Good morning Vietnam!

Hanoi is celebrating 1,000 years as the capital of Vietnam. My knowledge of the country was essentially limited to the ‘Nam of action movies. But it seems that that the American war of the 70s was just one in a long line of irritations to be swept aside - long before then the Chinese had occupied for centuries, the French colonized, and even the Japanese arrived for a while during the second world war.

The Ho Chi Min museum offers an interesting take on this – Uncle Ho (‘Bringer of Light’) seems more of a popular nationalist than an ideological communist, influenced as much by western art and literature as bolshevik rhetoric. The guards gave us a taste of commie customer service by unsmilingly evicting us at 11am for workers’ playtime, so we indulged in a capitalist icecream whilst admiring the beautifully brutal architecture and enjoying the blaring revolutionary songs.

Hanoi itself is bright and bustling, but blighted by traffic. The old town will be lovely once pedestrianised, but at present it’s hard to appreciate whilst dodging speeding motos and thuggish taxis. Hoan Kiem Lake is a more pleasant walk, complete with popcorn sellers, plastacine modelers, calligraphy writers and dice players. It even boasts an Arthurian legend of a sword emerging from the depths. Sadly the lady of this lake is a big fat turtle.

Escaping to the coast, we dipped our toes in the South China Sea at Hanlong Bay. The scenery is stunning – sailing in a wooden junk between thousands of small, green dome-shaped islands (limestone ‘karsts’) is truly breathtaking. Sleeping alongside the ship’s rat population is less romantic. And I'm not impressed with the skipper’s opinion that rodents on a boat prove its buoyancy.

The overnight train journey to the far north provided a better night's sleep, and we awoke on the cold and misty border with China. Driving up and up we arrived at the old French hill-station of Sapa. This Alpine landscape is home for many traditionally garbed ethnic groups, who skillfully cultivate rice on intricate terraces even at nearly 3,000m, and cleverly sell colourful handicrafts to visitors – be warned, the only Christmas prezzies I'm giving this year are ethnic hats.

Cool, clean and canine-free – Vietnam was a welcome break from Cambodia. Katja even managed to pick up some basic language, though it is 'tonal', so something which sounds essentially the same can have a completely different meaning depending on how your voice goes up or down. Perhaps it seems less immediately foreign because it’s possible to read straight away, the Vietnamese alphabet being similar to the western one. I missed the Cambodian bowing and relaxed approach, but loved the food and drink. Fresh beer (bier hoi) was a great find, and coffee is everywhere – did you know that Vietnam produces more coffee than any other country in the world after Brazil? ‘Pho’ (noodle soup) makes a great breakfast, especially if you avoid the stinky fish sauce, the rice is light and nutty, and deep fried tofu from a street stall is lick-smackingly good. All this with not a dog in sight – on the streets at least, though I suspect there were a few on the menu…

Back in Hanoi, the Temple of Literature was another haven of peace, and had a display of superb photographs to celebrate the city’s millennium – beautiful, telling images which for me captured the essence of the city even more than a thousand years of the temple’s words.