By Ashley Chapman

It is 7:15 in the morning but the town of Hanoi has been awake for hours. Bicycles bells clang, Vietnamese women barter at tiny food stalls, and dogs and chickens scurry at our feet. My brother and I are hypnotized by the chaos as we wait for our ride to Mai Chau, a hill tribe a half-day's drive from Hanoi.

A dilapidated 1950s Russian-made sedan greets us rather than the standard tourist van, so we sink into the cramped back seat wondering where the additional tourists are. We drive for fifteen minutes in silence until our guide, Chuong, informs us in broken English that there are no more travelers today. We realize that our "tour guides" are not part of a legitimate tourist agency at all. They are just entrepreneurial students like hundreds of others in Vietnam whose only viable career is tourism.

We bounce along in the backseat, while Chuong plays chicken with oncoming traffic and beeps mopeds, cyclos and bicycles out of our path. Images of Hanoi dance in front of our windshield: women in the traditional long, flowing suits; a slain goat strewn over the backseat of a motorcycle. Soon the town slips away behind us and we are driving up through the mountains, our little sedan beeping its way around hairpin curves. The beeping tactics continue for four hours as the sedan barrels through the dust like a snowplow in a blizzard.

Finally we enter a valley. We stop abruptly in a hill tribe village and Chuong jumps out and starts walking down a dirt path with no explanation. Children are sprinkled everywhere. Barefoot and with hair plastered to dirt-smudged faces, they stare at us with wide, bewildered eyes. We walk toward a small schoolyard littered with kids in traditional village garb. Chuong is explaining how the government brings in teachers from the "outside" world to teach, when suddenly fifty pairs of curious eyes are surrounding us, listening to Chuong's voice, confused by the strange words. He speaks in Vietnamese to a boy. Then he explains, "I asked him his age. He said he doesn't know." Crippled by the communication barrier, we observe each other with hesitant glances. I try shooting some pictures, but every time I point the unwieldy black object towards the children, they dart into the shadows.

We walk tentatively through the village, like tourists on a safari, except we are the foreign species. Crowds of fascinated children follow in our wake. They line up along fences, peek out from dark windows, and wave from rice paddies, yelling "hello, bye bye!" In this hill tribe, medicine is not a science - it is a faith. The children wear large silver ring necklaces to ward off evil spirits and sickness.

No adult is in sight. Since they're all working in the fields, the village seems almost Lilliputian. A boy of about six peers at us as he absent-mindedly drags a rusty machete. Two young sisters follow me down the road, giggling, but when I stop to talk to them, they scamper away. I continue walking and hear their little feet and giggles following me. So I turn abruptly to speak to them, my hands on my hips in frustration. They imitate me, putting their hands on their hips and swiveling, in mock defiance. I swing my hips right back. This triggers peals of laughter. We've finally found a way to communicate - through '50s dance moves.

As we leave the hill tribe, two boys race after our sedan, waving wildly until their little bodies are no longer in sight.

Hours pass, and soon we are near Hanoi, smack in the middle of Asia's worst traffic jam. Horns blare, motorbikes rev, the exhaust thickens, and the entire crowd of limbs and metal and lights pulsate in unison. Then the rain comes down. It rains hard and the drops pelt the windshield, blocking our visibility while the stationery bodies outside the car melt into a soggy, sticky mass. Inside, we sit quietly on the spring seats and listen to whirring of the mini fan. Gradually, the traffic loosens and we are on our way. We arrive in Hanoi to find the entire town has lost electricity in the storm. We roll through a darkness that is punctuated by the occasional candlelight of families eating dinner in darkened storefronts. The whole city has fallen asleep, and pretty soon, so have we.