been to a few places since my last update, so i'll try to sum up. with my foot healed, i was ready to move, so i bought an open bus ticket to saigon, which allows you to stop at five places along the way. the first stop was nimh binh, about two hours from hanoi. it was a nice town, though the reason i went was so i could ride a motorbike through the countryside, but then the guy wouldn't late me take one by myself. which i guess is fair, because they were manual and i don't know how to work a manual motorbike, but i was disappointed. nonetheless, i had some fun days biking through the beautiful countryside, even though the "blissful back roads" that lonely planet describes turned out to be tiny paths often made of sand or mud or water, and sometimes filled with men holding rifles. well they weren't holding rifles like to shoot me, they looked like farmers going to shoot ducks or something, but it was a bit frightening.
from there i went to hue, which is supposed to be the scene for the art & architecture crowd, as compared w/ the more partyish areas. it was okay, but a typhoon hit while i was there so all my stuff is completely soaked. i took a day trip into the DMZ, the de-mitilarized zone from the vietnam war where, ironically, most of the fighting took place. it was interesting to see some important sights from the war, and we got to walk through the underground tunnels dug by the north vietnam army.
i've decided to change my plans to travel through the rest of vietnam, and am turning north again, where i'm going to travel to kunming and complete the trail i started in may, from kunming to dali to lijiang and the tiger leaping gorge. i figure if i'm leaving china, i should spend the end of my time in china. i'm hoping to get in a trip to halong bay before i go, though as monsoon season has started i'm not sure if i'll be able to make it.
i've had some random thoughts i wanted to jot down while i was travelling, but i've forgotten most of them. oh, one was that its been interesting meeting westerners from random countries that i've barely heard of. so far i've met a girl from tanzania, and one from estonia. i always have to be careful not to let them know that i have no idea where their country is, and usually i figure it out eventually. other than that, most everyone is from the uk, australia, or holland. thats nice too.
also i'm back in hanoi now, i just spent the night on a sleeper bus with an english guy who complained about everything in the world, reminding me that perhaps i shouldn't complain so much, because its kind of annoying. but i mean he was especially bad, because he kept complaining about stupid things like, "why don't they take some of the zeros off their money?" or "why didn't they have loads of buses going to main towns from the lao bao border when i crossed at 12 at night?" anyway, hoping to make it back to china without drowning in all this rain.