SUNDAY, MAR 14TH--HANOI, VIETNAM

I had been anticipating this day for years. Not really knowing if I wanted to visit this place that I had been 30,000 feet above on the nights of Dec 18th & 20th, 1972. It was on those nights that 11 of the 15 B-52’s were shot down by the North Vietnamese air defense system’s SAM’s (surface to air missiles) during the 11 nights of intense bombing from Dec 18 to 29. I was lucky! Anyway, 741 B-52 sorties dropped over 20,000 tons of bombs on Hanoi and Haiphong during those nights and forced them to sign the peace treaty in January 1973. By the way there were also hundreds of Air Force & Navy fighter-bombers pounding Hanoi and another 12 of those fighter-bombers were also shot down. We sailed into the port city of Hong Gai which is in Halong Bay about 130 miles east of Hanoi early in the morning. We boarded our tour bus for the 3 ½ hour drive into Hanoi. It was a long but very interesting drive through small villages and past miles and miles of rice fields. The farmers were also raising some vegetables and we saw some corn fields. There were many big, black water buffalo and cattle roaming the fields that were not flooded for the rice production. Vietnam is only second to Thailand in the amount of rice that is exported. The farmers live in small villages and walk or ride bicycles to their fields. It was Sunday but we saw many women standing in the mud and water covered rice fields pulling weeds from their crop. Our guide said 6 weeks after planting the rice they weeded before spreading fertilizer on it by hand. There was NO mechanization. Although I did see one man plowing with a water buffalo. Every thing was done by hand. I’m not sure how they could work stooped over every day for 12 hours a day. You will see pictures I took of the village houses right along the highway. They are very narrow with 2 to 5 floors. The bottom floor is their shop or little store and they live upstairs. The parents and young kids live on the 2nd floor and married sons and their families live on each of the upper floors. Vietnam is a “young” country. By that I mean 65% of the 87 million people have been born since the end of the war (1975 is when Siagon fell). The most remarkable thing about the whole day is that during the 7 hours of bus riding to and from Hanoi, we were not killed nor did our bus kill anyone. The drivers are insane. There are hundreds of motor scooters on the edge of both sides of the roads and buses, trucks, and cars playing the game of chicken down the middle. I guess they know how to play the game as I only noticed where one truck had ran off the road. The sound of horns was continuous the whole day even when driving in the city of Hanoi. We stopped about half way for a restroom break at an arts and crafts factory with a huge showroom of stuff for sale. I took some pictures of the girls at work sewing before I was nicely told “no photos”. Their work was beautiful and the pictures they were hand sewing took a month of work to finish. The picture I took of the cat face would cost $75 to buy. First stop when we arrived in Hanoi was at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum where we walked around with our guide for about 45 minutes. There were huge lines of Vietnamese people lined up to go into the mausoleum. We did not go inside. We saw the two houses where Ho Chi Minh lived. No lavish lifestyle here for sure! While walking, I saw two old men in what seemed to be old military uniforms so I eventually got up enough nerve to go over to them, as they sat eating some ice cream, and ask if I could take a picture of them. They slide apart and offered me a place to sit between them so I did and Rebecca took the picture. I am not so sure how nice they would have been if they knew I had dropped bombs on their city. It will be uploaded on the blog. All the people treated us well during our time in Hanoi. Then we drove to a temple but I have seen enough of them to last a long time so stayed on the bus. The city streets were clogged with motor bikes, millions of them, parked on the sidewalks if not on the street itself. Next stop was at what our driver called a “five star” hotel for a Vietnamese lunch buffet. Well, the Hanoi Daewood Hotel was maybe like our Holiday Inns and the food was not very good. I enjoyed the local beer though. Our drive after lunch took us through the old French area with the villas they built in early 1900’s and that now house most of the Embassies of other countries. We stopped for a guided walk through some old market streets. Each street had a specialty, like shoes. I have never seem so many shoes in my life! We enjoyed this part of the tour. The streets were packed with people on Sunday afternoon. Last stop was at the Hoa Lo Prison better known as “The Hanoi Hilton”. It was built by the French in early 1900’s so they could imprison Vietnamese resistance leaders but during the Vietnam War it was used to house US pilots that had been shot down. This is where Senator John McCain spent 6 years. Most of the prison has been torn down and replaced by new office buildings but what remains was turned into a small museum. Most of the museum was about how terrible the French treated their Vietnamese prisoners. Only 2 small rooms dealt with it use as a POW prison for US pilots. I found the place disgusting. The pictures of the POW’s were only ones showing them playing games and smiling like they were being treated well and having a good time. Nothing was mentioned about the years of torture, lack of medical attention, and lack of food our heroes endured. Then they had big pictures of the war protesters back in the US. I could tell that our guide did not want to talk about the subject and was nervous when he did. I found Hanoi not to be a modern city, as the Chinese cities were, and it was very dirty. The air was very polluted and many citizens wore masks over their nose and mouth. Ok, so I have seen it once and never plan to return. We headed back to the ship on another 3 ½ hours of hair-raising bus riding with again a stop at another crafts factory enroute. Our bus was the last to return at 6:40pm and we were last ones off the bus. As we stepped off the bus we were handed a cold wet wash cloth. Two waiters held silver trays with glasses of Champaign also. Very classy!! We were last two onboard and by the time we got up to our suite the ship was already sliding away from the pier. Even though we were very tired we showered and dressed for dinner up in the La Veranda. Rebecca retired after dinner but I went to the production show with the ship's singers and dancers.