Bikes, Buses and Tunnels
Trip Start
Sep 30, 2005
1
45
82
Trip End
Sep 01, 2006
Hue, Vietnam
Friday, February 24, 2006
So we left Hoi An having successfully managed not to get any clothes made unlike every other tourist we met and arrived at Hue. The temperature has decreased the further North we've travelled so the socks and sexy anoraks came out against the constant drizzle. As usual we were dropped outside a hotel the bus company wanted us to stay at. This one was cheap and nice so I agreed to stay but in the time it took to walk back downstairs the room was gone and there were only $7 rooms left, no sorry to much for us so off on a moto somewhere else. The driver said $6 room very nice, so once there we are shown the $10 nice rooms first then $8 so again no thanks too much for us and we turn to leave when she says "ok $6 but don't tell anyone else!" We've agreed that many times before! Is hard sometimes to find balance between being ripped off and quibbling over small amounts.
We stayed in the main backpackers area of Hue and opposite our hotel was a little cafe with writing all over the walls and an eccentric Vietnamese owner. She kept shouting and doing fishing mimes trying to 'reel' people in and had a million rhymes like "If you don't go, you'll never know" in the end we agreed to do a half day moto tour of the city the next day along with about 6 other people in the cafe.
The bike tour was really good, the guides amusing and informative and driving through the rice fields with mountains all around and big grey clouds and constant rain only added to the views.I was on the back of a guides bike, and Danny was let loose on his own. The first stop was a 230 year old Japanese bridge designed by a woman to match the one in Hoi An. The best bit though was the old woman outside smiling and talking to me for ages in Vietnamese and me smiling and talking to her in English, neither understanding the other but it didn't seem to matter!
Next the royal tomb of Minh Mang which had very beautiful grounds (as they should have been for the entrance cost) and the hill top tomb of Emperor Khai Dinh. The tour also included two Pagodas and the French bomb shelters. Inside the first pagoda we watched the morning prayer ceremony of the monks which was very peaceful and interesting (not sure I could be a monk though, female issue aside). The Vietnamese Monks are different here as they all volunteer. In Thailand it is expected that every male spend some time as a monk (used to be 1 year but now I think you can get away with 2 weeks). In Vietnam though if you do volunteer then you have to stay for life. People join from the age 10 upwards. In the second Pagoda we went to there were pictures of the monk who used to live there, setting himself on fire in protest to the treatment of Buddhists by Catholics in South Vietnam. The pictures are graffic but the monk is sitting cross-legged and looks almost peaceful.
That afternoon we went to the huge moated Citidel in the city centre and walked through the huge gardens, halls and forbidden purple city of the Gia Long Emperor. After a full days cultural sightseeing, beers (30p a bottle) were required and we even found the only club in Hue with new found friends. At 3am Danny tells me that the bus tour of the surrounding area starts at 6am the next day, great! In the morning the alarm fails to go off (partly cos Danny didn't set it) and the phone rings at 6:15 saying we have to leave now, so up, dressed and packed in 5 mins, just remember to collect our passports and onto the bus. As the bus pulls away we realise we forgot to collect the laundry (definitely Danny's fault), and we aren't going back there! We are meeting the bus to Hanoi along the way. After much hassle and calls we manage to arrange for it to be put on the bus from Hanoi before we get on it later, silly tourists.
On the bus tour we went to the much larger Viet Cong tunnels of Vinh Moc which were interesting and far less Clostrophobic than the Cu Chi tunnels even though we were down there for over 20 minutes. There were over 200 miles of tunnel networks some 23 meters down all over Vietnam. Seeing the tunnels as well as reading about the war gives a real sense of how difficult it must have been to live in the hot, damp, suffocating tunnels for so many years. There were even hospitals, weapons manufacture areas and birth chambers under ground.
On some of these organised tours as well as feeling herded sometimes you also feel uncomfortable. On the way back we stopped at a 'traditional village' which felt very intrusive going into the village and looking at peoples homes with a bus load of people. I wonder what the village gets out of it and if it's money how much? When we arrived Danny and I decided to wait behind with the bus and look at the chickens instead.
On the way to the museum at the Khe Sanh Cobmat Base a bus going the other was stops and out of the boot to my alarm comes my big backpack. Apparently my bag had gone to the Laos border and back with other people from the morning bus tour without me! Thankfully I didn't know so couldn't worry about it until it was back, phew!
Both of us really enjoyed Hue and it was interesting to see the tunnels, religious sites, the Ho Chi Minh Trail and an old American army base. But also to see the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) which used to divide the north from the south. The more I have travelled in Vietnam the more I've like it as well as the people. Lots of people we have spoken to work 7 days a week and really long hours but keep smiling. Both of us found the Vietnamese we've met the funniest and seem to use humour as a good mechanism for dealing with poverty as well as the past.
So 13 hours on a bus to Hanoi thankfully the lack of sleep the night before meant we slept all the way!
Take care everyone, we miss you.....
