My watch tells me it's Monday, which means we have been in Vietnam for over a week. Four of those days were in Ha Long Bay, and the rest have been here in Hanoi.

We didn't quite know what to expect from Vietnam. In America, we tend to mentally lump these Asian countries together. They all use chopsticks and squat toilets and speak strange tonal languages, and we sometimes figure the other differences are minor, like the differences between the US and Canada.

But from the minute we crossed the border, it was clear we were in a very different country than China. More different than we expected.

The first difference we noticed was in the architecture. The typical modern Chinese building is a 3 story cube covered in white tile. It has all the warmth and aesthetic beauty of a giant inside-out bathroom. But as we pulled into Hanoi we saw radical things like color, and curves, and wood trim. We had expected to see a few battered remnants of old French colonial buildings, but the pleasant surprise was that new construction also seemed to take into account the fact that you actually have to look at buildings and not just store bodies in them. The buildings were narrow and tall, more Amsterdam than Paris. They had high ceilings and big shuttered windows or French doors that opened onto balconies. Most were painted a beautiful yellow ochre.

It was clear these people -- at least some of them -- had good taste. One day we walked into a travel agency that had floors of such beautiful rich rare hardwoods it made me want to go out and chop down a rainforest.

We grabbed a taxi outside the railway station and headed north, towards our hotel. Along the way we noticed several other big differences between Vietnam and China. Most of the traffic was motorcycles and scooters, rather than bicycles and cars. People balanced impossible loads on the motorbikes. We saw TV's stacked 3-high, 12-foot long sheets of metal, and one small scooter actually held 6 people. A whole family! Amazing, especially considering the chaotic traffic.

We found a nice hotel for about $15/night, showered to wash away the last traces of the cold from our Prison Train (though this wasn't necessary since the weather was now hot and humid) and set out to explore the city. Our hotel was located in the Old Quarter, an ancient section of town in the center of Hanoi. The Old Quarter originally had 36 streets, each housing a different guild. Although some of the streets no longer sell their original merchandise -- like the Sugar street or the Clam Worms street -- there are still distinct streets for things like gravestones, shoes, silk, tin, votive papers, and baskets.

We wandered the twisting alleys, trying to learn how to cross the street with so many motorbikes criss-crossing in every direction. As we walked south heading around Hoan Kiem Lake another thing surprised us.

What were all the white people doing here?

We were used to going all day without seeing any Westerners, or at least seeing very few. But here there were dozens. Every block we passed them. Young, old. Backpacker, professional. So much for Vietnam being "undiscovered."

A few more tree-lined streets, more motorcycle dodging, and we found ourselves at Maison Centrale, the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" from the Vietnam War. Or American War as they call it here.

Much of the complex has been torn down to make room for a high rise office building, but the main entrance and several of the buildings remain. It was a strange feeling to walk through those front gates, knowing how many Americans had been held here. Most of the museum documented the attrocities commited by the French when the prison held Vietnamese freedom fighters, but a small display showed how well the American POW's were treated during their stay. Black and white photos showed several Americans with forced smiles holding chickens that they were "preparing for a typical dinner."

Despite the propoganda, it was an interesting museum and left us with the clear impression that Maison Centrale was not a fun place to be held, whether Vietnamese or American.

On the way back to our hotel we did some CD shopping. Very cheap at $.80 each. Strange to think they can afford to pay the artist's royalties out of that meager amount. And come to think of it, it's also kind of weird that the covers were photocopied, and the titles were handwritten on the CD's. Hmmmm. . .

The next day we toured an amazing site called the Perfume Pagoda. It was a series of temples and shrines set into the mountains along a small river about 3 hours south of Hanoi.

You can only reach the sites from the river, so after a bumpy van ride from Hanoi we boarded a small metal boat about the size of a canoe and were paddled upstream by a local villager. After an hour we reached the path that led up to the main site. We hopped out of the boats and started up the steep cobblestone path that was polished smooth (and slippery) by hundreds of years of pilgrims' footsteps.

As we sweated our way up the path through the humid jungle, I suddenly realized that those strange jungle-sounds like the screeches and caws and crackling sticks were actually real! They weren't just piped in over speakers to enhance the mood!

Our path took us to the very top of a mountain and then dropped straight down into what looked like a jungle-covered crater of a volcano. As we reached the bottom of the crater and looked up, all we saw was a small circle of blue sky surrounded by dripping green walls of jungle. And there, at the bottom, was a cave. A few shrines were placed here and there amongst the stalactites, incense wafted through the air and out the cave entrance, and a lone monk sat cross-legged stroking a kitten on his lap. This was full-on Indiana Jones country. I half expected to step on a booby-trapped cobblestone and send a giant round boulder tumbling down after us.

On the way back down to the river, we stopped at a beautifully restored chinese-style temple. Jungle and mountains rose up all around it, but inside was quiet and peaceful. We finally got a taste of what all those beautiful temples we saw in China would have been like if we had been spared the crowds.

The next few days we took a side-trip to Ha Long Bay (see previous Dispatch) and then returned to Hanoi for another couple days of siteseeing. None of the things we saw were spectacular, but several deserve Honorable Mention.

The Army Museum wasn't what you could call a high quality museum. Most of the exhibits were either bad reproductions of black and white photographs or else every day articles that had some apparent significance. For example, in a dusty glass case was a plain ballpoint pen with the caption, "Pen used by General Nguyen to write congratulatory note to such-and-such a platoon for their air defense efforts near such-and-such a town." Or the umbrella with the caption, "Umbrella used by so-and-so to protect herself from rain while protesting the puppet regime of the South Vietnamese government." Not exactly thrilling show-peices of national pride.

There were some sections, however, that made the museum worthwhile. One entire exhibit was dedicated specifically to mothers. They had pictures of mothers who had lost several sons in wars, and they showcased other ways in which mothers had contributed to Vietnam's wartime success. It was neat to see their efforts recognized, that the country acknowledged publically that it's not just soldiers who make great sacrifices during war.

The largest section of the museum documented the Vietnamese fight for independence from the French in the 1950's. The thing that struck me here -- as I looked over the crudely printed pamphlets calling for freedom and the tattered hand sewn flags that flew in early battles -- was how similar this periphenalia was to all the artifacts that we in America worship from our own Revolutionary War.

A disturbing series of exhibits were the "trophy cases" of downed US airmen. In each case was a pair of boots, flightsuit, helmet, survival book, flares, and all the other stuff that the pilot had when we was captured. Sometimes you could read the name of the pilot on the helmet or flightsuit. I can't imagine being a pilot, coming back to Hanoi, and seeing my own things laid out in a museum like a prize. Worse, many of the helmets had gaping holes, and you know the pilots didn't survive.

Despite the crowds of roving westerners in Hanoi, we were the only people (either Vietnamese or western) in several of the museums we visited. For some reason, I really wanted to see the National Air Force museum, so I dragged Sarah with me to the old concrete building on the outskirts of Hanoi. When we arrived the building was dark. I was worried the museum was closed but we decided to check anyways, so we walked passed the junkheap of downed US airplane parts towards the entrance. Just as we got there, the door swung open and a uniformed lady let us inside. We paid our 10,000 dong admission ($.70) and she turned on the lights.

As we wandered through the exhibits she scurried ahead, flipping switches to light up the room we were about enter and to turn off the lights behind us. This was their National Air Force Museum! It was like showing up alone at the Air and Space Museum in DC and having someone follow you around to light up the Spirit of St. Louis with a flashlight.

A few of the museums deserved to have no one there. The National Fine Arts museum was in a pretty building, but the art was fairly uninspiring. Walking down the halls we could easily pick out the Vietnamese knock-off of Degas, of Renoir, of Picasso. . .

But the Ultimate Sleeper Award goes to the Vietnamese Women's Museum. Except for an exhibit showing the different costumes worn by the 54 minority groups in Vietnam, it was all bad photographs and boring everyday objects. Here's one example, and I swear I'm not making this up.

Up on the second floor, proudly displayed amongst snapshots of various panel discussions from international women's conferences, was a large photograph of a serious looking young Vietnamese peasant woman. Beneath the photograph, this caption:

"National rice-seedling transplanting champion of 1971."