(Irina) A practical note first: we will post pictures at some point in the next couple of days. Just need to find the right computer/Internet connection.

So after spending 3 days in a food- and jetlag-induced stupor, our New York habits kicked in and we booked a manic schedule for the next week: First, in about an hour we are taking an overnight train to Sa Pa in the northern mountains where we will spend two days hiking around to neighboring villages. Then, on Tuesday night we take the overnight train back to Hanoi, arrive here at 5:30 a.m. and catch an 8:30 a.m. bus to Halong Bay (in the northeast) where we will spend two days kayaking. Then we come back to Hanoi on Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning fly out to Hue in the central part of the country. You'd think that a month is plenty of time to see the country, but reading the guidebooks we see so many things we would like to do and that we won't have time to do.

Over the last couple of days we did wake up and stop eating for enough time though to go to some the thousands of stores around Hanoi. The insane profusion of merchandise covering every available inch of storefront space is amazing. It seems that a great many people (at least in Hanoi) make their living by selling anything and everything you can imagine. I personally did not expect that, mostly because I was thinking of Vietnam's socialist economic system and expecting things to be like they were in Eastern Europe before the changes - some private economic activity but not much. I cannot judge whether private economic activity extends to enterprises on a larger scale, but the solo/family businesses dealing in buying and selling all kinds of stuff are another of the most visible characteristics of Hanoi. Usually, each street specializes in a particular kind of thing - silk, household goods, temple offerings, wedding invitations, jewelry, etc. Arond Hanoi, there are whole villages making and selling one thing - ceramics, snake oil... We even ran across a store specializing in old socialist propaganda posters - I am still pondering what the selling of such posters as souvenirs to Western tourists says about the state of the system in Vietnam. Huey bought a poster in which a Vietnamese is hurling a thunderbolt and repelling a falling bomb bearing the effigy of Richard Nixon - absolutely priceless. (By the way, seeing the school children wearing the red kerchiefs around their necks, and the hammer and sickle on certain buildings is so surreal to me.)

While on the topc of shopping, Grandma took us today to the jewelry stores because I wanted to buy a jade bracelet. After haggling for a while and clinking various bracelets togeter she picked one for me. I looked at it dubiously because it seemed way too small for my hand. (The way to measure the bracelet is to see whether it fits over the index, middle and fourth finger only.) However, Grandma and the jade lady assured me that it was perfect. The jade lady then motioned me into the long hallway to the side of her store. The buildings here are very long and narrow (the old tax system was based on the street frontage of a building) and these long hallways are the way you get to the back parts of the buildings (which are tehmselves a warren of stairwells, rooms and small courtyards). Once we got inside, the jade lady led me to the sink and pured a generous amount of liquid soap on my hand and then she and Grandma proceeded to somehow slide the bracelet onto my wrist. Looking at it now it seems physically impossible. Most Vietnamese women wear these bracelets which are put on their hands when they are little and then they grow into them. Grandma and the jade lady achieved the same effect with my hand with the help of some dishwashing liquid and some persistence. And some short-lived pain on my part. But anything in the name of beauty.

As a last note, over the last couple of days I also discovered that Huey and I are hopeless yuppies. Back in New York, we bought two really cool backpacks and decided that for our month in Vietnam we would shed the New York lifestyle and just lead an uncomplicated life of simple pleasures and travel adventures. Well, as we packed the backpacks today with cell phone, cell phone charger, two iPods, iPod charger, portable iPod speakers, and my Estee Lauder face wash and eye cream, it dawned on me that the only backpacker thing about us are the two backpacks. Of course I quicly rationalized it with "Well, Vietnam is so cheap and it has so many amenities that it is not necessay to really live like a backpacker." Right. Now we are off to our mountain adventure to which we will get by sleeping into very own private sleeper on the train...