Bicycle riding, avocado shakes, and che
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
1
152
166
Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Hue,
Vietnam
Monday, June 2, 2008
After visiting the tomb, the woman running the souvenir shops next to the place we parked our bikes demonstrated how she makes incense and the conical straw hats that are worn throughout Vietnam. She let each of us try incense making. While both Lysiane and I failed miserably, Maryse seemed to be a natural. Thao needed to get to class, so we left her for the afternoon with plans to meet up with her later that evening.
She and two of her friends who are also studying English and Korean at the local University came to our guest house that evening and brought us to a riverside cafe down a couple of back alleys that no tourist would ever be able to find on their own. When they translated the list of drinks for us, they were unable to think of the English word for one of the fruit shakes, only able to describe it as green on the outside and inside. Since we had no idea what it was, I decided to order it. Maryse also ordered a drink that they couldn't translate. She ended up with the better one. My drink turned out to be a thick, green, avocado shake. It tasted like a couple of avocados had been placed in a blender. I like avocados a lot, but this drink was way too intense for me. I managed to drink about 1/6th of the glass, eventually pawning the rest of it off on Thao who gulped it up. Maryse's drink turned out to be passion fruit limeade and was really delicious.
The following day I joined a tour to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The DMZ was the area that divided North and South Vietnam. The tour started at the ungodly hour of 6am, which turned out to be ridiculously early since we returned home more than two hours before scheduled. I think I would have enjoyed the tour a lot more if it had started an hour or two later. Instead I was nodding off the entire time, in and out of sleep every time we got back in the van. Our guide was actually quite good - he was a child living just south of the DMZ during the war and gave us a good perspective on his experiences. We visited a couple of places that used to be military bases and while there isn't anything there anymore, it is good to see that life has moved on. As is the case in most of Vietnam, the trees and other growth are all relatively young, since everything was wiped out during the war. We stopped off at the start of the Ho Chi Minh trail, a massive collection of routes leading from the North to the South that were used extensively by the Viet Cong during the war. What was once a hidden footpath is now a paved highway. Not so exciting to see, but our guide was good at helping us imagine what it was once like. The highlight of the tour were the Vinh Moc tunnels. In contrast with the Cu Chi tunnels near Saigon that were only used for military operations, an entire village essentially lived in the Vinh Moc tunnels when they were under siege during the war. Thankfully these tunnels were (and are) much larger than the Cu Chi tunnels, only requiring me to duck my head a bit. The tunnels included "family rooms", where entire families of 4-5 people lived in a space about as large as the bathroom was in my old apartment. There was even a maternity room where 17 babies were born.
My last day in Hue I spent exploring the Citadel and city, but none of it was particularly interesting. The big Hue festival started while I was there, so there were some fun activities going on in the evenings by the river and a lot more people out and about, but I didn't manage to attend any of the festival events since I was too tired from the DMZ tour.
In stark contrast with the not-so-delicious avocado shake, we were directed to a wonderful vegetarian restaurant by the tiny and adorable woman who ran our guest house. It was about a 20 min walk away from the tourist ghetto and completely packed with Vietnamese people. The English translations on the menu weren't so great, so we ordered based on which names we thought sounded funny. Unfortunately they were out of Hydro Bamboo Royal Wave, but they did have Affection and Missing and 8 Assorted Weapons. We weren't such a fan of the weaponry, but everything else we ate was delicious enough that we returned the following night. Lysiane and Maryse also introduced me to a lovely Vietnamese treat - che. Che is a delicious concoction of beans, glutinous rice, fruits, condensed milk, ice, and all sorts of other sweet delights. Every che stand is a little bit different, but so far every one I've tried has been delicious. It's a nice refreshing treat on a hot day.
