Hanoi, Vietnam

So, I don't have much time for an update now. I am sitting at a desktop in a hostel in Hanoi, Vietnam and there is a line quickly forming behind me. A quick update, though..

The end of last week was a complete blur. It almost felt like we had been in Taipei for a month and we finished seeing everything that was on our list. Among the things we did were hike along a river outside of the city, visit the Chang Chi Shek (I know the spelling is probably wrong...), visit a couple of temples and go to a place called MTV - a movie place where you pick out your own movie to watch and get to watch it in a private room on a big screen.

Sunday, we finall had to say goodbye to Taiwan. Originally, our next destination was to be Thailand. However, with the warnings being issued by the US State Department and with a temporary curfew in effect, we decided to go to Vietnam instead. But, it was too expensive to re-route our tickets so we still flew into Bangkok on Sunday night. We arrived around 11 pm, cleared customs and camped out in the departures area where we would check into our flight to Hanoi at 4:15 the next morning. It was sort of funny, sort of sad, but as we cleared customs the lady looked at our 'address in Thailand' which said 'Airport' and asked me what that was about. I said I was leaving in 6 hours... She said she had thought I would be travelling into the city. I didn't have an answer I wanted to respond with.

Arriving in Hanoi we were tired, but happy to have moved on. Also, clearing customs was a lot easier than I ever thought it would be.. My pen broke as I filled out the entry for so I did not fill out the 'address in Vietnam' or 'passport number' fields and didn't sign the document. The customs agent looked at it, looked at me, didn't say a word and waved me through.

Taking a Vietnam airlines mini-van into the city made us think we were safe from the taxi scams that run rampant from the airport. However, we still managed to get dropped off at the wrong hotel (a hotel posing to be ours, but operating under a different name). I didn't give the man my name and only told him my name started with 'M'. We couldn't tell me my full name from their reservation book. We left. However, the second hotel looked fishy so we settled into a hostel dominated by westerners. Its a good place from which to get our feet on the ground and organize the rest of our trip here.

In a couple of hours we get on a night train headed to Sapa, a town to the north renowned for its treking. I'll let you know how that goes when I get back. The line's getting long. I have to let someone else on the computer.