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Published: December 9th 2006
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As soon as the bus pulled into Hue I knew I would like it more than Hanoi. It's smaller and less busy. The former capital of one of Vietnam's dynesties, the old town is built around the old Imperial Palace. It's a very pretty city. But most memorable for me was that I finally got the opportunity to hang out with Vietnamese people. The second day we were there it started raining so we couldn't go check out the royal tombs as we had planned to. Instead we decided to make it an internet morning - thinking that if the rain didn't stop it would be a wasted day. However, it turned out to be the most interesting day I've spent in Vietnam. I left Vincent alone for a few moments and he gets picked up by a local guy on a motobike. The guy said he was a teacher and wanted to take Vincent and I to a cheap restaurant for an authentic meal so that he could practice his english by chatting with us. The meal was fantastic - we got a plate of steamed tiger prawns and a local dish called Lau, which Hue is famous for. The
guy didn't eat much but he made sure that the beer was flowing, most of which he consumed at a very impressive pace. The bill came and it definitely wasn't the cheap meal that he proclaimed it to be, but it was delicious so we paid up. Next he wanted us to come and meet his family and perhaps stay for dinner. We declined on the dinner because we were meeting the French couple that we had met at Halong Bay later that evening. But we agreed to go to us house with him. It was raining buckets and we didn't have any other plans. We ended up going to a private karoke room with a bunch of his friends (with his adorable 3 yr. old son in tow). We would never have found it ourselves, being tucked away in little alleyway that a tourist would normally never find. It was really fun but once again they kept the beer flowing. I didn't want to get drunk with a bunch of people I didn't know so I kept my drinking to a minimum. But everyone else got drunk, excpet for Vincent despite the efforts of the locals. Of course, we got stuck with the bill again. Our "guide" made a half-hearted attempt to offer to help out with the bill but early in a conversation he made sure we knew that he only made $150 USD a month and had a wife and two kids to support on that wage. So we felt like shit making him foot the bill but then again we knew we were being taken for a ride. Oh well, it was an experience that was very unique and what we paid would have been considered peanuts back home. We certainly learned our lesson though. When you get invited out by a local you better be prepared to foot the bill. That night a buch of us went out for dinner with a girl that worked at the front desk of our hotel and her Canadian boyfriend (a falang that spoke better English than I did). He ended up paying for the whole dinner because he said it was Vietnamese custom that who ever does the inviting pays. Hmmm, I guess that rule doesn't apply to local Vietnamese and tourists.
From Hue we also took a day trip to the DMZ (demilitarized zone). We had a good guide that gave us the Vietnamese experience of what they refer to as the "American War." The tunnel we explored was awesome and I could have scampared around for hours, but because we were with a tour group I had to be content with 40 minutes. I had just finished reading the novel The Sorrows of War - the most definitive novel written about the Vietnam war by a Vietnamese author and one of the best books about war ever written, so it was quite emotional for me to be able to actually go to one of the regions I had read about.
Hue was definitely a city full of unexpected experiences for me - both good and bad. Here, I actually began to get an inkling of how local Vietnamese people feel about their Viet Kieu counterparts. The chasm cause by the disparity of wealth, opportunity and cultural experience is vast and beginning to think unbridgable.
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AGROjazz
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A common Scam in Vietnam
What you explained happens a lot in Vietnam, it's a common scam. Usually "your new friend" and the waiter or restaraunt owner will split the profits with eachother the next day! But yeah it's all peanuts back home so, it's not the end of the world. Happy Travelling!