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trip! Northern Vietnam
We
set out on a 7-day private tour of Vietnam's northeast in a Russian
4x4 jeep, departing from Hanoi. This jeep had all the amenities and
creature comforts of a child's go-cart, and our confidence soared
when we learned that it could be completely dismantled with a single
wrench and screwdriver. From the looks of it, this had happened many
times -- our guide pointed out its original Russian parts, its
cheaper Chinese imitation parts, and its even cheaper Vietnamese
imitations of Chinese imitations. During the trip, we learned
first-hand that our driver was quite adept at taking apart the jeep
-- he took apart the gear box on the
first
night (!), and a small cooling fan (i.e., the car's
multi-directional, air-conditioning system) from one area of the
dash to another. We traveled through remote towns on some very rough
roads (almost as bad as Madagascar). Overall, however, we were
surprised at how much infrastructure was present in even the
smallest towns (unlike Cambodia): all had electricity, water &
sewage, telephone, and paved streets!
The scenery in this region was stunning -- hundreds of giant limestone boulder-mountains rise out of flat rice paddies. As we reached the coast, these boulders continued into a bay called Halong Bay, at which point we ditched the jeep for a large boat.
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