These photos are from my trip through Hanoi and Halong Bay.
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Market stall next to my hotel in Hanoi, which was in the Dong Xuan Market. | A butcher's stall in Hanoi. Yes, this is in fact how meat is sold: in fact, this is better than most. | Man plowing with a water buffalo, outside Hanoi. (This photo needs cropping badly, but I didn't have time--sorry!) | Apartment of a poor Hanoi citydweller. It's a 10x12 unheated, unpainted concrete cubicle. That's the bed: a hard wooden bed with thin straw mat. |
| Trip to a Farm | |||
| One of the hotel clerks in Hanoi invited me to tour his family's farm. So we got on a motorbike and off we went...70 kilometers up to his family's lychee farm, near the Chinese border. | |||
 |
 |
 |
 |
| A view from his parents' farm. | A worker comes up the dirt road. The green and red trees in the background are lychee trees. | Rice fields near his family's farm. | Nice view of a stream, near the toll gate... |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
An impromptu toll gate set up at the entrance to the village. The bridge over the stream in the last photo had nearly washed out, so some village children were imposing a "toll" to raise funds. (See the kids on the right?) Having seen the bridge, I was more than happy to contribute...I'm amazed it didn't dump us into the river, frankly. |
My guide's mother, plucking a chicken for our lunch. I was moderately surprised to find them slitting a chicken's throat over a bowl (the cooked blood later wound up on my plate, too), but the crowning touch was finding half a chicken head on my plate too--with beak and (closed) eyes. I didn't eat it, but I wonder now what it would have been like... | Wood fire for boiling the chicken. | Big baskets where his father keeps fighting-cocks. These are almost ubiquitous in rural yards in Asia, where cockfighting is a major entertainment in the evenings. |
 |
 |
 |
|
| A water buffalo at a nearby farm. Hey, so I *like* water buffalo.... | My guide's sister arrived with a full basket of morning-glory leaves, so I begged to try out the Vietnamese shoulder-sling. It's surprisingly stable, and very well-designed for carrying loads. | ...speaking of loads, this was another startling sight along the way. It's amazing what people transport on bicycles in Asia... | |
| Halong Bay and Catba Island | |||
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Halong Bay is full of gorgeous karst (limestone) islands like these...unfortunately it rained on the way in and out, so I didn't get many good photos. | Man paddling a boat in Catba Harbor. | Limestone formations in a cave in Halong Bay. This photo does not do the cave justice...it was amazing, but my photos mostly didn't come out. | We went hiking on the second day, passing through a flooded forest... |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| ...another forest photo. We scrambled over some very dangerous, sharp, slippery, and muddy rocks for five hours... | ...emerging into this beautiful valley... | ...where we ate lunch in a minority village. Northern Vietnam gets quite chilly, so this thatched hut is daubed with mud on the outside to strengthen it. | Scorpion brandy. The Vietnamese have a very strange taste for putting odd animals into brandy or whisky as tonics...I saw silkworms, geckoes, three different species of snake, crows (!), and seahorses (among other things). |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| A funeral procession in Bat Trang, a potterymaking village (aka tourist trap) near Hanoi. | A mechanical loom with 36 harnesses, running off a string of punchcards at top right. | The punchcards. It was mesmerizing to sit there and watch the loom weave...I wish Id' been able to ask more questions. |
A green treesnake in brandy. I kept waiting to see the giant clear glass vat with an entire cow suspended in it...I'm sure they've got one *somewhere* in Vietnam. And yes, they *do* actually drink the stuff. Even the ones with 1000 silkworm caterpillars in the bottle... |
