Vietnam Airlines has a monopoly on flights within the country, and as such, is prone to abuse of power. We left our luxurious hotel room at Hanoi’s Sofitel Metropole at 4am, and arrived at the airport to discover that we had been bumped, without notice, from our 6am flight to Hue. With five hours to sit on unpadded metal seats, listening to garbled announcements of further flight delays, I began to write my impressions of our travels in Southeast Asia during January 2008. Part one:

What we’ve seen of North Vietnam is a series of contradictions. The chaos of Hanoi, the quiet beauty of Halong Bay. Villages with televisions in every house, but no sewers or toilets. Cell phones held in indigo stained hands of mountain “minority” tribes whose heads and bodies were wrapped in hand dyed embroidered cloths. Pigs and chickens. Satellite dishes

There are tourists in Hanoi, but they are German, French and Australian, few Americans. Nevertheless, there is something familiar here – Hanoi feels like a large version of New York’s Chinatown. Street vendors and shopkeepers vie for customers with bewildering heaps of candies and clothing, shoes displayed in towering columns, heels towards the street. Cooking fires burn on street corners adding to a haze of smoky pollution. Motorcycles are everywhere, weaving around each other in indecipherable patterns, carrying twenty and thirty something young Vietnamese, who gaze straight ahead to their destinations. Few cars, fewer trucks. Whole families, pigs, kegs of beer, balanced with seeming ease on small motorcycles competing for space in traffic streaming endlessly through interweaving intersections. Blaring horns are the main form of traffic control and communication.

We take a four hour drive through town after grimy town, heading northeast to the port of Halong City. In each town, we pass military cemetaries and towering, narrow houses with elaborate facades and sparse furnishings. Groups of bicycling students in white windbreakers are dismissed before noon, allowing them time to work on the family farm. One town is dirtier than the rest - a center for coal mining - covered in a depressing pall of black dust. We arrive in Halong City and board our cruising junk where we stay overnight in a fitted wood cabin and dine on a five course meal. The beauty of the towering crags and endless caverns of Halong Bay contrasts with the floating villages of boat people who live in poverty at the end of the bay. The next morning we head back to Hanoi to spend the day touring the city.

We take the night train to Lao Cai, a small city far to the north, on the China border. We have booked all four berths, so the car is private, but there is no heat and the toilet is down the hall. It is so cold that I sleep in three pairs of pants and six shirts. Lao Cai is the entryway to Sapa, a former French colonial mountain retreat, and Sapa is an hour’s ride to the north through fogged over inclines and hairpin curves. Sapa turns out to be a gritty little town of steep hills and market stalls where giggling children on their way home from school shout, “Hello,” “Hello." We stay at the lovely Victoria Hotel overlooking the village below.

Outside Sapa are the villages of the mountain minority groups, each distinguished by the colors and cloth wrappings they wear. Black Hmong, Red Dao and others – our guide purchases government sponsored tickets allowing us to visit their villages and observe how they live. Stunning scenery of terraced rice paddies provides a green backdrop for the women who form the core of the village during the day. In Cat Cat village we are welcomed into the home of a 98-year-old woman, a long time friend of our guide, Hai. She adds wood to the fire and we are invited to sit around the pit and warm ourselves in the dark two-room home, which is lit by a single light bulb. I feel like we are in Colonial America, with pigs outside the back door and ears of corn hanging across the front porch.

It is the next day, in another village, that I meet the women of the Red Dao minority. They descend on tourists like a flock of colorful crows, chanting, “Buy from me, buy from me!” They follow us through the village, giggling and chatting, trying to establish a relationship for future sales. They speak mountain dialect, but little Vietnamese. Most speak some English; a few are fluent, having learned from conversations with tourists. “If you don’t speak English,” said Ta Mai, “you can’t sell.” They ask about my family, my children. The women are uneducated but want a better life for their children, who they hope will graduate from high school. The Red Dao women sit in groups and embroider, their cell phones at their sides. Most of them appear to be happy, smiling, singing while they work, while living their lives under the scrutiny of tourists with digital cameras. We buy what we can of their embroidered bags and cloths and I return to the hotel covered in mud.