I love Vietnam! Part II

In yesterday's story, we had just stumbled across a bunch of farmers drying their hay and grain in the middle of the road before we headed farther west.

We knew we were at the right place because Les said that this sign...

announced the start of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is where we were supposed to turn.  I was certain it was an election poster (note date in upper right hand corner), but I was in no position to argue, so left we went.

As it turned out, he was right (but it wasn't because of the sign we saw, I'm sure of it!).  Heading south, we travelled through miles of beautiful rice fields with spectacular bluffs off in the distance.  My camera doesn't do any of this justice (especially since the "zoom" feature isn't working for some reason).

Eventually we came to a billboard advertising the "Sky Golf Resort".  Being as we were parched, we decided to take a detour in hopes of finding a cold beer.

We wondered up into the hillsides on a dirt road where we finally found a guard tending his shack.  He stopped us and said something in Vietnamese. After giving him a blank look and saying "beer" and "drink" about ten times, to no avail, I attempted a charade-like golf swing, complete with "schtook" sound effect (that would be the sound of the club hitting the ball) and he let us right through.

Of course, we had no intention of playing golf, so when we arrived at the club house, we were summarily asked to leave. And, no, they had nothing for us to drink.

We meandered through the hillsides, marvelling at the scenery (at least I did; most of it escaped Les I'm afraid).

You can't see much (thanks again, zoomless cell phone camera!), but on the lake, under the white-roofed building, was a penned in area full of ducks.  A good imagination would be helpful here.

Very cute little puppy (which, again, would have been cuter "zoomed").

The road narrowed here to a small bridge.  For the rare car which happened to reach this point, it's a dead end I guess.

We continued through the countryside taking in the spectacular scenery and all sorts of interesting sights.

We saw this often; an agricultural device of some kind.

Sign with dog in upper lefthand corner...and not in a good way, me thinks.

(sorry again for lack of zoom; I'll get that fixed soon).

We finally reached the point where we knew a another left turn should take us east again to meet up with a road heading north.  Along the way, we came to a stretch where house after house had hundreds of these strange limestone (I guess) rock formations.  There were often people out "working" on them (cutting? drilling? shaving? Power tools were definitely involved), but I have no clue what the end result is.

Here's a huge lotus pond, full of soon-to-be-blooming lotus flowers,

the national flower of Vietnam.

These guys are toting a door, length-wise.  Intersting.

We eventually popped out at Phu Ly, about 60 kilometers south of Hanoi (just under 40 miles) where we hopped on the AH-1, the main freeway back into town.  Travelling on the equivalent of a heavily-congested Vietnamese interstate was like playing a video game where you're forced to speed past one obstacle after another.  I was glad to finally make it home.

As it turns out, the majority of our trip took us through what is called "Ha Long Bay on land".  The area is full of massive limestone karsts (look it up!) which dot the countryside.  There are several national parks in the area (none of which we happened upon) which I'd eventually like to see.

It was a fantastic day and yet another reminder of how grateful I am to have the opportunity to live here for these short months.  I couldn't help but smile the entire time and marvel at how lucky I am to be here.

How can you not love the world?  :o)