriated, but he refused to turn it off. Spent a day in Hanoi and were off to Halong Bay.
Halong Bay: FAVORITE place in Vietnam, along with Hoi An. Anyone coming to Vietnam cannot miss Halong Bay. It is the most mysterious, magical place I have ever seen. I took a 2 night 3 day tour on a junk boat through the bay (which I will elaborate more on later.) I went on the boat tour with Paula and Ebony. We stayed one night on the junk and one night in a guesthouse on Cat Ba island, the largest island in Halong Bay, with a population of 7,000. Cat Ba island is a craggy, Jurassic park-esque place. We did a jungle trek through the forests, which were complete with yards of tarzan vines hanging down all over the place. I was peaking around all the time to make sure I would spot the dinosaurs if they decided to make an appearance. I think they were a bit scared away though, because I did not see any. At the bottom of the trek route there was a sign labeled: "ADVENTUROUS ROUTE" which of course, we took. It did end up being quite adventurous. I kept slipping into fantasies of being an explorer who has just stumbled upon the island. These explorer fantasies were periodically interupted by shrieking Korean tourists who had just reached the top of a close peak and were screaming over: "VICTORY!!! VICTORY!!! VICTORY!!!" Oh well.
[NOTE: For anyone planning a trip to Vietnam, please email me (leaholson1987@yahoo.com) and I will give them the name of the company to go on the Halong Bay tour. We got an excellent tour for our money. I have a friend who was not completely thrilled with her tour, but our company was excellent.]

Today: Was planning on going to see Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh), but admission to see him closes at 10:15am, so will see him tomorrow. When I say I am going to see Uncle Ho, I mean literally, as his body has been "preserved" by some Russian specialists (similar to Lenin). Embalmed is the word? Anyway, I shall pay him a visit tomorrow morning. I am hoping he is still here in Hanoi, as apparently he is shipped to Russia for 3 months out of the year for "maintenance."
So instead went to Hoan Kiem Lake, which is in the center of Hanoi's old quarter. There is a nice red Japanese bridge at one end which leads to a temple which we visited. At the temple we (Ebony, Paula, I) met one guy from Argentina and one from the UK. Paula was excited to meet a fellow countrymen and to be able to speak Spanish again. We all roamed the city together for the day. Our main visit was to the temple of Literature. About a 30-40 minute walk from the Old Quarter. The Temple of Literature is an ancient temple dedicated to men of scholarship and academics. After we wandered all around, pretty much just getting ourselves lost.
In Hanoi (similar to Saigon) there are streets dedicated to all sorts of things. For example, there is a clothes street, hat street, shoe street, motor bike seat street, etc. Along the entire street will be only one thing, but multiple stores selling that designated thing. It confuses me a bit how people manage to have good business as they are all selling the exact same things, but it somehow seems to work.
Streets of things I have seen: motor bike seat covers, lace, buttons, sequins/fake gems, dolls, toys, jewellry, electronics, safes, refrigerators, TVs, helmets, motorbikes, bicycles, dogs, birds, meats, fruits/vegetables, manequins, wigs, beauty products, coffee, dried fruits, snake wine, watches, bags, souvenirs.
Today, managed to find "depressing" street. It was a particularly dingy and decrepit street. I think one of the main hospitals of Hanoi is stationed here. I saw a rather strange looking sign board from across the street and dragged our gang over to take a look. It was a glass case on the street full of pictures of the most graphic injuries I have ever seen. Heads pretty much hanging off, severed hands, horrific gashes going to the bone, bodies mashed to a pulp. There wasn't really any description of why the pictures were there. There were a few words in Vietnamese underneath each picture. This sign board made all our stomachs turn. I have never seen anything so graphic displayed like this on the street. I could not for the life of me figure out the purpose of it, but here are some possibilities:
a) I thought maybe it was some sort of advertisement to encourage people to wear helmets on their motor bikes, but there was no words anywhere or pictures of people wearing helmets.
b) The sign was stationed outside a hospital. Maybe it was the hospital's way of saying: look at all these horrible injuries that we have fixed! Come here and we can fix you too!
Those were the two options I could think of. No one else cared to ponder why these pictures were here so we moved on.
More depressingness came up. This same street (next to the hospital) was lined with parents all holding small children (probably around the age of 3-5) and every single child had a cleft palate/ cleft lip or some other sort of mouth deformity. There were literally dozens of parents holding these children along the street. None of them were begging, they were all just sitting around. Maybe waiting for surgery? Not sure. Anyway, a bit depressing.