(Irina) So we've been in Hanoi for about 2 days now and I think we have eaten something like 14 times already... Pho (noodle soop), banh cun (rice crepe with minced meat), xoi (sticky rice with sausage), cha ca (fish sauteed with dill), tofu, fish soup... We just keep eating.

Aside from the food, the overwhelming first - and lasting - impression I have of Hanoi is the mopeds. They are everywhere - on the streets, on the sidewalks, inside the hotel lobby. Everyone gets around on a moped - even in the narrowest of narrow back alleys. Even the stairs in Huey's family's apartment building have a strip running in the middle that allows you to bring your moped up to your floor. Walking the streets is somewhat nerveracking in the beginning because of the non-stop onslaught of mopeds. But after a while you figure out that the best thing to do is just walk slowly and deliberately in the direction you want to go in and the drivers will avoid you. (Huey's theory is that each driver is responsible for about a 45 dgeree cone of space in front of the moped.) It is kind of counterintuitive, but if you can muster the nerve to step onto the middle of the street in front of 30 mopeds coming at you, it works like a charm. So finally yesterday we rented a moped of our own and joined the thousands of Hanoians on the street - I even bought the requisite ninja-like face mask (to protect from the exhaust) and we roamed the streets and made our ontribution to the chaos that is Hanoi street traffic.

The mopeds are also the source of another constant presence in Hanoi - the noise. Motors running, horns honking - it is an incessant background to our days. It only ceases for a couple of hours in the middle of the night when the city is dead quiet. Then, at about 6 a.m., it is as if someone flipped a switch - and the noise is back.

On our first day here we visited Huey's family - they were incredibly nice and I am only sorry that I am unable to speak to them. So I just sat on the floor, around the low table, ate delicious food, listened to the sing-song sounds of Vietnamese around me and just couldn't quite believe it was all real.

Huey has been trying to teach me a few words of Vietnamese but it is difficult. After a half-an-hour-long tutoring session over breakfast yesterday I asked "Is what I am saying understandable, even if the pronounciation is mangled?" "Hm..." Huey said, "If taken in context, it may be." So, no. I also tried to learn the correct way to address his family and here is what I know so far: address the older women as "bak" except if they are so old that they are "ba" and except that a younger woman is also "bak" if she is descended from an older woman that is a "bak." And if I don't know how old someone is? That's a whole another story... I think I need to eat again.