Hello from Hanoi
By Ted Wachter

We are in Hanoi on a cold day, the temperature at 40 degrees. The city of three million is incredibly energized and chaotic. Motorbikes are everywhere. When crossing a street, you must negotiate your way through an

unending stream of motorbikes - eight abreast - as lane

is not a concept that applies.

Yesterday, we went to several museums and memorials celebrating the life of Ho Chi Minh and the people's struggle against the French, who were brutal colonial oppressors of the Vietnamese. These are a formidable people who endured and persevered from 1945 until 1973 against the French and then the Americans to ultimately prevail.

Today, we walked around the French Quarter with its old French villas and grand Opera House. It was built by the French from 1901 to 1911 as a replica of the Paris Opera House, while not far away at the same time they were building Hoa Lo Prison to incarcerate and guillotine many dissident nationalist Vietnamese - then used in the 70s to house downed U.S. pilots.

We are staying in a hotel in the old quarter of Hanoi - 500 years old, with very narrow shop- lined streets on which armies of motorbikes travel non- stop all day.

The food and the local beer is good and cheap. That was also true for our days in Thailand and Laos, a very poor country of only 5.5 million people. The U.S. dropped more bombs on Laos than it did on Germany to win Laos the distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare?

The trip has been good so far. But Jan and I concluded it is more work and effort to travel in countries like these than France or Italy!

I send our best greetings to Star readers and the Rosewood family.

Ted Wachter

(Editor's note: Dr. Ted Wachter, principal of Rosewood

Elementary School, and his wife, Jan Collins, are on a

three- month sabbatical touring Southeast Asia. They

began in Hong Kong, flew to Bangkok, then to Chiangrai

in northern Thailand. They crossed the Mekhong River

into Laos and stayed a few days in the old royal capital of

Luang Prabang. Then they flew to Hanoi.)