From Hanoi to Chiang Mai

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  Chiang Mai, Thailand
Thursday, November 27, 2008

First of all we managed to be one day ahead of a typhoon.  Now we have managed to beat the Bangkok airport shutdown by a few hours!  But before we write about that, a little more about what we've been up to in Hanoi.

We ended up really enjoying our time in Hanoi.  Once we got used to the complete craziness, it sort of grew on us (especially once Carol found an excellent coffee shop, after 2 weeks of instant coffee!!).  We spent a day going to some really interesting museums.  First we went to the Ho Chi Minh museum, or at least we thought that's what we were going to do, but didn't realize that it was part and parcel of the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, where Uncle Ho is perfectly embalmed.  There were masses of people -- (think the opening parade of the Beijing Olympics) in long lines and we all filed silently past the body.  Then we went to the museum, which was fabulous, really interesting and innovative

Doi Suthrep, Chiang Mai

.  Instead of just telling the story of his life and of Vietnam, it was very artistic with a lot of symbolic representations of different aspects of society and culture.  In the afternoon we went to the Museum of Ethnology, which represents all the different peoples of Vietnam.  Inside the building are exhibits and outside in the grounds are reconstructed houses, tombs and longhouses, which were just fascinating.  That evening we went to the very famous Water Puppet show.  This is where people stand waist high in water and manipulate puppets from under the water.  The puppets are all representations of various aspects of Vietnamese life and although it's a bit simplistic, it was quite charming too.

The next day we went to the Temple of Literature which is the oldest university in Vietnam (possibly Asia?), dedicated to Confuscious.  We spent the rest of the day enjoying sitting by the lake, and wandering in and out of the alleys looking at the endless tiny little stores.  Some are geared to tourists, but many are whole streets of just one product -- for example, a whole street of stores that just do wedding invitations, a whole street of stores that have party decorations, and so on, with the streets being named after the product they sell.  On our last day we went to a fabulous restaurant for a buffet lunch with the most delicious concoctions we'd had so far.  And of course, every day we enjoyed the sights that you see everywhere -- women with conical hats carring long bamboo poles on the ends of which are enormous baskets with fruit or other products, men on motorcycles with anything and everything you can imagine on the back

Doi Suthrep, Chiang Mai

.  For instance, anything you might put in the back of a pick-up truck -- furniture, animals, massive 6ft china urns -- we saw on the back of a motorcycle!

The one thing that did bother Carol unfortunately was the pollution and so much smoking everywhere (including in the hotels.)  So we decided we would head out of Hanoi and go directly to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.  We flew with Air Asia, a budget airline -- the first time we've ever been on a plane where they wouldn't even give you a cup of water without charging you!!  We had to change in Bangkok which was no problem.  Thank goodness we were doing it yesterday, so that we only found out about the disruption to the airport when we met up with friends of friends who told us about it.

We were looking forward to seeing our friends Fran and Bill from Ajijic, but since we came earlier than expected, they were out of town.  They arranged for their friends Ruth and Bill to take us under their wing and they have been just fabulous.  We're staying in the apartment-hotel they live in -- we feel like we're in the lap of luxury.  Yesterday they took us to the Night Market, where even we, the most hopeless shoppers you know, can't wait to go back and start buying!  It's just amazing the amount of stores and stalls, and the quality and variety of things for sale

Doi Suthrep, Chiang Mai

. 

Today Ruth and Bill took us up to the King's residence in the mountains above Chiang Mai.  It's a palace for the royal family to come to in the winter, (January to March) so they're currently getting it ready for the royal visit.  It was beautiful, and because the King is big into botany, the gardens are absolutely lovely.  From there we went to an incredibly beautiful temple, also in the hills.  People say they get "templed-out" but so far we're still enjoying the beauty.  Afterwards the four of us went for a delicious lunch at an upscale restaurant in the posh part of town -- which cost all of $5 each!  Now we're off to Thanksgiving Dinner with Bill and Fran.

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street in Hanoi	street in Hanoi	traffic in Hanoi	woman in Hanoi
Vietnam countryside	Museum of Ethnology	Museum of Ethnology	Ho Chi Minh Museum
water puppet stage	temple of literature	Temple of Literature, Hanoi

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