Things before the Night Train to Hanoi

I wanted to add a couple of things about our cool tour yesterday. At one ofthe buddhist pagodas, we waw the tomb of a monk that burned himself to protestthe south vietnam government that was killing people that wouldn�t convert toChristianity in the 1960�s. It had the picture of him meditating while he wasburned alive and his car.At another pagoda, we watched the monks chant their evening prayers. Theywere in a monestary where the monks say around 50 words to each other a day atmost. Then they come together and they sing loud together. The boy monksdidn�t have their whole heads shaved but they left two pony tails and theirbangs. They graduate, as our motorcycle guide put it �coconut� head (shaved)when they become 20. As the older monks chanted, the little boy monks playedsoccer.Today we took motorcycles to the beach 25km away. We had the beachpractically to ourselves. It was great. Many local people stopped and talkedwith us, even though we didn�t buy anything from them. The people are sofriendly and try to emphasize that they don�t have any hard feelings towardsamericans. They like them, but they think that French people are rude. It ispretty funny. I tried to convince them that not all of the french are bad, butthey wouldn�t believe me.Now we are getting on a night train from Hue to Hanoi. The only bed�s leftwere �hard beds� so i probably won�t sleep too much tonight. We�ll see.Mom and Dad, Paul emailed me that you were planning a vacation August 1-4. Iwould be happy to go as long as we left Aug 2 and came back Aug 4 during theday so I could be back for Deppe�s wedding reception that night. I will havesome wicked jetlag because I get back the day before so I hope you don�t mindif Paul does all of the driving. Paul and I are then planning to visit Karenon the Aug 6. So I guess I will have a summer of trips away from home