Mai Chau

On Tuesday we went to Mai Chau. It is a little tiny village where the Thai minority live in stilt houses.  It was about a 3 hour drove north west of Hanoi. The vistas along the way were gorgeous.  Lots of rice fields, sugar cane and green tea growing along the side of the hills and as we got closer to Mai Chau, there were high peaked mountains without the snow.  We even saw a beautiful golf course with many Vietnamese women working on the course with there conical hats.  Other interesting sites along the way included pigs in cages on the back of motorcycles I presume being brought to the market. A man holding a bill board on a motorbike and you could not even see the driver.  There were many water baffalo meadering in the middle of the road and one little boy was hitting one on the behind to move out of the road so he could pass on his bike.  There were open markets in villages with raw meat sitting out in the blazing sun all day. I wonder what microorganizisms were growing there.  There were live fish in plastic blow up pools.  It was quite the site!  We picked up Peter and the kids on the way home and went to the old quarters for good old pizza and ribs.  It was so..good to have western comfort food again.  Wednesday was a quiet day.  We walked around the markets and we got ourselves completely turned around.    The streets twist and turn and each cross section is a new name.  Each street is also lined with similar products ie.  A hardware section, a clothing section, a street full of baby parafanalia, a street full of shoes and etc.  It is completely chaotic.   As Kay said, it is a cacaphony of sounds.