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Published: November 4th 2006
Train Station Sign
There's only one set of tracks & only two directions you can go in, North or South. I left you as we set off on a train south from Vietnamese capital Hanoi to Hue near the central coast. As is often the way, Kylie had attracted the resident 'drunk train passenger' who was sitting opposite us, trying to play footsie with her & falling all over the guy sat next to him. Luckily the guy disappeared somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
There seems to be two types of train in Vietnam; slow & extremely slow. The slow ones are at least moderately modern & have a few padded seats as well as air con & proper windows. The extremely slow ones have harder seats, no air con (just fans that blow the warm air around a little) & a bars across the open windows. From Hanoi to Hue we travelled in the vague luxury of 'soft seat' on a slow overnight train.
Hue is full of history, built on the banks of the Perfume River, with a city wall that surrounds a palace, temples & the old city. Much of what's left today is in ruins, and sadly
Riverfront, Hoi An
Most of the places shown are 'Hello, come in please' restaurants there's little information to tell you what's supposed to be where. However it's an interesting place with a few impressive scenes.
North of Hue is the former DMZ - the Demilatarized Zone that during the American war was the buffer zone between North & South Vietnam. Thirty five years ago it was where some of the most intense battles were being waged between the North Vietnamese Army & the American / South Vietnamese forces. Today it's a popular place to take a 'DMZ Tour' & see a few places that were of significance during the war.
The tour began with a look at a bridge over the Ben Hai River, the river that used to mark the border. The original bridge was bombed but a new one was built in the seventies. Some of the tour was fairly uninspiring - for some reason we travelled to another bridge that was only built in the last 10 years, but there's plenty of sobering places along the way though. Khe Sanh was home to a huge American base, but today is a small clearing with a museum & a few remnants from the war. It's pretty much impossible to comprehend
how different it was all those years ago, but there is a small collection of tanks, helicopters & bombs that give some small hint of the carnage that was involved. We also took a look that the Vinh Moc Tunnels, a vast underground network where many North Vietnamese lived during the war. There's similar tunnels near Saigon. The hidden tunnels were well equiped, and a number of babies were even born in the underground hospitals.
This isn't really the place to start a war debate, but when you come to a place like this you can't help draw parrallels between what happened in this corner of the world back then & what's going on a few thousand miles away today.
From Hue we jumped on an 'Open Tour' bus to Hoi An. You may remember that I wrote about these evil tourist busses in the last episode - but don't worry we haven't bought the whole package & joined the party yet. We just used the bus to travel a couple of hours down the road. Because the tourist bus is so cheap, it seems it's no longer just a tourist bus anyway - locals use it too
Propaganda
These things are everywhere. No idea what they say, but very colourful now. In some respects I guess this makes the whole concept slightly less the devil's work - but the companies still try to restrict where people stop, eat & sleep so they are still not in our favour.
Hoi An is simply one of the nicest places you could find yourself in. Formerly a major trading post, this small town that grew on the banks of the Thu Bon River is just delightful. The beautiful old town is an interesting mix of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese & French design. It may be touristy & the locals selling their wares may be some of the most vocal in the country, but you just can't help but love the place.
The town is probably most famous for the local tailors - here you can have just about any item of clothing made, both cheaply & quickly. The clothes aren't put together on some flash new electric sewing machine, almost all of the machines in the area are antique manual Singer ones. Kylie had a dress from NZ that she likes, so she took it in, they measured her up & within 24 hours she had a new one in a different
colour. These days they even make shoes too. Sadly for me the focus is all a bit too much on women's designs, the main clothes they make for men are suits & I've no intention of ever needing to wear a suit on a regular basis.
Hoi An is also famous for it's food. There's a handful of dishes that are available here & it seems nowhere else on earth. Cau Lau, noodles made with local well water are just divine & White Rose, a type of pork & prawn dim sum were a big hit with Kylie. There's also some very tasty DIY rice paper rolls (like spring rolls but not fried), and a lot of cheap fresh beer & very cheap cocktails.
Numerous cafes line the riverbank, all desperate for business from the throngs of tourists. 'Hello come in please' echoes all around as you stroll along the river choosing where to eat. Although most places serve much the same food, most people all go straight to one place recommended in the guide book, leaving the friendly neighbouring
families & staff looking sad & rejected. Luckily we were here long enough to spread our meals around.
Interesting highlight while eating beside the river was seeing someone accidentaly ride their motorbike into the river.
I'd been to Hoi An on my first visit to Vietnam 7 years ago & knew that we'd probably stay awhile this time. As it happened, soon after we arrived the rains came, so we just had to stay longer. After it had rained non stop for 48 hours I checked a weather forecast, which gave the impression it would rain for another 7 days. The river was already flooding at high tide, and the locals were filling sand bags to try & hold off more damage. We went to bed that night expecting a big storm to hit. We awoke to sunshine. It's good to know the forecasts here are just as bad as everywhere else.
Not far from Hoi An is the ancient temple site of My Son. The area probably used to be quite stunning, but sadly the Americans bombed most of the area into oblivion during the war. One small part of the complex is still standing & is fairly impressive. Much of the area is simply piles of rubble next to still obvious bomb craters. The
style is similar to that of Angkor in Cambodia, and it would be a nice place to spend a few hours. Sadly we were on a tour, which was the only sensibly priced way of getting there. The tour was a con & we had far less time than promised, which later resulted in a heated argument with the operators over refunds, rip offs & the like.
One of my favourite past times in Hoi An was simply to wander off into random alleys & see where I ended up. Although the whole old part of town is full of fairly narrow streets with beautiful old architecture, they can still get pretty noisy & hectic. Hidden within the town are numerous alleys, full of tucked away houses, gardens & people quietly coming & going.
There's a number of small but again beautiful temples & shrines around town, as well as museums, a Japanese bridge & a few houses that you can explore. Many houses are built with a central open courtyard that provides light & ventilation as well as often being home to the family's water well. We stumbled upon one house that we were invited into. The
owner was a retired teacher who gladly told us about his life, Hoi An & how much it had all changed. It's certainly true that the town is changing far too fast - the volume of tourists has pushed up the number of shops, hotels & restuarants at an alarming rate. We had in interesting discussion about the current situation in Vietnam - much like China it's supposed to be a socialist/communist government, but in reality it's capitalist & functions largely based on corruption.
From Hoi An we travelled back again to Hue. Friends Amy & Amber were about to arrive so we decided to begin what would become a mammoth backtrack north & meet them.
Again we jumped on the 'Open Tour' bus, again it was a mix of tourists & Vietnamese. Hoi An isn't quite on the railway network & the main highway nearby used to pass through numerous villages, no doubt delaying tourists arriving from closest city (& airport) Danang. Hence a new highway has been built. The fact that people lived in the route of the highway was of course not a problem - progress comes first & the road was built, carving up
plenty of livelihoods along the way. What remains is a rather surreal sight - most of the houses along the way were not fully destroyed, rather they were simply bisected. The fronts are all gone & what remains are bizarre 'half houses' with the back wall of the front room & the back part of the house often still standing. Most people in Vietnam have a small family shrine in the house & many of these now stand open to the elements. Many of the houses still appear to be lived in.
When I wrote about China, I dedicated a lot of time to writing about bus drivers & their fondness of the horn. Happily the situation is the same here. to be honest it is generally essential as the roads are full of people on bicylces & motorbikes slowly cruising down the centre of the road while chatting to a friend on a bike beside them, oblivious to the fact that busses & trucks may be approaching at breakneck speed from behind.
On one journey we were sat near the front & after awhile I began to get a headache from the incessant horn tooting. Soon after,
I noticed the bus driver cleaning his ears with a cotton bud. After I had recovered from the shock of seeing him partake in such a delicate act whilst negotiating the insane highway (& horn) at the same time, it struck me that the drivers are probably all in the process of going deaf. Perhaps they clean their ears, mistakenly thinking the small amount of earwax is comprimising their hearing rather than horns. I later saw another driver clean his ears whilst driving as well.
In Hue we met our friends. After an interesting vegetarian dinner we set off to find a quiet place for a beer. Earlier we'd been given flyers for a free drink from a couple of well dressed Vietnamese women outside a rather fancy looking bar. You can't help but assume that there must be a catch - especially as it was the kind of place that was normally way out of our budget. The women assured us as best they could with limited English that there was no catch & that we could have a free beer each. What followed made no sense at all, but made for an enjoyable few hours in a
Tan Ky
An old house in Hoi An nice bar with flash toilets that would never normally be in our price range. Free beer, free bread, free chips, free tea, free biscuits, free pineapple, even a free fan each to keep us cool & later when it rained a free poncho each to keep us dry. We left, there was no bill, no catch, just a friendly farewell. Very bizarre.
From Hue we travelled back to Hanoi, my fifth time, Kylie's third time there. We were planning to hire a four wheel drive & local driver to go & explore the fairly remote north west region of Vietnam. Having been in the travel agent game so long, it can be interesting to see parallels between people you've known or worked with & people in travel agencies along the way.
The first travel agent we visited had helped us out before. She'd given us what we needed as well as good service & a smile. This time we interrupted her lunch. She wasn't interested in us & spent the whole time we were there eyeing up the obvious big spenders that were waiting to be served after us. Next travel agent seemed to have no idea what
we were talking about. It was as if they didn't even know there was a north west part to Vietnam. After that came someone who hadn't listened to a word of what we'd said we wanted to do & persisted in trying to sell us something way out of our budget that we really didn't want to do. All traits I've seen over my years in the business.
Finally we managed to arrange what we thought we wanted, and we set off expecting an adventure that would take us off the beaten track, into remote villages, up mountains & into the lives of various minority groups that have lived the same simple life away from the cities for generations. The journey turned out to be a little different from what we anticipated....
looks like the format for photos on here has been changed again. they now spill over onto a few pages, so if you want to see them all, you can either scroll down & then hit next below or just click on a photo to enlarge it & navigate through all of them from there.... Wellington - Sydney - Bangkok - Khao Lak - Chaweng (Koh Samui) - Lamai (Koh Samui) - Bangkok - Macau - Guangzhou - Yangshuo - Guangzhou - Zhengzhou - Guangzhou - Shanghai - Huang Shan - Shao Lin - Beijing - Xi'an - Chengdu - Leshan - Kanding - Tagong - Litang - Xiang Cheng - Zhongdian - Lijiang - Kunming - Hekou/Lao Cai - Hanoi - Cat Ba Island - Ninh Binh - Hanoi - Hue - Hoi An - Hue - Hanoi
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Kurt
non-member comment
Great post!
Why should we place delicous here so that we can Bookmark this article for the future reference... Thanks, Kurt www.guidevietnam.com