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The Ngoc Son (Jade Mountain), Temple on an island in Hoan Kiem Lake in the centre of old Hanoi and the red The Huc bridge that leads to it are the most photographed landmarks of the city.
Here is another view of the red bridge that naturally is one of the most popular lovers rendezvous in town.
In Hanoi, I stayed upstairs of the crowded Darling Cafe near the Dong Xuan Market, an excellent place to exchange travel tips and good addresses with other backpackers . The fellow turning around is Dominique de Polignac, a French student with whom I went to Sapa and Halong Bay a few days later.
Busy Hang Bo street not far from the Darling Cafe.
This is Hanoi's Municipal Theatre southeast of Hoan Kiem Lake.
The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum stands on Hung Vuong street, west of the Hoan Kiem district.
And this is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of special importance for me because of the unforgettable lady that I met who worked there.
One day, Dominique and I decided to visit the village of Sapa near the 3143 metre Fansipan mountain on the Chinese border (Vietnam's highest). This was the green countryside on the way to the mountains.
Sapa was built by the French in 1922 as a hill station, a place to get away from the heat of Hanoi in the Summer.
Now it is a market centre for the Hmong and Yao tribes that live in the neighbouring mountains.
The cool summer temperatures at the altitude of about 1600 metres is what attracted the French in colonial times. Now, it is the curious customs of the hill people that draws the tourists.
These steps lead down to the market area where all the action is on Saturdays.
The Hmong do their trading mostly during the day and leave in the late afternoon when the Yao start coming.
The Hmong hill people are small in stature and easily recognised by their traditional blue clothes. They number about 7 000 000 in total. About 6 million live in the Chinese province Guizhou, 900 000 live in Yunnan and some are dispersed in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Several thousand have immigrated to the US after the Vietnam War.
Pork is the favourite meat of the Hmong and Yao.
The Yao hill people come to do their business when the Hmong start to leave. They are somewhat taller and their features differ from those of the Hmong. The women are often bald. They both speak Sino-Tibetan languages but they do not mix.
Yao women enjoy considerable sexual freedom and the Saturday night market in Sapa is the preferred venue for mating games.
The women take the initiative and it is the men's role to play coy.
Finally, couples pair off as everywhere else in the world but here, it looks more candid, natural and obvious than in most other places.
I wonder how these charming customs will survive being exposed to the crude curiosity of their foreign visitors once tourism takes off in this country?
On Sunday, our curiosity satisfied, we all went back to Hanoi.
