Central Vietnam

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I've decided not to go into as much detail with this entry, as I think the pictures tell a better story than I do... Just a few anecdotes from the road:

Ninh Binh

The tour to Ninh Binh via the "Ancient Capital" and Tam Coc, although beautiful, made me quite fed up with arranged tours in big groups. The "Ancient Capital" lacked some explanation, as all we saw were really two temples dedicated to the first and second kings of this era, and we didn't have time to visit the grave up on the hill. I'm not really sure what the "Ancient Capital" was... Just a temple?
Then it was straight onto our bikes, and this was a lovely part of the day, riding through the magical landscape, through villages with kids that were greeting us and high-five'ing us all the way.

But once we got to the river of Ngo Dong where we were being rowed for three kilometres through three caves, I had enough. Karin and Anita were sitting in the front of the little boat, and I was sitting next to the 'captain', a woman in her forties who only spoke French and Vietnamese, so I had to dig deep to find my French glosses to try to understand what she was telling me. Behind me was a young man, who turned out to be her 15-year-old son.

It was very beautiful, but this was rather spoiled by the fact that after we'd sailed through the three caves there were little row boats that sold cold drinks and snacks, and they handed us extra drinks and crisps which they thought we should by for the people sailing us - which was an uncomfortable situation to be put in. On the one hand they were being paid to row us there, so we shouldn't really have to buy their drinks etc., as well as it isn't right for someone else to decide what you should spend your money on - but on the other hand it's very uncomfortable having to say: no, we don't care if these people who've just rowed 3km are thirsty or not... It seems mean. But Anita was adamant that it was not right for them to push these drinks on us - and she was very right to do so. When we got back I read in the Lonely Planet that they actually don't drink these drinks, but sell them back to the vendors in the evening and make extra cash that way!!

Anyway, already in a bad mood from this experience, we made our way back - and now out came the metal chest we had moored up to another boat at the beginning to heave onto our boat, in the middle of the water. Our lady captain had already started telling me about her husband who had a bad back and her three children who needed to go to school, and her sick mother, etc. etc.... And now she pulled out all this embroidery, which she claimed she, her daughter and her mother had made themselves. A claim she tried to substantiate by showing me pictures of them planted behind a work-bench - first herself and her daughter together, and then the daughter and the grandmother... Like that was going to convince me after I'd witnessed how the whole load had been on another boat before ours!! So at this point I definitely didn't have any more space in my backpack - or at least that seemed to work as a valid excuse...

You'd think that would be the end of the money-grabbing, but no... When we got back to the starting point and we got out of the boat, the lady who tied up our boat had the nerve to ask for a tip for our crew as well! I'm not saying that salaries are probably great in Vietnam, but I think trying to get money out of people 3 times on a journey of an hour and a half, when you've been paid for the work as well, is too much. And I'm very sorry to say that this tainted the whole day at Tam Coc - which is a real shame as it was really rather beautiful. I hope the pictures give you a better impression than I got when I was there :-)

Hue

The most remarkable thing about Hue, was the amount of water that poured out of the sky while I was here. I spent some time waiting for it to stop, while I was trying to find Karin and Anita, who had been put on a different bus from me, and apparently dropped off somewhere completely different from where I was, and the company had no idea where they might be... It's all a bit haphazard, the way they sell you your tickets and organise your travels in Vietnam. But in the end I ventured out to see the old Citadel and the emperor's palace - or what was left of it after years of neglect and then bombing in the Vietnamese/American war. I was literally walking through 20cm of water in some places, and even my trusty raincoat/poncho couldn't keep the water out, which just kept pouring down.
The amazing thing, though, was that one crossing in the road which I saw and photographed around 6 o'clock, when it was completely submerged in many litres of water, was completely dry when I walked by there again about 3 hours later. The city is used to floodings and typhoons every winter, and seems to cope quite well with it.

Here I met a really interesting young man - the first in Vietnam who spoke REALLY good English. He had studied English at the university, but had to stop school as his father had died and he was now the head of the family. He now made a living as a moto-driver and unofficial guide, which he really liked as it gave him a chance to get out and about and practice his English every day. He still dreamed of going back to uni as he would really like to be an English teacher. I hope he gets the chance one day...
His father had disappeared under the war and had been missing for several years and presumed dead when he finally came home to his grandmother. He didn't want to marry because he had been hurt in the war and exposed to all sorts of things, but his grandmother's biggest wish was for him to have a family, so in the end he married after all and had 4 children who by good fortune didn't have any birth defects.
But the worries don't end there. When the guy I spoke to (I feel really bad I've forgotten his name...) got married a few years back and his wife got pregnant, they too were really worried until the baby was born as to whether something might be wrong with it. Luckily again it wasn't - so that's his son's name: Lucky (but in Vietnamese... of course).
It was really interesting to talk to him about the effects of the war on Vietnam, and how life is today - from his perspective. I was really upset that I'd already confirmed my ticket to Hoi An for the next morning. Also, I probably wouldn't have felt completely safe travelling with him alone to Hoi An - so for once I wished I was travelling with someone else. Karin and Anita could not be convinced to go a different route than their own, unfortunately. They'd bought their tour and were sticking to it!
But at least I got a cup of coffee and a really nice chat with him before I had to go to Hoi An by bus...

Hoi An

I loved Hoi An - so much so that I stayed there for two days more than Anita and Karin. It was nice sharing a nicer hotel with them for a couple of days, especially as this one had a pool where I did some resting while they were off on another tour. I felt a bit like I’d been on the go for ever and ever, so I decided to just take it easy and look around town on my own. Hoi An used to be one of the most important trading ports in South East Asia. Eventually the mouth of the river silted up and Hoi An once again became a small town like any other - except it’s still got some of the beautifully crafted merchants’ houses along the river and the Chinese legacy is visible in the old assembly halls in the old part of town. The Japanese bridge linked the Vietnamese old town to a Japanese settlement on the other bank. Today the whole of the old town is classified as a Unesco World Heritage site and you can buy a ticket to see some of the landmark buildings within it. Aside from being a cosy little town with some beautiful little spots along the river, the town is today renowned for all its tailors that are calling out to you from every corner.
After Anita and Karin had gone on to Nha Trang, I moved to a different hotel that was a bit cheaper to stay in now I was on my own. I was going to meet them the next day in Nha Trang so I relished my solitude and picked up some shorts and dresses I’d had made. I’d had to throw away a few bits of clothing already as they weren’t getting clean in the wash. White is so not for travelling 😊 As it turned out, I couldn’t get the bus the next day as they claimed it was full, so I stayed for another day and spent it wandering around town, reading my book in the peaceful temple gardens of the old Chinese assembly halls, taking a bite to eat by the river and looking at the school girls in their traditional white clothes getting on the ferry home.

Nha Trang

A couple of “funny” things happened to me in Nha Trang… Apart from being a party town and a tourist hotspot due to its reputation for having the most beautiful beach in Vietnam, there isn’t really much to say about Nha Trang. As I wasn’t there with a group of friends I didn’t really check out the night life too much, but I did go to the beach. As the weather was a bit changeable I was more or less alone on my stretch of beach and I had just enjoyed a bit of swimming or whatever you’d call my trying to stay reasonably above water in the powerful surf on this very steep beach, when I noticed out of the corner of my eye someone descending some stairs behind me. I looked over my shoulder and the someone turned out to be a middle-aged Vietnamese who in the shade of the stairs was enjoying himself a bit more than is normally socially acceptable… I’m not sure what the best reaction to this kind of incident is: On the one hand you want to tell them to stop it, that it’s not a nice thing to be doing in public, and that you’re worried that this is a case of a flasher gone to greater lengths of satisfying himself on the road to something a lot more sinister. On the other hand you don’t want to have to deal with the embarrassment of it at all, pretend you haven’t seen it so as not to give him more of a thrill out of his illicit behaviour and generally deny that it might have anything to do with you lying on a beach in a foreign country in a bikini which could be considered semi-pornographic in some cultures, possibly the one you’re in!
Not feeling so comfortable on my lonely stretch of beach after this, I was glad to realise that it was soon time for me to meet Karin and Anita again, so I quite happily started walking along the beach towards our rendezvous which was a couple of blocks down the road, in the same direction as the beach. And funnily enough, just before I was going to turn off the beach, I saw a blond woman in the distance and thought it looked a lot like Anita by the way she moved - and it was! They’d met a couple of Australian guys, Morgan and Brian, on a boat-trip they’d been on the day before and had now bumped into them again on the beach. They seemed like nice blokes and we had a great time on the beach before we went out to dinner. They were all catching buses to Saigon that evening, but we still had time for a nice meal and a bit of catching up before they were off.

They talked so enthusiastically about their boat trip that I decided to take a similar tour of the bay the next day. It was a reasonably action packed day with snorkelling, a water bar, visit to an aquarium and of course the famous “on boat band” with the most ingenious drum set I’ve ever seen. I had a nice time and met some interesting people, including the first Danish girl I’ve actually spoken to on my trip! There was also a Norwegian couple who understood Danish very well, so I go to practice my mother tongue quite a bit that day 😊 And that was more or less it for me and Nha Trang as I was running out of time and wanted to go to Saigon.

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Photos

Hibiscus tree in front of the 'garage'
full of replicas of the king and queen's chairs which they were carried around in