Jan. 1 in Hanoi

Wendy and I ushered in the new year in a small, grungy pho place in the 24-hour restaurant alley in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. We toasted with Cokes, which the guy at the table next to us ordered for us, since we couldn't communicate this to our waitress.

Pho in Vietnam is, as you might suspect, a wonderful thing.

Which is a great, great relief to us, after the disappointing blandness of Cambodian food. Except for amok, which is a lemongrass-y soup concoction, we did not come away with a high opinion of Khmer food. Khmer cheese was especially horrendous -- described as "mined pork cheese" on the menu, we brought it upon ourselves when we gave into curiosity and ordered this dish, which was some unholy combination of meat, fat, and ... ewww.

Cambodia was difficult. For more reasons than bland food. The atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge are so recent, they show up everywhere -- in the way you cannot go off marked paths, for fear of mines; in the missing limbs of the beggars in the streets; in the lack of an educated population. There was a feeling in the air, a heavy, troublesome kind of weight that bowed our shoulders and made us eager to leave.

We couldn't leave, though, for several days, because first Wendy and then I got sick there. Wendy got over her illness in 12 hours; I'm still feeling the effects of mine in periodic bouts of extreme fatigue, when even breathing feels like an effort. Because of being sick, we were in Siem Reap for six days, and felt every one of them because, I think, the weight of the past was pressing down on us more and more each day.

Leaving was a comedy of errors. First, our bestest friend and guesthouse manager, Chhay, uncharacteristically made a mistake when ordering our plane tickets to Luang Prabang, Laos -- he wrote down Jan. 7 as the leave date instead of Dec. 31. We jiggered flights around and figured out a way to get into Laos through another city, but a full connecting flight meant that we would have had to wait a day in Pakse before heading into the city we really wanted to see. So at the airport, we abruptly decided to go to Hanoi instead. I felt rather badly, negating the frantic work of Chhay and his uncle, who works at the airline company, but in the end, it's probably best we came here; with me still feeling the effects of being sick, Hanoi is a safer bet than Laos.

Getting the ticket to Hanoi, we went through some more shenanigans: the ticket agent first mistakenly put Ho Chi Minh as our destination on our ticket, which had to be taken back to the airport and changed. Then, our second, correct ticket was somehow mistakenly sent to Phnom Penh. So we got a receipt from the agent and joked the rest of the day about how we might be going to Hanoi, but who knew? We might be going to Bangkok! Or Vientiane! Ha ha! Ahahahaha!

On top of it all, after getting our receipt for the plane tickets, we went to the Angkoriana Hotel to sit by the resort-like pool again, where we ordered two dishes: spring rolls and salade nicoise. The spring rolls came. And then the waiter brought out a wicker container and opened the lid, announcing, "Fish amok." (Fish amok is a curry-like soup that is the best Cambodian dish I tried.)
Um, fish amok... salade nicoise... yeah, that's ... no. Fish amok wasn't even on the same menu page as the salade nicoise! This wouldn't have been half as funny as it was had it not been for the fact that when we were previously at the Angkoriana, we'd ordered two dishes, one of which the staff got wrong also. We sent it back, but the dish we ordered never came to us. However, it was charged to us on the bill.

All this made us rather punchy by the time we left. And very glad to finally make it to Hanoi, which is dirty, smelly, polluted, traffic accident-y, and wonderful. Every time we cross the street, we feel like we've achieved a great thing, and for good reason -- there are very few signal lights, and so you wait for a break in the stream of scooters, bikes, cars and buses to slowly -- slowly! -- and steadily make your way across. The slowness is key -- Lonely Planet says it's the best way to let the oncoming motorcyclists gauge how to get around you, and I think they're right.

We took today and yesterday very easy, sleeping in late and wandering slowly around rather than rush from sight to sight. We do regret missing seeing Uncle Ho's embalmed body, though.

Tomorrow morning, we're off on a three day tour of Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We'll spend one night sleeping on a reproduction of a Chinese junk, and one night sleeping on an island, plus spend one day kayaking around the magnificent stone karsts (rocky island-y thingees). Can't wait. The pictures look stunning.

After that, we're on an overnight train to Hoi An, where I hope to be able to log in again. Til then, amigos.