Hue & Hoi An - the full story

Well, as I've said, Hue cost a lot of money. And doing the prearranged tour meant very little time at any one spot. I met a Swiss-Italian couple on the boat tour of the tombs and temples (of all the old Kingdoms - you catch a boat down the river) and we went to the citadel together the next morning, as well as hiring a car to take us up to the Vinh Moc tunnels (there's a picture earlier). This meant I didn't have to do the full 13 hour DMZ (demilitarized zone) tour, whcih picked you up at 6am and returned you to Hue at 7pm. In between you saw some generally interesting sites, but also some piles of rocks and some very dusty broken highways. Everyone I've met who has done it says that the tunnels were the best bit, which is what I thought and which is why I managed to convince the Italian Swiss couple (Antonio & Daniella) that they wanted to see them too, so we could hire a car and go together ;^)

The tunnels were fascinating - several children were born in there - they had a maternity ward (a tunnel like the one in the last picture, filled with life size figurines of a woman who'd just given birth, the nurse, and the newborn baby!), some family rooms, a meeting hall (basically a bit of the tunnel where you could stand upright) as well as several levels and exits. The tunnels were fully guided and really interesting. All the surrounding area has these huge craters from American B-52 bombs.

We also stopped off at the Ben Ha river - former dividing line between North & South, and saw the bridge which used to be painted red up until the middle on the norther side, and yellow till the middle on the southern side. We also saw a famous church of which only the shell remains after major bombardment, as well as several towns where major incidents happened.

In one of several contemporary accounts by Western photographers and journalists that I've read about Vietnam during the war, I'd read a description of Highway one just before the dividing line - how it was all rice paddys that meant you felt like a sitting duck as you drove towards the border, never sure if someone was going to jump up out of the rice field and attack you. As we drove through, I thought about that. There were people working in the fields and they looked just like they would have looked at the time.. it was very surreal...

That night we had dinner at a place accross the river and then walked back of a bridge designed by Eiffel (of Eiffel tour fame) which is lit up and changes colour gradually across the span of the bridge.. beautiful..

The next day I caught the bus to Hoi An, stopping off ever so briefly at Marble Mountain (ummm... several mountains of marble, with incredible carvings and statues of...marble inside). Didn't really get to see as much of it as I would have liked - yep, once again the pre-organised tour buses only stop long enough to buy food and souvenirs. We had 45 mins, but that was no where near enough time to see the whole complex. I saw one mountain, and it was fascinating, but couldn't even find it's description in the guide book, so am pretty sure it was a minor one.

The tour buses are a really good and cheap way to get around, but you never meet anyone but tourists, and you never get to stop long enough to enjoy anything. I'm really over them, but am considering getting one to Saigon/HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City, as it's now known) simply because there is no day train, and the night train gets in at 4:45am!!!

So I arrived In Hoi An mid afternoon, and ended up at a hotel very far out of town, but it had a pool, fee cocktails by the pool every evening, breakfast and airconditioning. The walk into town was only 10-15 mins, and we were slightly closer to the beach.

Antonio & Daniella left a day or so after, but I stayed a full 5 days in Hoi An - I loved it. It was a beautiful historic town on a river, with world-heritage listed buildings, lovely cafes, wonderful sights and historic museums... and of course the most incredible tailors you've ever seen.

Every second shop was a tailors' shop, selling the most incredible made-to-measure clothes, which could be ready in as little as a day! Some of the most elegant designs, beautiful fabrics and stylishly made clothes I've ever seen. Needless to say I had some things made. My good friend Liz had advised me to take any favourite clothes to have copied, so I took a favourite pair of pants, a skirt and a jacket, and I now have wonderful hand-tailored copies! Have to admit I went a little mad.. I am now lugging around 2 dresses, 4 pairs of pants, a jacket, several skirts and a few tops. The minimalist bag I'd managed to whittle my stuff down to in Hanoi is now fairly full again!

I met heaps of wonderful people in Hoi An: Michelle - an American who lives in Coogee that I'd met previously in Sapa, and we're going to catch up back home. Aruna - an Aussie guy and Michelle his travelling partner from Luxenburg - we had dinner and drinks one night in town and they introduced me to the bar called "Bar", where I met other people later on. Katerine - a French Canadian who'd spent a year on exchange in Ecuador, so we spoke Spanish as our common language. We hung out and went to the beach together on our last day in Hoi An. Some French girls with a scooter - we had dinner in a restaurant on stilts in the river and I spoke very mediocre French and they spoke some English, and I got driven there and back on the scooter. The Spanish guy and his Swedish partner who'd been on my boat in Ha Long Bay when all my stuff was stolen - we bumped into each other in a rain storm, sheltering under a tarpaulin in the market, and confused the hell out of the stall owners as we had a very animated half hour discussion about what had happened and the guide in Spanish. Claire, Lucy & Jeremy - all from the UK, who visited Mr Phong's village with me, and finally Tamsin - from the UK, and Claudia, from Germany, who she'd met on a bus.

I was checking out a Chinese Assembly Hall that I didn't get to go to, when Tamsin and Claudia walked out, and I started speaking to them. This lead to further discussions about travelling and so on, and eventually led to Tamsin and I getting night bus tickets to Nha Trang together, staying in the hotel here, and probably doing a Mekong Delta tour from Saigon! But more of that later..

Fom Hoi An, I went to My Son - a Cham Temple Ruin several kms away. It was interesting, but crowded, and having seen Prambanan and Borobodur in Java, and going to Angkor soon.. I was a little "ruined" out, and was annoyed that after all that effort, it was only going to end up being 1 hour to see the whole site. It made me more determined to do the Mekong Delta with some other people on a self-organised trip.

One of the most interesting things I did was go out to Mr Phong's village, and hear his stories of the war, both from his side as an ARVN (South Vietnamese) soldier, and also from his uncle - a decorated Vietcong soldier. Everyone was lovely, and his family were fascinating - all the people in the village were so welcoming.. it just wasn't touristy at all.. I learnt so much, and got to meet a whole lot of real Vietnamese people, as well as see some of the local produce and learn about it - all without any pressure to buy anything - in fact I didn't buy anything the whole day - except to pay Mr Phong something towards his time and for the wonderful, enormous helpings of food we had for lunch. Excellent!!

I will post photos later - they've put gaffa tape over the cd rom drives here, and the other internet place I went to was so slow I could have flown home and told people my stories before the page would load...