On our Hue north...

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We arrived in the early hours of the morning into the picturest village of Hoi An, which is famed for its movie set streets and its vast number of taliors. After checking into our hotel & an extra few hours snoozing, we awoke to undertake the village tour, viewing the covered Japanese Bridge, an ancient chinese house and numerous musuems. Later in the day, Chris and Liam went to one of the top tailors and arranged to have two suits made for the approx cost of $100 each. As we sat in a restaurant that evening we discovered (thanks to one of the english speaking waitresses) that there was a big celebration planned for the evening as Hoi An had been awarded 'city' status by the Vietnam government as of that day. We walked towards the bright lights and music and just as we arrived over 100 lanterns were set alight and released to float gently off into the night sky. Seeing it was such an important night for Hoi An we all felt duty bound to celebrate in style with them and decided it was only reasonable to drink on long and hard into the night (at 25p per pint could we afford not to?).

The next day we took things a little easier and after a second fitting for the suits we hired out bikes and rode the 3km to the nearby beach. We were just in time to catch the end of the women's 5-a-side beach football and we were all surprised with the sheer number of supporters they had watching the matches. After the tourtnment was settled and the pitch was cleared it wasn't long before another match started up, with teams consisting of westerners versus locals. Well, let's just say it wasn't long before the three of us had signed up and were running around like headless chickens. After about 3 mins we were all gasping for breath and we all quietly decided to drop back into defence - at one point Chris was marking a poor 7 year old Vietnamese boy, no more than 3 and a half feet tall. I think he may have won the odd header too!

The following day we caught a 4hr bus north to Hue, sure we'd seen the best of what Hoi An had to offer, and finally checked into another good hotel for $12 total per night. After a spot of lunch we walked into and around the citadel and visited the Emporor's Enclosure. Lady Luck was shining down for Liam and a few other fortunate tourists, as two new Emporors had just arrived in town and were visiting the sites. We even got a quick snapshot of the pair on the throne (no, not the kazi!). The following day we had agreed to take a motorbike tour with our local guide Mr Phou, all with our personal moped chauffeur. Our first stop was to see the Praying Monks at a large, nearby Pagoda, which was a very enlightening experience. We followed this with a visit to the amphitheatre where Tigers used to fight elephants for the Emporors pleasure (the tiger would be injured before to make sure that the elephant - a symbol of national pride - would always win). We also visited more ancient temples (the names escape me now) before being forced to finish our tour slightly early to make it back in time to catch the 16hr sleeper to the Vietnamese capital - Hanoi.

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Photos

Not quite Hells Angels
Check out the pink helmet!

Ancient Temple
Forgotten the name, but no less impressive!

Comments

[Daddy Dixon]

emporer
Those emporer costumes are faintly disturbing