Hello!! Yes, I'm still alive and kicking, despite the utter lack of posts. It's been a whirlwind trip through Vietnam. Three weeks, 1800+ kilometers, overnight "sleeping" buses, overnight trains, boats, cyclos, motos, bicycles, from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay to Hue to Hoi An to Nha Trang to the Lunar New Year (Tet) in Mui Ne to Saigon to the Mekong Delta (and onward to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, but that's another story). It was incredible and intense - I went from being completely overwhelmed and awestruck by Hanoi, to disenchanted with the middle bits, and then fell completely in love with Vietnam in the last week.
I have so much to say and not enough time. Internet access has been difficult throughout Vietnam. The way it works is that you get free internet in the lobby of your guesthouse and internet cafes are few and far between. The problem with the "free" internet is that there are only 2 or 3 computers, there is usually a wait, and when you do have a computer, people are staring into the back of your head, willing you to finish. The keyboards are crappy, and there is usually someone shouting or some other commotion going on in the lobby. And in Hanoi, freezing blasts of air were coming through the door at regular intervals. In short, it has not been at all conducive for anything but a cursory check of e-mail. In Hue, I decided to dedicate a morning to writing some posts. An hour or so into writing, the power cut, and when the computers started up again, the file I had saved to the desktop had disappeared. And my USB drive has contracted a virus. I'm really missing my laptop at this point in the trip!
BUT, I have loads of notes and when I reach Bali next week I plan to dedicate some time to catch up since there is so much to say, so look for some out-of-chronological order posts. I'll also post photos as I am able.
