I feel like we really would have liked Vietnam had we not had such a string of rotten luck. Cold weather + everything being closed = hard traveling. Anywhose, here are some things I learned in Vietnam:
- Don’t go in late January/ early February. Even though there are only 10 days of winter (so says Uncle Ho), they are miserable.
- Avoid the Tet. You would think it would be all dragons, and fireworks, and parades. But really it is everything being closed and all the locals sitting inside their houses having a grand old time while you wander the streets aimlessly.
- Do go to Halong Bay. Do use Buffalo Tours. Do buy lots of stuff at the Disabled Craft Center. It’s cheaper than anywhere else. Do go kayaking the first time they offer, cause there may not be a second time.
- Do go to Sapa. Even if you don’t see any grand views, the interesting people you see are unlike anywhere else (except maybe Northern Thailand, Southern China, parts of Laos, and, umm, Minneapolis.
- Read Catfish and Mandalay (about a Vietnamese immigrant who fled after the war returning for the first time to bike up the coast) and/or The Quiet American (a fictionalized account of early American involvement in Vietnam).
- Do go to Hanoi. There is some interesting museums, et al, to see, even if the people aren’t warm and fuzzy.
- Before you cross the street, take a deep breath, gird up your loins, and just go. The moped drivers will go around you. Be in the Matrix!
- Do go to the Army Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts (especially in the rain), and Seasons.
Then tonight I watched Holiday, a 1938 rom-com with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. And, what are the chances, Grant plays a 30-year-old investment banker who gets fed up with his job and decides to quit and travel to figure out “what it’s all about.” Of course, the father of his rich NYC socialite fiancee thinks that is “Un-American.” Awesome. [I mean, I guess I am going to a communist country. Though I don't think that Uncle Ho envisioned a tri-life crisis as part of his communist manifesto.]
It was hard to figure out who I identified with the most, Grant (as the disgruntled corporate cog), Hepburn (who I heart, as the articulate, yet goofy sister), or the alcoholic brother. His way of drinking his pain away looked sooo sophisticated. Plus he played a mean banjo. Perhaps if I could have done my job blotto . . .
