"sometimes i've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast'

dennis and i toured the mekong delta. most people there live on boats or some sort of floating house. we were told that many people in the mekong only set foot on land a few times in their lives. it is eerily like the movie water world--but lower budget. whole communities float together. the merchants advertize by roping their goods to the mast (potatoes, combs...) after exploring by boat, we went to a town called cai be where we saw people making rice paper. dennis tasted some local snake wine. remember those coiled snakes in the last post? he drank that.












now we are in cambodia. we started in phnom penh...more to follow.

"but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice"

andrew joined me on thanksgiving in hanoi. we've had fun dodging motorbikes, experimenting with the most effective way to say no to someone selling something, and trying to find trashcans. here's a little sketch of our vietnam adventures:


hanoi:
hats on bike. here you can move a house on a bike.


balloons and more balloons



andrew and monet's garden at the temple of literature



sometime hard to see the city...but i am thankful for electricity.



at the museum of ethnology there were about a hundred model brides being photographed. since then we have seen more and about one bridal shop per block. also, i've noticed that just about every other woman is pregnant--maybe a result of the marriage craze (or perhaps the relationship is inverse)



a little late night pingpong in hai phong


trying to get in the christmas spirit




cat ba island in halong bay

when talking about his film career, andrew sited both "requium for a dream" and "lock stock and two smoking barrels" as inspiration.






this is how we got around. don't worry mom, there's a helmet in my pocket.




this is the family we rented the bikes from. they lived right here.



we hiked 14 km in the national park, ending in a beautiful fishing village for lunch.

these are really cool ferns that shrivel (temporarily) when you touch them! andrew's footage will be on the next planet earth.






it's ping! except they're not chinese







next we went down to ninh binh

we took a delightful boat ride through the three caves in tam coc
andrew ducking to get through the cave


thun and her dad


i couldn't help but wonder how many conical hats a vietnamese woman goes through in her lifetime


bich dong is a pagoda cut in the side of a karst outcropping. we hate pagodas but love karst (andrew tried to take a boulder home with him)






next we went to hue, the site of the bloodiest battles of the tet offensive. we walked along the perfumed river and in the forbidden city and visited the citadel. before moving on to saigon.


HCMC--we really enjoyed this city, especially the war remnants museum which had sobering depictions of the war. it was staunchly anti-american (the name previously was "the museum of american war atrocities") but educational nonetheless. there was an amazing sculpture made out of landmine fragments that was the highlight for me.

mmm, dinner! everytime we ate meat, andrew was convinced it was dog.


at the famous ben thanh market


more possibilities for dinner


this photo is for erica and john walsh--may you reach such lengths.


at the fine art museum...
ab found a look alike. he wanted a picture at the US embassy but they tried to gun him down. this was second best.

there was bird poop on the art


at the reunification palace, down in the war tunnels.

crossing the street is a fun dodge and weave game

andrew's last night we found an excellent kem (icecream) parlor.