In this case, North Vietnam.

Matt and I have spent the past two days seeing the sights in Hanoi. "The sights" consist of the Ho Chi Minh Masouleum, the Ho Chi Minh Museum, Ho Chi Minh's house, Hanoi Hilton, the Army Museum, and a couple of very old Buddhist temples. As you can tell, "Uncle Ho" has been a central figure in our tour so far. At the museum, we were able to "follow Ho Chi Minh's thoughts and exemplary morality" through a series of oddly artistic displays (pictures will be posted someday).

Basically, most of the information here deals with the Vietnamese fight for independence from France. Very little is written anywhere about the war with America. For instance, there are only two very small rooms at the Hanoi Hilton about the American POWs held there. It mostly showed pictures of them playing ping pong and talking about how wonderful it was. And the Army Museum has a lot of captured planes and tanks and helicopters, but not many displays with explanations about why America was bombing Hanoi in the first place.

Despite the propaganda (which they have every right to), Hanoi is very lovely. It actually has a very European flavor to it, with most of the buildings built by the French. There are lovely tree-lined avenues and a number of large lakes where old people do their calisthenics and play badminton at 5:30 in the morning. And the food, in restaurants or on the street, is very tasty. But it's hot and we're heading south tonight, where it's actually supposed to be cooler.

Before trotting around Hanoi, we visited the tourist town of Sapa, way up north near China in the mountains. They aren't lying when they say it's the Alps of Vietnam. It is very pretty. There are hill tribes there that still wear traditional clothing (which they will attempt to sell to you off their backs), and terraced rice fields that make for some stunning photography. And, with an elevation similar to Denver, it's cooler there!

It's actually been a pretty exhausting week, but we're really enjoying it and can't wait to see what the rest of Vietnam has to offer.

If you are, or are aspiring to be, an Evil Genius, get thee to Ha Long Bay just east of Hanoi because the Evil Hideout real estate market is HOT! We just spent about 24 hours on a junk in Ha Long Bay which is incredibly beautiful. Its a bit like Thailand's Andaman coast, but with a lot more islands. Almost 2000 of them, many of the islands have caves that are completely unexplored, and better yet (for evil geniuses at any rate) many of the caves and lagoons are only accessible at low tide as their entry points are below the tide line. That's what I call a stellar Evil Hideout. But forget I told you any of this! I want them all for myself. Do you hear me?! The Evil Real Estate is MINE! ALL MINE! Mwuah-hah-hah-ha!

Anyhoo... We arrived in Hanoi late Sunday night. We checked into our hotel and made a pathetic attempt to stay awake to watch the World Cup final, we fell asleep around the time Italy tied it at 1-1 and then had to turn off the TV sometime in the extra period. Woke up the next morning, drove to Ha Long Bay, and well, you know the rest (kind of) from the first paragraph. Wow. That was really dull, so against my better judgement, I'm going to tell you about Beng Melea.

The day after we visited the main temples in the Angkor Wat complex, we visited a somewhat remote temple from the same time period called Beng Melea. Which turned out to be a fantastic find. It is, or rather was, laid out almost identically to Angkor Wat, but looks far more like Ta Phrom (The Tomb Raider temple). Only where Ta Phrom is fairly crowded and cleaned up by virute of being 300 feet from Angkor Wat, Beng Melea had about 10 visitors the day we went and we hardly saw them. It has also been left in its "discovered" state, which means only about 60% of it is still upright, and to visit any significant portion of it, you have to climb over the giant bricks that once made up the ceilings. Which was quite a lot of fun really. There was a bit of Indiana Jones/Lara Croft channeling, only there was nobody trying to steal our newly-discovered-ancient-and-powerful-artifact. Probably because we didn't find anything like that.

The moral of this story is to always read your in-flight magazine because that's how we found out about Beng Melea in the first place.

And stay away from Ha Long Bay! There's nothing to see there!

Angkor Wat actually. Home of the cheapest souvenier t-shirts on the planet. Also a complex of 12th and 13th century Hindu and Buddhist temple ruins that rival Egyptian temple ruins. Granted, they're 3000 years younger, but (I think at least) the detail is far more impressive. Why am I telling you this? We visited there today and holy Pete was it ever hot.

Speaking of the heat, what I was struck by was how much the temples actually look like they're melting away. As though they're constructed of wax bricks that are just giving out under the heat after almost 1000 years.

By far the temple complex with the biggest "Gee whiz, isn't that cool" factor is Ta Phrom, portions of which you would recognize from the Tomb Raider movies. The temple is essentially being swallowed by the surrounding forest. Tree roots have replaced columns and even walls in keeping the structure upright. It gives the temple a very creepy suggestion of life, as if its going to eat you at any minute.

We leave Cambodia on Sunday for Hanoi, Vietnam.