I got pretty slack on the blog front for a while, so the next couple of entries will be written retrospectively, meaning the general lack of interesting stuff can be blamed on my rapidly fading memory of precisely what went down.
Where were we? Let's assume nothing else happened in Saigon and that Ariel and I are now leaving. Excellent. Since we are (were) in the very south of Vietnam, we logically could go no direction but north. We find this nifty place called Sinh Cafe, which rather bizarrely sells not coffee and snack-like fare, but bus tickets. We board an overnight sleeper bus bound for the beach paradise of Nha Trang. The sleeper bus is quite frankly one of the strangest vehicles I've ever been on. It consists of three rows of half-seat-half-bed things, stacked two high, along the length of the vehicle. Generally each seat-bed is self contained, but right up the back there are no less than five beds squashed together (top and bottom levels), the outer ones having a good half metre less leg room than every other bed in the bus. Since me and Ariel obviously didn't book our ticket until the day before we left, we ended up with the bottom level at the back of the bus, with a grand total of fuck all room. Luckily nobody else got in the back with us, so we could stretch out and be comfy-ish.
Eight hours later we arrive in Nha Trang, where it is very early morning. We check into a hotel and start exploring. Nha Trang really has two sides to it. The one you are first introduced to is the touristy side - a long stretch of beautiful beach, decent enough waves (although they're all dumpers), impressive scenery, big hotels (a freaking Novotel!), wide main road, huge sculpture, backpacker-filled bars, etc. After walking a few kms we broke through to the oft ignored, but much more authentic side of Nha Trang. Here we found the rabbit warren of hectic streets, frightening street food, and huge markets; basically, where the locals live. We promptly got very lost and wandered around for several hours (our map was handily located back at the hotel - which we could not find). During our adventurous afternoon we found a 19 metre tall white buddha statue (complete with swastika), some ancient Cham ruins, a school with an elephant inside for no readily apparent reason, and saw a truck drive past with a person in a Mickey Mouse costume and a bear chained to the roof. Yeah, we didn't get it either. Eventually we managed to get directions to the main street and make the long trek back to our hotel. That evening we retired to Bar Oz (it was a fraud! Totally devoid of other Aussies) for some cheap Biere Larue and fish and chips (stunningly good for an Asian attempt). A laptop was hooked up to the speakers, so Ariel quickly hijacked the playlist and put on his favourites, pissing off the entire bar in the process by continually cutting tracks short as he found something better.
The next evening we had finished soaking up Nha Trang and hopped back on the sleeper bus for an 11 hour journey north to Hoi An. This time we were again at the back, but up top this time. Also, the other three seats were occupied. By three huge German dudes. So we had the five
biggest people on the entire bus squashed together in unbearably close quarters for eleven hours. Swell. The dude next to me, Tiek, had a fondness for rolling halfway onto my bed while he slept, so I spent a good deal of the time on my side trying to force him away with only the power of my mind.
EMERGENCY INTERRUPTION: HOLY SHIT I THOUGHT BED BUGS WERE JUST PART OF THAT STUPID SAYING BUT I JUST SAW ONE CRAWLING ACROSS THE BED I AM CURRENTLY WRITING THIS BLOG FROM. DIE, FOUL BEAST, DIIIIEEEEE!!!
Sorry. Kind of breaks up the flow of the piece. Anyway, Hoi An. Hoi An is a tiny little town on the coast, roughly in the middle of Vietnam. It was once a major trading port, but now it is just a really chill little town. It has managed to resist development seemingly for centuries, as the whole town still consists of traditional little yellow houses. It sits on a river, which is literally exactly the same level as the footpath, so the main street gets completely flooded at the slightest provocation. After all the hectic places we'd been through, Hoi An provided us with some much needed relaxation. Hoi An has its own (excellent) specialty dishes which cannot by obtained anywhere else in the world (even in other parts of Vietnam). We found a restaurant called Duc Sin Hoi An (literally "Hoi An Specialties") and tucked into a delicious bowl of Cau Lao. My favourite vietnamese dish (VERY big call), it contains super amazing noodles (made from the water of a particular well in Hoi An and totally unique), delicious broth, tender pork slices, cruncy croutons, bean shoots and lettuce. Hoi An also has some very pretty but rather bland steamed shrimp dumplings called White Rose, and some incredible fried wontons with an absurdly tasty salad on top. The place is gastronomic heaven, and I was very sad to leave it (without a final Cao Lao too!).
Hoi An is also the tailor capital of the world. If you heard that every second store in the whole town was a tailor, you would call bullshit, but astonishinly it is absolutly true. I got a snazzy business suit, a shirt, a silk scarf and some hilariously stupid looking but oh so comfortable red silk/satin pants made up for about $200AUD. If you go for crappier fabrics you can get suits made up seriously cheap, but I ended up getting quality stuff. When I was here two years ago I got an awesome three piece pinstripe suit, gangster style. Cool stuff.
Ariel had to fly back to Australia for a rather unneccessary Uni entrance test, and would be gone for a week or so. My father, who sorely missed old 'Nam from his visit two years ago, pounced on the opportunity and flew over to travel with me for two weeks during his time off work. We met up in Hoi An and got yet another Sinh Cafe sleeper bus to the next hotspot, Hue. We ended up on the some bus as my German buddy from the last trip, Tiek. Fortunately we weren't sleeping next to each other this time (ugh).
Two cities down, why stop when you're on a roll? Hue! Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam before the title was transferred to Hanoi, and the architecture shows this. Similar to Nha Trang, Hue is split into the old and new halves of town, in this case by the Perfume River. The old part of town is the Citadel, basically the local part of town, flanked by high stone walls and a massive moat, with only two bridges connecting it to the rest of Hue. Me and Dad walked in, hoping to see the inner Citadel (the old home of the royal family, now mostly in disrepair). It hadn't opened yet, but a friendly cyclo rider showed up (cyclo = bicycle thing with big chair at the front for the passanger, with the driver at the back pedalling like a madman) to show us round. He asks for twenty thousand dong each. After some bargaining we agree on fourteen thousand each, with him and another rider so we had a cyclo each, for a one hour tour of the Citadel. This goes well, and we see a ruined old bunker left over from the war, and even have a shot at riding the cyclo. We get dropped off at the inner Citadel, and hand over our 14k each. We are met by a blank stare. "Forty!" claims the driver. Woah ho no. Aruguments insue as the dude tries to convice us that we agreed to a much inflated price. I had previously demonstrated the number on the screen of my phone so as to avoid confusion, so I try again but the guy is dismissive (FUCKING HELL MORE BEDBUGS!!!!). He lights a cigarette, looks on the verge of tears and goes off to loudly complain in Vietnamese to the other cyclo riders. The other rider gives us the look of death. Shrugging, Dad grabs the correct cash and places it on the seat and turns to leave. The dude snatches it, grabs Dad's hand and shoves it back in, screaming "SOUVENIR!". After ten minutes of utter confusion, we shrug and go into the Citadel. I've never felt shittier or angrier about getting something for free.
Citadel was impressive, but our foul mood marred the experience. We get lost as we leave but eventually find our way out to the bridge across the moat. We stop for a delicious lunch at a restaurant run by a deaf mute. The bathroom was hidden in the wall halfway up the stairwell. Awesome. We leave and go into a stationary shop to get a notepad. I feel a tap on shoulder and turn around to find an extremely irate cyclo driver. It's the second rider from before. He's shouting for his money. The store keeper kicks him out. We'd just got over the shit feeling from before, and here he is to renew it. Again we try to explain the agreed price, which he denies and starts sprouting some bullshit about price per kilometre. A helpful local with some English skill steps in to resolve things. He shuts up the rider and turns to us, saying "Just give him twenty thousand". It's more than agreed, but we don't care. I offer the note to the rider, who glares at me furiously for a good ten seconds as he contemplates whether or not to take it. He snatches the note and leaves immediately without another word. The other rider is nowhere to be seen. Moral of the story; get cyclo drivers to write down their agreed price and fucking sign the paper. I wish it were overkill, but we heard stories of cyclo drivers jacking up prices and ripping people off so commonly (Ariel's "free ride" ended in money being snatched out of his wallet) that it sadly isn't.
Anyhoo. The next day we book a day on the boat to visit the various tombs of the emperors scattered around Hue. Some of these were seriously impressive - huge, lush parks with grand temples in them, as well as more subdued structures on the lakes where the emperor supposedly sat and wrote poetry. Others had courtyards full of stone statues of soldiers and elephants. The boat side of things was a fair bit more dodgy. Heaps of places around Hue offer boat trips with different prices and itineraries, but they all take you to the same two or three boats. On the one boat there were people who paid as little as $3 and as much as $15 for exactly the same thing. Our ticket for motorbike transfer to one of the tombs was a scrap of paper with "MO TO BIE" scribbled on it. Over the course of the day four items on the itinerary were skipped without explanation and we still finished over two hours behind schedule (people with flights or trains to catch were forced to pay an extortionist taxt fare - the cynic in me says the late timing was very deliberate for this reason). At the beginning of the trip, about ten people were ushered off our boat and onto a smaller once. We then passed a police check point, and just minutes later the small boat rejoins us and the ten people hop back on. Nothing suss! Still, sunset over the river on the way back was beautiful, and we saw some cool shit despite all the dodginess. After three nights in Hue we called it quits, and since we couldn't be arsed with another twenty hours of buses, we grabbed a quick flight up to Hanoi, the real capital, where we soon met up again with Ariel.
Phew! A week and a half of travel wrapped up in one entry, well done team. By team I mean me. Self congratulation is a wonderful thing. There's a while yet before the blog catches up with wherever I am now though (OOOH MYSTERIOUS). Next up is Hanoi, and also some excellent trekking in the mountains of Sapa. And then... nah, I won't spoil it. Pretty pics if I ever get them onto the PC (or ever find internet access).
Later dudes.
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