Advertisement
Published: August 10th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Quiet streets of Hoi An
Everywhere I pointed my camera was postcard perfect The North and South Divide
After my last train experience, I decided to catch on overnight tourist but from Nha Trang to Hoi An instead. What a difference. Granted the ‘beds’ were nothing more then seriously inclined seats, you had to be shorter then 6ft to fit in them comfortably, and I was squished in the back with 4 other travelers for the duration of the trip. Bundled together like kittens, it was certainly one of the strangest introductions I’ve ever made. But despite these challenges I still passed a more restful night then I had on the train.
Hoi An is a beautiful little town that was named a UNESCO world heritage sight for it’s historic architecture. My guesthouse was located in the center of town in a small teak 180-year old house that had converted its 3 (very small) bedrooms into hotel rooms. The room was almost exactly the same size as a double bed. I know this because there was a double bed in the room, and the only floor I could see was a narrow 1ft strip on the side with the sliding shuttered door. The room came with an A/C unit (a blessed relief
Morning market
This was right outside of my guesthouse in the scorching 40-degree heat), and a shared bathroom located on the main floor (I was on the second).
The town itself seemed to glow. This could have been a result from the shimmering heat that seemed to rise up from the cobblestone streets, the hundreds of softly illuminated Chinese lanterns hanging from every building, or the warm yellow paint that adorned almost every building in town. Whatever the reason was, I found that the town was so beautiful and romantic that I was almost inclined to hold my own hand as I walked through it.
To complete the picture, Hoi An was inundated with art galleries. My own personal form of kryptonite. I found myself whipping out my credit card far more often then was wise. I ended up leaving town with a grand total of 5 oil paintings - 3 for me, and 1 each for my mom and sister. I decided to avoid the personal tailor shops entirely, as I apparently have no sense of willpower whatsoever.
Having heard that the coastal scenery on the way to Hue was spectacular, I decided to take the local bus to Danang where I would jump on
Jennifer's Kryptonite
Art galleries everywhere! Must. restrain. myself. the train for this short trip.
Boarding a battered and beat-up bus filled with locals and luggage, I made a move to grab a seat up front. The driver, a gruff and aggressive looking man, indicated that I should go sit on one of the wooden benches at the back of the bus which were laden down with boxes of goods, bags of produce, and a few unusual items like fans, bicycles, and rocks. I perched down on a corner of a bench while waiting to depart. While I was waiting, a young girl came racing up from the front of the bus to sit down beside me. The first breathless words out of her mouth were that the bus fare was 10,000 riel. She warned me that the driver would try to charge me more, and that some friends of hers had actually been hoodwinked out of 70,000 riel for the short 45-minute journey. She had barely gotten the warning out of her mouth before the driver saw her talking to me and began yelling at her. Keeping her head down and biting her lips to hold back tears, she endured the furious diatribe. When he finally stomped
Early morning streets...
...the only time of day when you didn't melt while walking through town away, she asked me what I thought he had been saying. Venturing a guess, I asked whether he was warning her not to tell me the price of the bus fare. Smiling slightly, she said I had guessed correctly. We ended up talking for the entire trip to Danang, pausing every few minutes while the driver continued his verbal attack. The girl was so scared of him by the end that she vowed that if he was on the bus back to Hoi An then she would wait and catch another. His facial expression when, unprompted, I handed over the correct fare merely strengthened her resolve to avoid him at all costs in the future. She confessed that her disgust with this kind of blatant corruption was one of the reasons why she was studying tourist services. She was worried about the poor reputation that Vietnam had for cheating their foreign visitors, and hoped that once she was in the field then she would be able to work towards educating people on why this behaviour could seriously damage the tourist industry for the country in the future. Most people, after visiting Vietnam, state that they would not come back. And
though I had witnessed some incredible acts of kindness from the people here during my stay, this is a sentiment that I could still understand.
Getting my train ticket at the station in Danang was the usual an act of frustration. Polite queues and the first-come first-served mentality are obviously foreign concepts to the people here. Locals kept pushing me out of the way and milling around the counter. I finally had to practically bar the ticket counter with my spread arms and snarl in order to enforce that it was my turn in line. I managed to snag my ticket 10 minutes before the train departed. The train ride itself was beautiful. Perched along the coastline, I had a clear view out at the turquoise and pristine waters of the China sea. Unfortunately I didn’t get the window seat, and the person who did had obviously become so accustomed to the view that he had no compunction against closing the curtains shortly into the trip and having a nap. I was forced to reach around and hitch up a small corner of the curtain in order to sneak a peak out the window.
I arrived in Hue
Japanese bridge
Very old, and very beautiful in the late afternoon and checked into a bland and unassuming hotel room before crossing the bridge to the old town and walking around the parapet walls surrounding the citadel. The sun was just beginning to set as I circled around to the West wall of the compound. Separated from the city core from a deep moat, I saw a group of teenagers on the other side yelling and goofing off. What I first took to be the shouted question of ‘Hello miss, how do you do’, ended up actually being ‘Hello miss, how do I fuck you’. Ignoring them, I continued my walk. Snapping a few pictures of the West gate, I crossed the bridge over the moat and began walking back. I had completely forgotten about the gang of prepubescent teenage hooligans laying in wait on the other side. Immersed in the view, I jumped in surprise when all of a sudden the gang of yelling teenagers came running out of nowhere and surrounded me. Making frantic grabs at my camera they demanded that I hand it over. Their threats lost some of their power when I realized that I was at least a head taller then any
Vietnamese Wedding
Very staged, but beautiful nonetheless of them, was close enough to the main street that I would be heard if I yelled for help, and that none of them had anything resembling a weapon. So instead of letting them see that I was nervous, I put on my best poker face and gave them a steady stare before politely saying hello in Vietnamese, pushing my way out of the circle, and walking away. They followed me for awhile yelling obscenities and insults but eventually lost interest. They might have had better luck if they had tried to steal my wallet or laptop. But I am the girl whose first thought when being thrown from a motorbike was to curl my body around my camera to protect it from the brutally hard landing. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, will ever separate me from my camera. Question my priorities if you must, but I stand by them - haha.
Between dishonest bus drivers, aggressive locals at the train station, and an attempted mugging in Hue, I was beginning to understand why people had warned me that the people in the North were not as friendly as the people in Southern Vietnam. Little did I realize at
Boatman
Posing for the camera the time that my challenges were just beginning.
Signing Out,
Jen
Advertisement
Tot: 0.121s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0265s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb