Blogs from Thua Thien - Huế, North Central Coast, Vietnam, Asia - page 3

Nous habitons la citadelle, une petite chambre à côté du siège du parti communiste du quartier. Super sécuritaire, mais réveil à 5.30h le matin quand il y a un groupe de femmes qui font de l'exercice devant notre maison, dans le parc.! Il faut s' habituer. Le marché du quartier est à côté, on peut donc acheter tous les matins nos fruits, crèmes brûlées et baguettes aux oeufs. Toute ville traversée par une rivière a un gros atout. Hué est traversée par la Rivière des parfums et en plus elle est sillonnée par de nombreux canaux. Très romantique. L'ancienne ville est formée par plusieurs carrés imbriqués l'un dans l'autre, formant les différentes classes de la citadelle. Chaque carré est délimité de l'autre par un canal, jusqu'au coeur de la citadelle, la "Cité rouge interdite", exactement comme ... read more

My Son is actually near Hoi An, so apologies to those looking for it near to Hue. Can't seem to set locator to Hoi An. Tearing down the QL1A whisked by buses and trucks is not my favourite occupation and hurtling back from My Son in the ever decreasing dusk is far from palatable. My sister's words keep ringing in my ears about the dangers of motorbikes and the horrific accidents that occur. Nevertheless, the trip to My Son was worth it and in our case we returned home unscathed having tasted some of the best pho in an unprepossessing restaurant in a small town just before the turn off to the ruins. We had despaired of finding a coffee in any of the numerous ca phes that we had seen as being a Saturday they ... read more

Day 6 Early departure from Hanoi Airport to Hue, Vietnam: Before we depart for our next stop Hue, I must capture a couple anecdotes of naïve Julia and I getting ‘scammed’ at various times while in Hanoi (we did learn our lessons and didn’t have much of a problem the rest of the trip). While in Hanoi Julia discovered she is a terrible haggler of street vendors. We’d seen 3-d pop up Thank You cards with envelopes being sold at every street corner in town. Julia was dead keen to get one, but was not 100% about approaching a vendor to negotiate the purchase of one. Finally, she got up the nerve and asked a ‘kind and generous’ old woman how much as was told the equivalent of one card for NZ$10; which Julia quickly produced ... read more

Hue, Marble Mountain and Hoi An - The Imperial city and Royal tombs. I wish my camera was better at the time to take pictures of Hoi An at night. That's the time the city truly shines.... read more

I was woken at 5:50 this morning by exhortations emanating from the Party Committee building not far away. (These buildings are quite distinct – austere, yellow and white, fronted by a wide red banner.) Later Thuy explained that this loudspeaker service combines news stories for the illiterate and public announcements. (The literacy rate is high in Vietnam.) At breakfast a few of us got talking with a woman who was a professor for an international school teaching a course on environment to 31 students. The course consists of time studying in San Francisco (already done), this month in Vietnam, next month in Morocco and another month in Bolivia. She was startled to learn from us that Hoi An, their destination today, has even more tourists than Hue, not that we had seen much of Hue yet. ... read more