Vietnam : Sapa, Hanoi, Halong bay and Hue

Sin jow!
We have now been in Vietnam for a week, and here we are officially millionaires (1,000,000 vietnamese dongs = 32 pounds) and have had to trade our few words of Mandarin for Vietnamese, which is tricky as if you don't get the tone right people won't understand you. But everyone speaks great English so we just stay quite lazy most of the time (I know, shame on us...)
After crossing the border at Hekou/Lao Cai we took a minibus up the mountain to Sapa. It was a twelve seater and it seated 12, plus about 20 full black bin bags and all our luggage! It did struggle a bit on the steapest sections... Sapa is a lovely hill station surrounded by rice terraces, traditional villages, stunning peaks and generally lots of mist. The women here come on foot from there villages to sell their craft, and all dress in their traditional outfits (it is very different from China ; in Sapa people still follow their traditional way of life - even though they interact with tourists to whom they sell most of their production - they don't dress up for the tourists). Of course everyone tries to sell you something but in a very friendly way, and it is most of all an opportunity to have a chat. You get asked your name, your age, where you come from, if you are married, and you can ask the same back. Men from these villages didn't seem to appear in public, and the women I asked told me that their husbands were at home looking after the older children (the little one will be carried on mum's back all day) or doing building work for the village. It wasn't the season for that but i suppose that they also work in the paddy fields when the time comes.
After Sapa we took a train from Lao Cai to Hanoi : a hard seater (wooden slatted benches) for 12 hours to go 300km east... you definitely get the chance to take in the scenery at that speed! It was a fantastic experience, peacefully cruising through tropical landscapes, flooded rice fields, banana plantations, following the red river. We also sampled a few local snacks from the many sellers who walk up and down the train, and a sweet bean paste one filled with banana and wrapped in banana leaf was delicious. the atmospher was much more relaxed than on Chinese trains : fewer people, less noise, people chatting and sharing sweets, or lying down for a little nap when ther is enough room.
I am sure you will have guessed : it is warm here, and at around 25 to 30 degrees C we find it hard to believe that we are the 16th of december!
Hanoi is cheerful and chaotic : the city is taken over by motorbikes which move around in swarms. It wouldn't ne too much of a problem for pedestrians if they could use the pavements, but these are mainly used as motorbike parking spaces and as shops (a shop in Vietnam = the shop premises + the pavement in front of it) and also as restaurants. At any time of the day there will be people sat on tiny plastic stools on the pavement eating noodle soups, baguette sandwiches (yes, Vietnam does very nice french bread!) or sticky rice patties filled with meat and fried. So it is impossible to use the pavement, and also to cross the road, as most traffic lights don't work, and those that do are just ignored by motorbikes anyway. All this makes it a bit difficukt to walk around, so we only stayed one day in Hanoi, to see a water puppet show (a magical art where puppet masters are knee-high in water behind a screen and control their characters with sticks hidden underwater. The senes are taken from traditional Vietnamese life as well as folk legends, and are full of poetry and humour, with a soundtrack played live by a traditional orchestra. The ticket costing 60p, there is no excuse not to go!)
Then we took a tour to visit Halong bay, east of Hanoi. The landscapes are very beautiful (it looks like Yangshuo, in China, after a flood : the same karst formations - limestone humps - but in the shape of islands instead of hills) but it is absolutely full of tourists and their boats. We slept on the boat, which was very nice, and despite the apparent lack of organisation (we changed bus, boat and group several times) all went well and according to plan.
Back in Hanoi we took the night bus (nut a seated one this time : one journey on the sleeper bus was enough for us!) to hue, in central coastal Vietnam. It is hot and humid here, tropical style, and reminds me of the French West Indies : relaxed atmosphere, colonial buildings, and banana in everything! It is am area rich in History, with its citadel and various imperial tombs dotted about the surrounding countryside. And the good thing about sightseeing in Vietnam is that, contrary to China, the historical sights have been allowed to crumble a little and grow patches of moss, which makes you feel like you are the discovering them for the first time.
Tomorrow we are off to Hoi an, further South, to walk its ancient alleyways and peep into the tiny silk tailor shops. And I promise that as soon as I find a decent computer I shall put more photos online!