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. 

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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