Goodbye Vietnam

Hello all, sorry about the delay in getting you another blog entry, but apparently an earthquake in Taiwan knocked out all the internet in the city yesterday.
I'm in Hanoi, getting ready to fly back to Saigon this afternoon. I think I'll have to stay there the night and then take a bus to Cambodia tomorrow morning.
I spent three days in the mountain town of Sapa. It was beautiful. The main attraction of the town is the opportunity to interact with some of the minority ethnic groups that live in the area. This raises some questions about the ethics of cultural tourism. But I digress.
We arrived in Sapa and met our guide, along with the other members of our group. The most interesting pair was a couple from Canada that now teaches English in Hong Kong. They were very nice and had some interesting stories about Hong Kong.
We were scheduled to go on a mountain trek for the day, but I think our guide didn't feel like doing the hard walking. We just walked down a road in the mountain. I didn't realize that he took us down the easy, unexciting road, and not climbing through the rice paddies like he was supposed to till we met people who'd done a similar trip and the guide gave them a choice between the two routes. I think my dissatisfaction with our guide may already be apparent.
We walked to a village of the Black Hmong people and then we slept in a Day village. These people survive raising rice and bringing tourists into their homes. We slept the night in the village. It was really cold. Definitely below freezing. We huddled around an indoor open fire in a hut made of bamboo. It was more fun in retrospect than it was at the time. We had grilled water buffalo meat that was flavored with chilis. It was delicious but my mouth was so on fire I had to go walk around outside and breathe the cold air for about ten minutes to calm it down.
The next day we walked to another village and to a waterfall that was pretty. It was a sheer rock face with water running down it. We climbed up part way and realized getting down would not be so easy....so we came down very carefully.
The trip was nice and I'm glad I had the experience, but some things about it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. We met some nice kids that walked to their village with us. They speak freakishly good English and you can tell they speak it every day with foreigners. We had fun with them. Then came the hard sell. They were really upset when I didn't want to buy anything. The whole time we were walking, both days we had native women in hot pursuit of us, trying to get us to buy their embroidery and other things. They were really aggressive and got angry when you didn't buy.
An English woman tagged along with our group on the hike and homestay and the guide tried to charge her $20 for the night. I thought $6 was a reasonable charge for the services we received. The thing that's upsetting isn't the money. It's not about the money, it's about the principle of the thing. I'm happy to pay for what I receive, and so are most tourists here. It's being grossly overcharged because the guide wants to take his cut off the top, or because he thinks he can that's offensive. Same with the incident with the lady with the bread--it's about the principle, not the money.
Also, I can't help but feel like tourist presence is a serious intrusion on these people's lives. But then, maybe the extra money has improved life for them, I don't know. I'm also told that the "cultural tourism" has actually helped some of these people maintain their communal identities in the face of the government's effort at "Vietnamization." A lot of these people didn't support the communists and don't want to be assimilated into Vietnamese culture. There are probably posititives and negatives to the situation.
We spent the morning of the 26th doing some more hiking around the city. I bought some embroidery work from a Red Dao woman. It's really pretty and very old. One of the women made it for her own dress and when she was done using it she sold it. I like having things like that that people made for themselves--they are made with a different level of care and it shows.
Back in Sa Pa, there was a fatal car accident, I saw a serious fight between 2 women (I'm talking fisticuffs, hair pulling, knees to the stomach, etc), a woman who had fainted get put on a motorbike and driven away, and a bird in its death throes all in the space of an hour. Bad ju ju in the area, time to go. We took the night train back to Hanoi and spent the day here yesterday.
Krystyna and Derrick left for Malaysia yesterday afternoon, so I'm back to being by myself for now. It was really fun to travel with them.
I'm feeling pretty ready to leave Vietnam. People keep telling me other places are nicer than this. People are more friendly, etc. People in the north have been more aggressive about selling things and get angry when you say no. I have motorbikes driving into me and asking if I need a ride. I've taken a couple tours and they end up being disappointing. I don't feel like I learned a lot about Vietnam from any of the guides. They just kind of herd you around, but don't offer any interesting information. I don't get the sense that they're excited to share their country with visitors or that they understand that we want to learn about their country. I also get the impression that the tourism industry is not well developed here, which has a down side. It means that only one tour exists, basically. In other places, if you want to go trekking, you can. If you want to go to the jungle/national parks for a few days, you can. When the industry is more developed, there are more niche markets and a better variety of things to do. Here, it was nearly impossible to get to the national parks or do any kind of ecotourism.
I've had a nice time in Vietnam, but I feel ready to move on and I'm excited to see more places. I think these 3 weeks have really helped me ease into traveling and I've learned a lot about how not to get ripped off, how to meet friends, how to find something to eat (sometimes more difficult than you'd expect), etc.
I'm also excited to try some different food. I've been really disappointed with the food here. I've eaten in a wide variety of places, lots of food on the street, Vietnamese restaurants not catering to tourists, etc and the food is all the same. It's either Pho--noodle soup, or Com--rice with some stuff mixed in.
Taxi is here for the airport. Love you all and I will write again soon!