unruly toast: vietnam, the pictorial version

Clearly this is an attempt for me to waste time, look at pictures, and think about how nice it would to be have a bowl of pho ga while sick in sub-zero Beijing weather. A curse upon you, El Nino!

But actually, it was cold the first few days in northern Vietnam. Here we are crossing the border. I was sort of sad to leave China (I might not come back again!) but ironically, at the end I didn't want to return . This place was all very new, by the way, as China tore down everything in its eagerness to attack Vietnam some 30 years ago. Boo, China. Now it's called the Friendship Pass.

Our first meal in Vietnam was the first, and possibly the best, of many bowls of pho. I began with a plan to take pictures of all the pho, but the number grew out of control. Sometimes we had pho for dinner, then breakfast the next day, then lunch; by dinnertime again I’d insist on absolutely no pho.

After this meal, we had some beer with a few guys, who were really interested in our marital status. They turned out, in fact, to be older than we. They also really wanted Cliff's phone number.

Vietnamese people clearly love da bai cai just as much as I do. This is in Cao Bang, an awesome northern city in which we were the only tourists. We spent a lot of time looking for food here (no restaurants) and bargaining for motorbike rides out into the beautiful countryside. To quote the Go: "Cao Bang is magical." And so it was.

The saga of pho continues! This is our third bowl, served up lovingly by a shop near the bus station of Cao Bang. Not the best, I think, but doesn't that plate of fresh lettuce look so tantalizing? And those limes? And the chilis??

Our first self-piloted motorbike ride down the highway of Ninh Binh—by the way, most highways in Vietnam are just two lane roads, with no divider and no lane markings, because lanes are interepreted very loosely, and the two directions of traffic exchange sides pretty fluidly.

Sadly, this one of the few action shots I have, because pretty soon Cliff forbade me to take photographs while on a motorbike, or do anything else involving movement and not holding on.

On one particularly lazy day in Ha Noi (well, there were several), we went to 3 or 4 cafes in one day. But this was the first that we went to in all of Vietnam, the first place where we discovered the wonder of Vietnamese coffee. The NYTimes recommended the French pastries here, and the coffee was probably the best.

Another pho shop! It's a definite truth that market stalls and open-air street shops sell the best bowls of pho, not restaurants, though there are those that try to charge you 30,000 dong for a bowl. Plastic chairs, ingredients hanging out in the open (including these fine chicken asses, see them up close), bent chopsticks, unidentifiable meats—all the sure signs of quality. And in the end, you pay less than US$1 for a delicious, steaming bowl of pho.

We paid 2000 dong to cross this thing. I'm glad someone's maintaining this bridge though! It wouldn't do to let it fall into ruin. We had to push the motorbike across.

I'm also sort of ridiculously proud of the fact that I stayed in my first bungalow. In fact, I found out just what a bungalow is. And learned to take record-speed (for me) cold water showers.

Our ridiculous seafood feast. Ridiculous in how cheap it was, and how delicious it was, and how much devastation we caused.

See what I mean? Utter devastation. In our defense I say that scallop shells are much more substantial than scallop meat, though the shrimp were mad hefty. Where else will you find this for US$10?

We gave away all our candy here to these fishermen's children in Mui Ne fishing village. Even though they fought over the candy (we had a limited supply, and somehow the children multiplied when the chocolate came out), they were pretty sweet and cute, especially compared to the children who came later....

The pirate children of the sands! They look very sweet, cajole you to ride down a slide down a sand dune, and then when you're down immediately ask you for 100,000 dong. Also, if you slide down with one person, you're somehow expected to pay all 8 of them around you. Here they are mobbing someone else. Really, they were vicious. It was awkward, and Cliff thinks I would have really given them 100,000 dong if he hadn't been there. (They were so cute at first.)

I enjoy this picture. Dog investigates.

Floating market. Those were some pretty knobbly, warty carrots in that boat.

Here is a landmark moment, one might even say a Hallmark moment. After years of not eating pineapples out of extreme phobia (due to one bad childhood incident, involving salt), I had my first fresh pineapple again. You can see its hacked off bits on the floor of the boat there. And it wasn't just a small chunk of a pineapple. It was almost half. I have to admit it was not bad, pretty decent, almost tasty. I mean, I did eat nearly half the thing.