Crash!! (Again)

This morning we arrived in Hanoi after a 17 hour bus ride. It turned out to be quite an interesting ride--4 hours in we hit someone on a motorbike!! Jason said they actually ran into the side of our bus and weren't paying attention, so it was nice to know it wasn't our driver's fault. I felt the bus jerk quickly to the left then heard a loud "thud" on the right side. We stopped and some of us got out to see what was up. We aren't sure how bad the man was injured, but he was taken to the hospital (on another motorbike of course!). We were told he would be okay. A crowd of locals had gathered around to see what had happened, and as soon as the man was taken away, Jason and I became the center of attention. We had about 20 kids surrounding us, pulling Jason's hair, poking us, and giggling. One guy emerged named Hai who spoke decent English and translated for us with everyone. The young girls were captivated by Jason's hair, and gave him a round of applause when he put it in a ponytail on top of his head. They all wanted to take pictures with us and shake our hands, and told us many times how beautiful I was and how handsome Jason was. Later they asked me to sing a song, so I sang "You Are my Sunshine," and they sang a couple of songs for us. They asked many times how we felt about Vietnam, and we told them how beautiful it was and how nice all of the people were. Hai responded that Vietnam was very poor, and the people were short (they kept referring to how tall Jason and I were!) He said they were very gentle and smart though, which we certainly agree with! Another couple from our bus from Portugal joined us and he was very tall, and the kids had a great time trying to jump up to his height. Between his height and Jason's hair they were easily entertained! We couldn't communicate well with everyone, but there was tons of laugher and giggling; definitely the highlight of the trip so far! We talked with them for 2 hours while they fixed the bus, and when we had to leave Hai said "I hope someday in the future we will meet again." I hope so too.

Today we are checking out a few things in Hanoi, and tomorrow we go to Halong Bay! It's probably the highlight of Vietnam and I'm very excited to go. The following day we will come back to Hanoi, then take the train north to Sapa. We'll spend a day or so there, then head for the Laos border! Hopefully we are done with vehicle accidents, we're hoping the train will be a safer way to go!