The middle part!

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Hello! I guess we’ve all seen now how I like to start things and then never look at them again - like this blog! I hope you’ve all been enjoying Brian’s updates, I guess I have to take my turn though…

I’m going to zoom through the entire middle two thirds of the country in 500 words or less - here we go! From Nha Trang we bussed it up to Hoi An, a delightful town known for two things: historic buildings and tailors (and we thoroughly enjoyed both). It was my personal favourite so far, much smaller and more like my home in the north, friendly and small - although at home people don’t scream at you from their storefronts “YOU BUY, YOU BUY!!” Anyway, somehow we’ve ended up with wool coats that we now have to lug all over the place in a country where the temperature is not going to drop below 30 degrees. I also picked up a pretty hot suit though, very professional, you know, for the time in the future when I actually get a real job…

The buildings and houses have a real Chinese influence because it was a very important port back in the old days. Very elegant and simple, but once you walk through the doors there are the most intricate and rich looking decorations that you’ll ever see - everything in red and gold. The town sits on a river that doesn’t seem to have as much garbage as everywhere else, so it was quite beautiful. The beach is a 10 km bike ride away, it’s the far end of China Beach, which stretches for 30 km along the coast, and is a wide, white, jellyfishy, mostly garbage-less, irritating vendor filled, nice place. We had our most interesting meal yet in somebody’s front room eating a huge plate of rice and fish and who knows what else, accompanied by the daughter who stared at us the entire time and said every single word in English that she knew. Cool.

Okay, then we went to Hue, the old imperial city and saw lots and lots of imperial-type buildings. The sidewalks here are actually wide enough to walk on, and although lots of the old things were destroyed by war, there is enough left to give it a great ambience. We took another boat trip, and the most memorable thing was not crazy singing toothless guys, but a plethora of “extra charges” which made it our most expensive day yet. However, we did get to see some amazing tombs along the Perfume River where some old dead emperors are buried. As Brian says, you can see why the imperial times ended - they spent all their money on these things! They were amazing, and we also got our first downpour, so we liked them even more because we were cool.

So, that brings us pretty much up to the word limit I arbitrarily imposed upon myself, I promise to try not to abandon the website again. AND my cousins just had a baby - so everyone smile for them!

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Photos

Khai Dinh's tomb
This guy was a French sympathizer - hence the semi-European feel to the place

Comments

[Elaine]

so jealous!
It looks like you two are having a great time...Sara moreso because you actually get to check out the places a little more in depth, but still, its not Toronto in the hot sticky summer! Jon and I are packing up to head back to Orillia in a couple of weeks and we look forward to hearing more about your trips and seeing you at the end of the summer. Love Elaine

[jaelyn]

hi
Grandma got here safely. How is your trip? What are you doing? Love, Jaelyn