Election Day

Tuesday, Nov. 4 -- Although it's election day at home, it's just a regular day, filled with chaos, in Hanoi. I think the best word to describe this city is dizzying. The environment -- noise, people, goods -- puts you into overload. It's very hard to absorb all the sights and sounds so you just kind of wander and hope to make a few observations.

Yesterday was marked mostly with a steady drizzle, but at least it wasn't a downpour. In hopes of finding something to do inside, we headed off to the Temple of Literature, a place of worship of Confucianism. Beautiful grounds with a couple of temples and several altars honoring Confucious and his acolytes. We spent most of the rest of the day wandering through the city before meeting up with the tour group in the evening. There are 13 in the group, several from Canada, three from NY, a married couple who are both surgeons from Fresno and a couple who live in Wales. Seems like a really good bunch. We got to know eath other over a terrific dinner that came in at $4.20.

Raining again this morning as we headed off in cyclos, little rickshaw-like bicycles, that took us to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. He's not there (in Russia getting his annual enbalming treatment) but it was pretty impressive. An enormous monument, beautiful government building and a couple of small houses where Ho lived, pretty modestly. We got the full propaganda from the guide. Karen and I moved on to the Museum of Ethnology. Turns out there are 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam -- who knew? And each one was featured in some way at this museum, whether their clothing, tools, houses, celebrations, etc. We started getting mixed up on about the fifth minority. Good thing there was no quiz at the end. Another nice dinner with the group and we're off to Halong Bay in the morning. It's apparently about a three-hour bus ride and we're really hoping it'll dry out.