North Vietnam: Hanoi and Hue

The weather here wasn’t that good, but it could be worse. Heavy weather now in Holland: big storms blowing away trucks from the roads! I hope everybody survived and is now reading this while enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee or tea. If you’re not, maybe you should. I would. One of the things I miss the most from back home? Good proper D.E. coffee. As most coffee here is sweet instant-coffee, it tastes just like that. If you’re unlucky and you didn’t specify you wanted hot coffee, you may end up with ice cubes in your coffee!.. a national refreshment.

Okay enough whining. It has been ten days since my last log. Where have I been? After the shopping-spree in Hoi An, I went to Hue. The old capital of Vietnam. Here the main sightseeing is the Citadel, the wall-enclosed old city where the king and queen used to live together with their servants and soldiers. Within the citadel is the forbidden city, the actual temples and buildings where the royal family lived. Although still an interessting sight, it has degraded a lot by the many bombings in the war. The old city has been used both by Vietcong and the U.S. army for shelter and protection. And is equally attacked and bombed by both. The result is a big empty space where there used to be old chinese-style temples, libraries, theatres and houses. As with the My Son ruines in Hoi An, the sights here show again that a lot of cultural heritage has been lost in the war. The second big sight in Hue are the tombs of old kings. A dragon boat on the perfume river will take you to these tombs. Actually I have just seen one, because the entrance fee was about 55.000 dong each. Which is about 3 u.s. dollars. Although this is not too much, it adds up and since I still try to travel low-budget I figured one was enough. They all look alike anyway :) The boat trip was great. The weather was good and along the river you can see local people digging up sand and rocks from the bottom of the river, to be processed later onshore. Very heavy work, but it is all done by hand! And ofcourse many of them were women. One thing that is for sure: the women in Vietnam work so much harder than the men!

After Hue I went for a long bus-trip to Ha noi, the (political) capital of Vietnam. Here I met Sun, a korean teacher. And Chang Hi, a 14-year old korean boy traveling alone but barely able to speak english. With them I spend my days in Hanoi. We went to the traditional water-puppetry theatre. Which is essentially a bunch of puppets on sticks in the water staging a play while live-music is performed. Although this may sound dull, it was fun to see how much they were able to do with these simple attributes.

The next day we went for a 2-day boat trip to Hanong Bay. Maybe you can best describe Hanong bay as the sea with a thousand islands. Because throughout the water there are many limestone mountaints reaching out of the water, straight up to the sky. A magnificent view, and in the winter time combined with the fog this gives a somewhat spooky sight. We visited a big cave. And ate on the boats. The lunch and dinners here are general very good. A vietnamese dish is often like a buffer, or spanish tapas. You have a lot of different dishes, and a big bowl of (sticky) rice. Everybody aroudn the table can grab from the plates what they like. Like grilled fish, spinache, spring-rolls (dutch: loempias), beef, vegetables, leaves, etc. A good way to try many different vietnamese food!

In the evening I teached the others (the koreans and a vietnamese guy) the card game koehandel, the famous animal-trading game we play in Holland. Which was big fun as usual :)

The next day was quite relaxing, I was preparing for my departure to Laos (getting US dollars, making photo’s for the visa) and we watched some lame movies. Chang Hi and Sun were very good company, so I really enjoyed these last days in Vietnam.

I just finished a 20-hour bus ride from Hanoi, Vietnam to _Vientiane, _the capital in Laos. I delayed my ticket from bangkok with 8 days so that gives me some more time to explore Laos! Thankfully the weather is great here, although it is only a few 100kms more land inwards.

Vietnam, been there done that. You ask me what I think of it? Even if you’re not, I’m gonna tell anyway. Unfortunately I am a little biased because the weather has been bad all the time. Everyday it was cloud and only ocassionally the sun came through. That makes the experience a bit more dim. Compared to Thailand the vietnamese people are much more creative. Their music is better and they try to make things pretty. They have bread, which is a good things. And they have strong vietnamese identity. With old cultural heritage like strong family ties and celebrations still present today. Although capitalism is here to stay, that doesn’t mean westernization is here yet. The number of western companies are very limited. Once you start to talk to local people, they are very friendly. What I didn’t like about Vietnam is the many _scams _(dutch: oplichtingspraktijken) that I have encountered here. They try to rip you off in every way you can. And in the bigger cities the people are very a-social. They can order and deliver your food in a restaurant without even looking at you. The whole vibe of the city was more harsh compared to Cambodia or Thailand.

I have already seen that Laos will be a totally different experience, being one of the least-developed countries in the world. I don’t know my plans exactly, probably traveluing in the north for a while and then heading south before returning back to Thailand.

I want to thank everybody that has send me e-mails or leaves messages!! I really enjoy reading them :)

And ofcourse there are new pictures of the last days in Vietnam online.

Au revoir!