And you thought England was known for rain...

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  Hanoi, Vietnam
Thursday, November 20, 2008

So, our somewhat bad luck continued to dog us.  Hoi An is a very charming town -- but hard to see when it is bucketing down rain monsoon-style.  The first morning we couldn't leave the hotel at all it rained so hard and the streets were flooded.  People here are used to it -- everyone wears enormous plastic rain ponchos and pretty much carries on regardless.  When the rain eased up a little, we too donned these fashion statements and made our way onto the streets.  Hoi An is famous for their tailors -- you can order almost any clothes and they'll make them up for you.  So there are streets and streets of fabric/silk shops.  There are some lovely old buildings which served as Merchant Houses and a beautiful river. The shops have names such as, "Same, same but different", "same same, not different", "same same but better."! There are lots of little restaurants all serving similar and delicious food -- banana and chocolate pancakes, pho (vegetable noodle soup), curries etc. and we spent time out of the rain hanging out and eating

royal tomb

.  There were a couple of day trips we'd hoped to do while in Hoi An, and we wondered whether we should wait out the rain, but when we found out that it was forecast for the next 5 days, we decided to give up and move on.  So we got the bus to Hue.

The road from Hoi An to Hue runs along the coast and everything you read about it, is that it is stunningly beautiful.  We'll have to take the guidebook's word for it -- hard to see when rain is slashing down the windows!  From time to time I would open the window just to see, but the visibility was almost non-existant.  We caught what they call an "Open Bus" -- these are buses for tourists that run the entire length of Vietnam and you can stay on for as long or as little as you want.  What we didn't know, until we got on, was that our bus was a "sleeper."  What that means is that instead of having seats it has rows of beds -- great for night travel, but not ideal when your goal is to watch the scenery as you could only partially sit up.  We didn't mind that much, but there were some people on the bus who were really annoyed because they'd had the same problem with a different company so had specially switched to this company.

When we arrived in Hue there were touts swarming around the bus and we went with one of them to a little hotel that was fine ($8 a night, all mod cons)

Tomb or a Temple -- can't remember which!

.  We booked an afternoon sightseeing tour with a Danish family who were also staying at the hotel, and went to see 3 of the tombs of the emperors.  Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam early in the century so it has a very royal history.  The tombs were wonderful, set in beautiful scenery a few miles outside of Hue, elaborately decorated, one very Chinese-style, the most recent, more French style.  I was going to see the Imperial City, but the family said it was in such disrepair they didn't think it was worth it.  And of course, it was raining the entire day.  So we decided we would forge our way north to Hanoi where the weather would be better (it is!) 

Tomorrow we are off on a two day trip to Halong Bay.  
In answer to a question about money:  this is definitely the place for those who are good at maths.  In Bangkok we were using Baht -- 35 to the dollar; in Cambodia, Riem -- 4,000 to the dollar.  And here in Vietnam there are 17,000 dong to the dollar.  Good thing I do so much killer sudoku to keep my brain sharpened! 

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Royal Tomb, Hue

Temple, Hue

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