01.07.2004

Hue

We left Hoi An for Hue last night, and here we are. Hoi An was a great town to wander round - an old merchant town with narrow alleys and two-storey carved-wooden houses and a generations-old Japanese covered bridge.

Hoi An is also famous for the hundreds of tailors pumping out reasonable coats and shirts and pants at even more reasonable prices. Knowing that when we hit London forking out in pounds will hurt we stocked up. Danielle's uncle in London - Pat - is looking forward to another bag to store at his place (apparently the other one is getting lonely). Many thanks!

Hue is a few hours further up the coast - the mountains rise straight up out of the ocean here so the journey followed a snaking, slow curve along the edge of the mountains. There were some amazing views of the rice paddies pushing up against the sea in every valley.

According to our LP Hue was the only city to be taken by the Viet Cong for more than a few days, held for something like a month while the American's were distracted trying to protect Khe Sanh. It was all part of the Tet offensive and eventually the Americans returned to bomb the city into dust. So right now we're near the old DMZ zone where North met South.

Hue's risen again and the 290 000 residents seem as friendly as all Vietnamese are (not that we've met every single one, right). We took in an evening stroll along the Perfume river last night, and saw the usual bunch of vendor carts offering ice-creams, and sweets, and the same speaker system pumping out the same high-pitched "Happy Birthday" tune to attract customers. When cultures collide, weird happens. There are also these high tech machines that play horrible music and seem to measure your height and weight and are wheeled around constantly. Hordes of pay-me-photographers complete the crowd with stands and jackets and officially-assigned numbers hustling to take snaps for groups of primarily Vietnamese holiday-makers from Hanoi.

Which is where we're going tonight. The night bus should get us in tomorrow morning at 7am and then it's off to check out the north of Vietnam before crossing to Laos.