I remember little of Lang Son, our first Vietnamese town, beyond some scruffy children playing in the street and ignoring the equally scruffy park nearby. Our taxi to Hanoi was a modern minivan, and the driver did the usual Asian public transport routine of circling through town to find more fares. Just as we were about to ask if he would ever head south, he did, and the lush countryside returned, punctuated by those box houses and the occasional Catholic church.

The modernity and comfort of our road and our vehicle were a continual contrast to the fields through which we passed, being worked by human and animal labour. Water buffalo are commonly seen here, just as in China, pulling ploughs or tethered and grazing, but to see them through the tinted glass of an air-conditioned van, while Vietnamese pop music (really American style rock 'n roll with Vietnamese words) blares from hi-fidelity speakers, is a true study in incongruity.  Asia has always been a land of disconcerting contrasts, has it not? High-rise towers of commerce are within a easy walk of 9th century stone piles that were once splendid temples; a branch of the Silk Road, redolent of camel caravans, once came this way but that road is now populated with trucks that I have seen carrying camels (albeit not in Vietnam); Roman coins are found in Cham emperors' tombs; and Vietnamese teenagers, those who are not ankle-deep in mud behind a water buffalo, are now speeding through the streets of Hanoi on their motorbikes wearing t-shirts that read "US Army".

The motorcycles of Hanoi - ah, who would have thought, in the let's-bomb-them-back to-the-stone-age sixties, that Hanoi would ever again have streets, let alone vehicles?  But vehicles it has "by the glory" (Ruth's favourite phrase), and the two-wheeled motorized variety predominates by far.  We had lived in Suzhou, China, where the bicycle is king and we quickly came to reverse an initial misapprehension:  that dodging motorcycles would be much more difficult and dangerous than dodging bicycles.  You must understand that throughout Asia things with wheels have the right of way over things with mere feet.  Stepping into a street filled with bicycles is much more problematic since the time between the realization that a collision is imminent, and the actual event, is very short - a second or two at most.  But if a motorcycle is approaching at high speed its driver is looking farther ahead than would a cyclist, he sees you much sooner, makes a minute shift to his centre of gravity, and gracefully glides behind or in front of you.  The trick is simply not to do anything abrupt, stand still or calmly continue to walk.  This is not easy as a group of them bears down upon you, but trust me, it is vital.

The appeal of western materialism is nowhere so strong as in Asia and among the young. If you can't afford a car then you go into debt for a motorcycle, and if you can't afford a motorcycle a bicycle will have to do. In Hanoi, as in all other Asian cities I have seen, the people are lightening their hair, having their eyes widened, and wearing what they perceive to be western fashions, no matter how impractical or painful.  Skin-tight jeans and high heels are often seen, no matter that the wearer is walking on the beach or that the temperature is approaching 40 degrees.  Few western girls would dress so on a hot and humid day. There are also those who have recently arrived from the country, more traditional young people who, I suppose, quickly succumb to the sexy new look if they can afford it. Their modest and more shapeless attire bespeak their Buddhist upbringing, and I quietly mourned the erosion of this gentle culture, all the while admiring the fresh young figures revealed by the brash imported one.  In this connection, the ao dai must be mentioned. This is the national costume of Vietnam for both men and women, though I think I have only ever noticed women wearing it.  It consists of a blouse and loose pants beneath a panel than hangs down the front and back of the wearer. That prosaic description does no justice at all to the final effect created by a graceful Vietnamese girl wearing one.  Topped by a conical straw hat, the effect is quite magical.  Even a not-so-graceful girl looks fresh and attractive in an ao dai, and if Hollywood-style raw sexiness wins out here, something truly lovely and subtle will have been lost.  Both genders love colourful motifs:  pop stars, cartoons and phrases in often very fractured English are popular on t-shirts, as are commercial logos and national flags, especially the Vietnamese yellow star and the Stars and Stripes.

Has this new generation, I wondered, so completely forgotten the recent devastation of their country? Have the older people not passed on that memory? Apparently not, and the lust for consumer goods now dominates all.

Lust there may be, but not always means.  On the streets also are dirty-faced youngsters, selling nearly everything.  These homeless ones desperately hawk sunglasses, maps, cheap jewelry and toys, or pirated guidebooks and other English reading material.  There is a thriving industry throughout Asia that produces photocopied editions of the Lonely Planet guide or whatever novel someone has decided tourists will buy (or more likely whatever novel happens to come to hand).  Some titles are seen all over, and we both read harrowing accounts of survival during the war and learned about Mama Tina, the Irish woman who felt the call to aid the street kids of Saigon - more on her later.  These young entrepreneurs have learned street English and can often communicate quite well, using guilt-inducing phrases like, "Will you help me, please?"  We were fully aware that, while not rich by any western standard, we were much better off than these urchins, but we were travelling light, just a backpack each and with no home to return to in Canada.  We supported them as we could, even getting to know one young man by sight after several persistent encounters.  His Vietnamese phrasebook ($5) turned out to have several faded and unreadable pages.

We were staying at the Real Darling hotel, in Hanoi's Old Quarter, a place entirely typical of the design of such establishments in Asia.  Indeed, Asian hotels and restaurants constantly surprise me.  A tiny and grimy eatery with two or three tables turns out to have a spacious and inviting upstairs area, and a narrow hotel lobby such as at the Real Darling, will have at the end of a dark hallway an opening onto a pleasant Italianate courtyard with attractive stone staircases with wrought iron handrailings and inlaid with colourful tiles, leading to your well lit room on the fourth floor.  The staircases here however, seemed to go every which way, like an Escher print, and we had to memorize at which landing and past which potted palm we should continue our ascent.  It was lovely.

The hotel seemed to be located on Buddha street.  As is common in Asia, the street contained shops of which one type vastly predominates.  We have seen streets with nothing but shoe stores, or garden shops - this street had religious artifacts of the most bright and glitzy sort.  No antiques here, this was contemporary Buddhism.  Silver, gold and crimson - and plastic wrap - are what I remember, made even more eye-catching by multiple spotlighting.  The sparkling statuettes, plastic and ceramic, of fat smiling Buddhas spilled out onto the sidewalks, some with electrified halos containing small coloured lights that flashed on and off in concentric circles.  Every home and business here has a small shrine with incense sticks burning before the Buddha and offerings of fruit.  Buses will have a "St. Christopher" Buddha mounted beside the driver.  Buddhist serenity is big business in South-East Asia.

The French influence is still strong here too. We had been missing cheese in China, and Hanoi had many shops selling Vache Qui Rit wedges.  Throughout the countries we visited, the laughing cow logo was commonplace and its product was never seen to be refrigerated, attesting to the triumph of marketing over the desire to eat foods without nitrites. In one market, however, we spotted a round of real gouda and that evening we feasted in our room on cheese, baguettes and mangos. We had shortly before realized that the ladies with the huge and not very heavy looking baskets on their backs were selling French baguettes. French wines, including some quite good chateaux, the ubiquitous Vin de Pays d'Oc (the best wine value around - even in Canada!) and locally made varieties, were available at low prices ($2 to $15), and I would gladly return to Hanoi just for its oenological and gastronomic offerings at its hundreds of restaurants.  An interesting observation was that many restaurants prominently displayed signs declaring that they did not serve chicken or eggs.  The chicken-flu scare was in full swing.

Since we found Vietnamese cuisine not much to our liking (though there is a hot-and-sour fish soup that we enjoyed from time to time), we frequently sought out Indian restaurants.  Both of us are decent cooks and I can make what I used to think was a good curry, but chefs here have an inestimable advantage over Canadians:  they can utilize coriander and cumin and all the other fabulous curry ingredients which have been newly picked, dried and ground.  Even a mediocre cook can look good here, and the fresh brilliance of the flavours has not left me.  To bite into a cardamom seed and have it explode with flavour is a truly shocking and delightful - and for me, novel - experience!  As our travels were coming to an end and we realized how many times wehad eaten in Indian cafes, we began to joke that perhaps it was time to visit India - maybe that will be the next travelogue.

I cannot fail here to praise Vietnamese coffee.  Dark, rich, thick, deep - where are the adjectives that can convey the profundity of the coffee growing just a few kilometres away on those green hills?  Why do we foreigners content ourselves with that albeit acceptable but horrendously overpriced Starbuck's stuff?  A cup of pure heaven can be had here for 20 cents! Western consumers take note: you are being bilked, and I would like to be known in history as the instigator of the Consumers' Coffee Rebellion.

The market that had the cheese was close by the Cambodian consulate where we went to obtain our visas for that country, the next on our itinerary. Visas are a constant annoyance to travellers and one has always to be thinking about when and how borders are going to be crossed. Changing government requirements and tales told by other trekkers can cause one's plans to alter radically. In this case however, all went smoothly, in fact much more smoothly than it should have. After filling in the usual forms, to one of which a photo must be attached, I realized I didn't have any photos with me.  Every savvy traveller carries passport photos, but not I, not that day. I had visions of Ruth's scorn and having to return to the hotel and rummage through my backpack, but to my consternation the man said, "Don't worry. I help you. I just xerox your passport photo.  It okay." I say consternation because it is one of my favourite passtimes to belittle bureaucrats, especially customs and immigration officials. My experiences at the Canada/US border, while daisy soft compared to, say, Checkpoint Charlie, had nevertheless left me over the years with a deep distrust of the reasonableness, or even sanity, of these people. Here was one though, who was being straightforward and helpful, and he represented a corrupt and inefficient third-world regime to boot! How was I possibly to assimilate this man's attitude into my world view? I confess I have not entirely succeeded, and his pudgy, smiling face still haunts me. Not only that, he told us to return in only an hour to pick up our passports. Would his largesse never cease? When we finally left, colourful Cambodian visas in hand, we both marveled at how it had worked out...and then we found the gouda. Yes, I love Hanoi! The only downside was that somewhere I lost my glasses as we walked about during that hour. Possibly the guard with the machine gun just outside the consulate picked my pocket, but I don't think so. Westerners are a privileged lot these days, and are treated very carefully everywhere I have been.

Near the consulate also was The Bookworm, a bookstore and exchange. An unexpected thing happens to most tourists - newbies take note! - they come to crave reading material in their own language.  We were old hands, having experienced Literature Withdrawal in China, but our meager stock of books was now exhausted.  When you are backpacking, you don't want to carry weighty tomes.This place was thankfully warm, had comfortable benches and soft guitar music, and many shelves of books of all sorts to purchase or exchange.We spent a happy hour there and went home to start reading.......

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