Vietnam- Communist with a Capitalist 'C'

Vietnam.  Communist with a Capitalist 'C'

On the intercity buses between cities in Asia, you stop off every few hours at the Asian equivalent of service stations.  They have a bizarre buffet food system where you are not allowed to help yourself.  Rather, a team of close-knit waitresses block the path to the food counter and you have to attract their attention before pointing at what you want.  It's bizarre because behind the counter are more food servers who you could very well show what you want without the uncertainties introduced by a middle-man (or in this case a woman).   My questions about the logic of the whole thing besides, they are not often salubrious places.  At a purely objective level and given the throughput of visitors who, to a great extent are never likely to return, feedback about the food must be minimal and so, in consequence I suppose is the hygiene.  Anyway, this is all a roundabout way of saying that we both arrived in Ho Chi Minh city with griping stomachs, and shortly much more besides.  Traveller's diarrhoea is never nice, but when you've booked into a hostel with a shared bathroom and you're sleeping in a dorm with 16 other people it adds a certain communal flavour (ha ha) to the proceedings that aren't likely to endear you to the guy in the next bed (or stall).  The hostel was pretty good but we were more or less laid up for about four days.  Which was nice.

Hammer and sickle flags in Ho Chi Minh City, with Raiden hats for sale in the background.

Ho Chi Minh city is named after, ahem, Ho Chi Minh, who aside from anything else was a communist revolutionary, a figure still revered in Vietnam today and the father figure of the present communist government, which renamed the city from Saigon when the communist north defeated the more liberal (or at least less communist) south 40ish years ago.  The irony about all this is that Ho Chi Minh would likely be turning in his grave if he could see Saigon today.  It is a brash, bullish, colourful, busy, ostentatious city and is overtly capitalist.  It isn't communist, or even socialist, in feel at all.  

Starbucks has arrived (of course), complete with lines of locals queuing up for mediocre coffee. Abandon hope all ye that enter here.

The Bitexco (?sp) tower.  Saigon's latest capitalist shrine.

Teardrop lighting.  A marker of civilised society ;)

And neither, for that matter, is the rest of Vietnam (communist, that is).  It's an interesting observation (and in the Lonely Planet they diplomatically term Vietnam as a 'socialist market economy') that no matter what the governmental structure of a nation, the creep of capitalism seems scarcely to notice.  From Russia to China to Vietnam the same things are happening as have already happened to the Western world.  You can delay it but you can't stop it.  The internet, and all mass media, could be held to account I suppose, if anything could.  Suddenly people can see what they're missing (or think they're missing).  And they want a slice.  But a more fundamental level I think Maslow had it right, and the mass media has just catalysed a more fundamental process.  People want to better themselves, to ensure their basic needs, social status and to improve the lives of their children.  To do that you have, in many ways, to be selfish (even if it's for your kids) and capitalism certainly represents that aspiration at its core.  And it doesn't seem to be doing the ecosystem many favours.  But I digress.  Again.

Moped mayhem.  All good clean fun.  Advice for crossing the road.  Walk.  Don't look.

So the first experience of Vietnam, guts aside, was not good.  Out of the coach and into the foray of taxi drivers trying to get your business we fell right into a trap that was irritatingly obvious after the event, but in execution was quite subtle.  It hinges on the reasonable assumption of the rip-off taxi drivers that you are not going to have the local currency (which, like many things in Vietnam, is called the 'Dong').  The Dong is a bit like the Italian lira was years ago.  You need thousands of them.  No millions is more like it.  1,000,000 Dong is about £30.  Anyway, as I say this scam hinges on you not having any, which given you've just arrived by bus from another country is a reasonable assumption.  The taxi driver then offers to take you to your destination in his metered taxi, but he can unfortunately only accept Dong as payment.  Just having arrived you will not of course yet know that you can also pay for most things with US dollars, but even if you did he will not accept them.  The trap is set.  And it's also only when you're on your way that you see the meter ticking up a bit fast.  But no matter you think.  It's not far, even given you are going to go via an ATM.  And when you've returned to the taxi after said diversion, the meter has mysteriously jumped 300,000 Dong.  Taxi driver claims to know nothing about it and any more questions are met with the feigned lack of understanding of English.  When we arrived at the destination (five minutes down the road), we were facing a 500,000 Dong charge.  Further attempts at pointing out the situation are met with escalating aggression.  So we paid.  It's wasn't going to break the bank, but it pissed me off, and I was set up for not enjoying this place.

But even with my precious guts in an uproar, not to mention my precious pride, my bad mood was quickly dispelled.  Lively and friendly, the Vietnamese chat away in their Austroasiatic language which, by a twist of fate that can be put back to a French missionary in the late 18th century, is written in a diacritic Latin alphabet.  Basically it's a modified version of Chinese but written with letters we recognise.  And it's amusing also because (and I admit my puerile predilections here so many of the words have lavatorial humour in English.  Words like 'hung', 'dung', 'dong', 'long', 'phat' and many more besides, which on their own are only slightly amusing, but in combination often left me tittering like a teenager.  It's very rare to see a word over five letters long, which gives the phonetics of the language a staccato sound.  And coupled with the fact that the Vietnamese have this tendency to shout, I don't think (with the possible exception of German) that a language has ever made me smile more.  I feel slightly guilty as this reaction could be construed as me laughing at the people.  It's not meant that way and I have to emphasise that the Vietnamese are a really lovely bunch, as friendly as any I have met on this trip.  But when you are faced with a shop sign saying 'Daily Hung Bich' (and it was a hardware store as far as I remember), it puts a smile on my face that isn't easily erased.  Actually, as far as South East Asia goes, the Vietnamese seemed to meet with criticism from my fellow travellers for exactly the same reason that they made me laugh, their shouting staccato sounds taken to infer an unfriendly nature.  Everything dependent on one's point of view I suppose.

Titter ye not.

Make of it what you will

No idea what tampons have to do with this

But it wasn't just the people that dispelled my initial misgivings.  The food is sensational in Vietnam.  I think it was actually better than Thailand, and that's saying something.  So many road side stores selling yummy things and little eateries serving simple but delicious, fresh, cheap and wholesome food.  You don't need to bother with a restaurant, unless you want a change from local fare (not often).  Gorgeous noodle soup with grilled meats and heaps of fresh veggies and herbs that you dunk in and which cook in the soup, marinated pork, beef and chicken barbequed fresh on little charcoal stoves, crispy spring rolls crammed with goodies, freshly fried road side doughnuts and coconutty, milky puddings and sweets, fresh, cheap local beer brewed on every street corner (and I'm talking 15p-a-pint cheap), amazingly strong, almost fruity Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk and everywhere people selling fresh, delicious local fruits and juices.  I was hooked.  Immediately. If food is like a drug then Vietnamese food is like crack.

One of the many delicious, cheap, plates of goodies served up for us in Vietnam.  This lot about £1.

Other observations on getting to Vietnam.  Communist hammer and sickle flags everywhere.  Ideograms and pictures of Ho Chi Minh adorning every visible surface.  The standard moped mayhem, with entire families plus luggage perched on a Honda 125.  Pavements crammed with sellers, stalls, animals and everything else besides (pedestrians walk on the streets).  Big groups of people doing exercises in public spaces.  Raiden hats (they call them conical hats here, but I think they make them all look like the character Raiden out of the yesteryear game Mortal Kombat).  Lots of song birds in cages hung up on the street.  I seem to be taller than everyone except other tourists.  A much more Chinese feel than the rest of Asia so far.  Lots of writing on bamboo scrolls.  Propaganda.  And buildings that look like book ends (high land prices but no set limits on how high you can build).  

Having to take into account our guts, we didn't explore Ho Chi Minh as much as we would've liked.  We went to the top of the large financial tower that has just been built.  Spectacular views of the twinkling city below, and spectacular prices to match.  We had also arrived just after Chinese New Year, which here is called 'Tet'.  The throngs of people, lights and decorations surpass anything I've experienced in London.  

Tet 2013.  Chinese New Year.

Absolute Bedlam.

We went to the war remnants museum, which, aside from the fact that the entire Vietnam war was an absolute tragedy and should never have happened in the first place, was a huge and arguably unnecessary propaganda exercise.  

I might be taking a contentious position.  Both sides were guilty of propaganda as bad as the other at the time of the war and both were no doubt guilty of horrendous inhumane acts.  I just don't see the point of propagating propaganda so long after the event.  Why not tell the truth as much as possible so everyone can learn that physical conflict is not the answer to the world's problems.  I left horrified at the images (pictures of deformed children that may (or equally may not) be due to the American's use of Agent Orange (aka Dioxin) were particularly distressing), but disappointed by the unsubtle and relentless bias.

Market in Ho Chi Minh.  Raiden Hats on Display.

More Raiden Hats!  FINISH HIM!

Evening exercises in Ho Chi Minh city.

After my guts had sufficiently solidified (Ro still suffering), the most exciting day came via a trip to the Chu Chi tunnels, about 50kms outside of Ho Chi Minh city.  It's probably fair to say that the network of underground tunnels developed by the northern Vietnamese army (the Viet Cong) in the war were a significant factor in their eventual triumph.  While America obliterated vast tracts of the country with conventional bombs and horrendous chemical weapons, the Viet Cong stayed in their subterranean safe houses, only emerging to make raids on the Americans, which had the effect of both frustrating and demoralising them until the opinion back home was so wholly against the war that the Americans abandoned their attempts.  Probably the decisive factor about the tunnels, and related to the observation that we seemed to be taller than everyone else, was their size.  Just big enough for the Vietnamese to scurry down, the Americans had more of a struggle and the Viet Cong just picked them off with ever more ingenious and lethal traps as the war went on.  

Basic Viet Cong Trap.  Seemed a bit comic book to me sometimes.  Not for the people caught in them obviously.  Just the way I deal with the horror of it I guess.

A concealed entrance into a tunnel.

One which was not on display, but seemed particularly inventive to me, was drilling a long, small diameter hole in the ceiling of a tunnel and popping a venomous snake up there.  Then the hole was plugged with a cork and the cork attached to a string with a snagging object tied to the end.  When the enemy comes down the tunnel their equipment snags on the paperclip which pulls the cork out and the pissed off snake is free to sink its venomous fangs into the unfortunate victim.  Such imagination. It has an almost comic book element to it in my head, although ultimately going into the tunnels was a hot and anxiety provoking experience.  I could only manage half the distance before needing to take one of the side exits out.  I didn't know I had claustrophobic tendencies until I went in the Viet Cong's tunnels.  An amazing experience though.  I have never seen anything quite like them.

Going into one of the (enlarged tunnels)...

...and something to give a scale to it.  Note that this tunnel has been enlarged from its original size to accommodate tubby tourists.  

Our guts back in some semblance of solidity thanks to the magic of Ciprofloxacin, we headed off to our next destination, Mui Ne, on the coast of Vietnam.  

It adds more to Vietnam's magic that it is a long thin country with one side (almost) one long beach on the South China Sea.  That's a bit of an exaggeration actually but however you look at it there is a lot of gorgeous coastline here.  Mui Ne is a water sports beach, as it were, with the principle sports being kitesurfing and windsurfing.  

Usually there were about 80-100 kitesurfers out, as well as windsurfers.  Beautiful Sight.

As with all sports in the water, it helps immensely if the sea is not freezing.  And here it is not.  So I signed up for a kitesurfing course.  I don't consider myself the surfer type.  I'm not cool enough (or arrogant enough perhaps) to get away with it, but oddly I felt quite relaxed amongst all the bronzed, floppy haired teenagers and twenty somethings who lounged about on beanbags in the sun smoking pot before hitting the waves and catching 'serious air', seemingly effortlessly, on their boards.  A friendly lot though they were, that was as far as my feelings of inclusion really got if I'm honest with myself.  Kitesurfing is not easy to pick up, although the instructor was very encouraging.  

This is not me kitesurfing.

This is.  Thanks to Ro for the perfect timing.

Walking back along the beach with my nemesis the kite after another pitched battle from which it emerged triumphant in most domains.

Setting up the arch and capricious fiend.  It lies there biding its time.  I am, by this time, aware of its malevolent and quixotic ways, but not yet wise to them.

Me and the kite.  Instructor close by, therefore kite behaving for once.  Not for long.

After nine hours of tuition I was at the point of achieving some sort of understanding with the kite (it had been love/hate at first, but now we had moved into a predominantly pride/jealousy dynamic), and getting up on the board.  But then I had to stop, partly because we were leaving and partly because the tuition cost £40 an hour.  Maybe I'll give it another go back in the UK, although being pulled through the water by a kite in the north Atlantic isn't quite the prospect it is in the South China sea.  The advantage of kitesurfing, I realised though, is that unlike many other water sports you can get everything you need to do it in the back of the car.  No boats, or other things that will forever be out of my budget, required.  And unlike surfing you don't spend eternity paddling in the water like a beached seal with epilepsy.  

Mui Ne is a good town too.  Lots of Russians we noticed.  Lots of Russians everywhere come to that.  Along the shore in Mui Ne they have a long line of BBQ eateries where you sit on cheap plastic chairs and pick out seafood you'd like to eat and then they BBQ it for you and it tastes pretty yummy.  One of them, for better or worse, was called Mr Crab.

We chose not to eat here

Picking out the seafood is a slight trauma however because it is still alive at the time, swimming in tanks of water where the unfortunate creatures are kept.  This includes a variety of things other than fish such as eels, sharks and (more emotively for me) turtles.  Frogs too, slithering about all over each other in the tank.  I tried frog in Cambodia and found it to be an unrewarding thing to eat.  Added to which I think frogs are quite sweet, so their plight did touch me a little.  

And indeed, as we walked past one tank a particularly enterprising frog managed to gain enough purchase on his companions to make a leap for freedom!  Sailing through the air and out of the tank he landed on the pavement inches from my descending foot, which would've squashed him had he not taken another leap almost instantly.  He was going for freedom!  We watched, transfixed!  Just at that moment a moped pulled up with two girls on it.  Narrowly escaping the wheels of the moped the frog then leapt forward towards the road, only to nearly be squashed by one of the girls getting off the moped.  One more leap and he was on the road.  On the other side was a mixture of undergrowth and greenery.  He had a chance!  He could make it!  We were rooting for him.  Two more leaps and he was into the road proper, narrowly avoiding a car and another moped.  He was nearly there!  But then, disaster!  The owner of the restaurant had spotted our daring hero's escape!  He rushed over, scooped him up with his hands and deposited him back in his prison.  Foiled!  So near, and yet so far!  We were quite upset.  I like to think our frog made another successful attempt at freedom, but I think perhaps not.  He's probably croaked, or if not then certainly hopping mad <sigh>

Off up the coast to Nha Trang, the beach destination of Vietnam.  This involved our first coach trip on what are called 'open tour' busses.  They are sleeper coaches, but not as we know them, the standard reclining seats being replaced with two levels of (almost) flat beds.  Your feet slot into a compartment upon which the head of the person in front of you rests.  It almost works…but after about 10 minutes inside this machiavellian device I came to the conclusion that it was actually all a sadistic joke played by the Vietnamese on us unfortunate and unknowing foreigners.  A cruel full body version of a Chinese finger trap would be a more accurate description of this infernal invention.  Once in you can never get out and it isn't big enough.  Moving around just entraps you more.  Danté himself could not have imagined a form of torture more frustrating than these seats for his inferno.  Ahem.  I didn't get on with them very well.  Being tall had rarely been so uncomfortable, although that could also be put down to the Vietnamese roads.  Thankfully this journey was only 5 hours.  

It's a cruel joke I tell you.  They *look* comfortable it's true, but there are cameras on board beaming our entrapped looks of agony live to the gleeful nation.  Don't be deceived like we were!

But beach destination Nha Trang was not, at least for us.  It proceeded to piss with rain so comprehensively that the streets flooded and we were wading through the water along the roads in our flip flops.  Nha Trang is known for its beaches and its bars so we did little over the next couple of days except drink, eat and attempt to dry out our increasingly sodden clothes.  Wash out.  It was during this biblical weather that I managed to persuade my laptop to run 'Bubble Bobble', a retro experience for anyone growing up in the eighties.  It kept our fingers busy whilst the rain pummelled the streets.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

After a couple of days the weather wasn't looking like it was going to change (this was the remains of a tropical storm from the Phillipines) so we decided to make a break for it and backtrack slightly to the hill town of Da Lat.  Again an open tour bus, but again mercifully not for long.

Russian a very common sight too.

Da Lat is about 1,200 meters up in the hills of western Vietnam.  Consequently it is cooler and less humid than the rest of the country.  The town has a French feel to it, and patisseries mingle with other colonial elements to give the town a distinctly European visage.  A large lake cuts through the centre of town and on it you can see lots of pedalos shaped like swans.  Next to that is a golf course, slightly incongruously, and a botanical garden.  By the standards of Ho Chi Minh city and Saigon, it is pretty sedate and we found it largely deserted by 11pm.  We stayed in a pretty hotel called 'Dreams' (it had 'vibes') which had a hot tub on the roof and a glorious breakfast spread in the morning.  It was the first time I had tasted Marmite since leaving the UK.  The first day we visited what is commonly called the Crazy House.  It's a bizarre architectural gem of a building constantly being added to by its owner, and it has turned into one of the major sights of the area.  

It feels in many ways like a cross between a witch's coven and something out of Alice in Wonderland. 

Twisting, organic stairways blend into rooms themed around different animals.  Still more stairways and walkways wind over and around roofs and walls shaped like dripping icicles.  

You can actually stay here overnight, but I think it would be a pretty eerie experience.  

That night we went to a restaurant for some dinner and a guy did a finger painting for each of us for free!  Lovely experience from a genuine, lovely Vietnamese man.  Mine is the Chinese symbol for happiness, so I tried to look suitably joyful in the photo (I really was quite pleased).

The next day we hired a couple of Easy Riders for the day.  It's an experience where a couple of of guys on big motorbikes pick you up and you cruise around the hills for the day seeing the sights.  And no, it isn't sexual.

Saw a big pagoda.  Not really special.  Lots of serpents and nagas and all the rest of it.  Very used to this lot by now.  Although true to say that the mythological icons have a more distinctly Chinese feel in Vietnam.

We drank coffee made from coffee beans that had been through the intestines of a weasel.  Yes.  I kid you not.  Weasel shit coffee.  It tastes wonderful by the way.  

Don't look *too* close!

Again, not *too* close ;)

More stupas...

Stunning scenery around Da Lat.  This is where much of Vietnam's flowers and veggies are grown.  We ate lots of cherry tomatoes growing by the road.

Coffee Trees in flower.  These, I think, are robusta coffee plants.

When I saw the weasels in cages about an hour later I regretted drinking the coffee and fuelling this industry.  They were being kept in terrible conditions.  

Poor weasels.  Shit life.  ;-/

We drank this fermented rice spirit.  55%.  Burns like hell.  Gets you drunk very quickly.  

Fermenting Rice Spirit.  Smells like Meths.  Probably is judging by one shot glass' effect on me.

Then we had a gorgeous lunch at one the little roadside cafés and we were given snake wine and bird wine.  These are rice spirit which snakes and birds have been tossed into.  Whole.  The bird one tasted a bit birdy I suppose.  Not very nice.  The snake one just tasted of the spirit.  But still not great.  But it's another one ticked off the list.  

Snake wine :-/

Bird wine :-?

Next on to a silk farm.  I never had any idea how they processed silk.  Amazing process.

The grubs are fed on Mulberry leaves.

Then they are allowed to cocoon themselves in silk.

When fully cocooned they are killed in boiling water and the threads of silk gathered by a...machine that gathers...

many machines that gather....

And then at the end of it the dead grub is laid out to dry on the hot machines...

...and you can eat it as a tasty snack!  What an ignominious end...;)

Next onto *another* buddhist wat.  More buddhas, nagas, serpents and many-armed deities of uncertain significance.

Definitely happy about something other than enlightenment

Maybe the extent of his belly

More serpents.  They tend to be on bannisters as a sort of iconic protection.

One cool helmet complete with eye-shades, more picture postcard scenery and innumerable hair-raising hairpin bends taken at unwise speeds later we were decanted back at the hotel where we celebrated our survival with a jacuzzi on the roof.

I suppose aside from anything else we did in Da Lat the most notable experience were the street sellers with squeaky toys that they use to attract people's attention.  Just one of those quirky things that stand out.

At about this point we had a particular run on something that seems to happen a lot in Asia, which is random Asian people asking if you will pose with them in a photo.  

To start of with I was a bit suspicious.  Why did they want a photo of me, or Ro, or us both together, with them?  Various interpretations wended their way through my mind until I gave up on it and decided to just enjoy it.  And the more you beam a smile, the happier they seem to get.  I would have taken it to be pure flattery were it not for the fact that groups of guys would also ask, although not as much as individual women and groups of women, always shy, giggling and seemingly put up to it by their friends.  I decided it was not so much me they wanted a photo with, as with something that I represented, which I took to be my cultural background (or that that's portrayed by media).  It's scarcely an accurate representation, media always seeming to exaggerate both the bad and good for some sort of self-interested gain, and I often wondered, if they knew what the grass really looked like on the other side of the fence whether they would still be asking.  Still, it was flattering to be asked so much and whatever the reason I hope the pictures came out OK.  I was not nosey, or vain, enough to want to look unless it was put in front of me.

From Da Lat we headed to Hoi An, this time by plane.  It would've been a 24 hour bus journey with a stop over in Nha Trang and the plane tickets were $60.  We couldn't say no.  We landed in Danang after an easy hour's flight from Da Lat then dropped off our passports for visa extensions and caught the bus to Hoi An.

Hoi An is probably one of the prettiest towns I have ever visited.  I'll let the pictures do the describing, but it was a myriad of chinese lanterns, cute European style houses and quaint old-style wood work.  

Chinese lanterns strung through the streets of Hoi An

Old colonial architecture give it a French countryside village feel at times.

But all with unintentionally amusing Vietnamese touches

The riverside

We spent almost a week here, not just because it was such a nice place to be but also because we were getting tailored suits made up.  Hoi An has over 600 cloth shops, although I think most of them are quite low quality.  It's an incredibly cut-throat market.  When we ventured into the cloth market proper to check out the prices and the options we had to fight our way out again, a woman pulling on the sleeve of my shirt to try and get me back to her stall.  Full on.  After a lot of research we settled on a couple of tailors to try out and, given the relative lack of decent information about tailors in Hoi An, I wrote a separate blog post which you can view here.  Aside from getting our suits made we spent the time picking up souvenirs, eating amazing Vietnamese food and drinking amazingly cheap Vietnamese bia hoi, which is beer they brew in their own homes (often very good).  We took a boat trip, which wasn't much fun because it pissed with rain and we saw the historic houses and other bits and pieces Hoi An has to offer.  The magic of the place, though, isn't in its tourist attractions.  The whole place is a tourist attraction.  It i so disarmingly pretty and quaint you really feel you've entered into some sort of fairy tale city.  It was a shame to leave.

Mr Xe!  Of course!

One of Mr Xe's assisstants working on a beautiful old singer sewing machine.

Mr Xe doing his thing

Two happy customers

One awesome dog!

Off, then, to Hué.  Compared to Hoi An this isn't much of a destination, notable really only for its elaborate citadel and the fact that it was the former capital of the country.  The citadel was extensively damaged during the war and little of it remains.  Still it's quite a rewarding visit, with some cute buildings.  

The Vietnamese flag flying above the entrance to the citadel of Hué.  The tallest flagpole in the country, apparently.

An imperial cannon.  Somewhat predictably, loads of rubbish stuffed down the front hole.

The faded splendeur of the old citadel.  Extensive renovations now going on, but completion dated estimated by me to be about AD 2500

This fella was standing particularly proud in the hot midday sun

But the highlight of the visit was definitely finding two puppies playing amongst the ruined buildings.

Bizarrely, and I never saw this in the rest of south east Asia (or anywhere else for that matter) along the roadside were these mobile aquariums where you could buy goldfish and other aquatic life from.  I have no idea what they were doing there or why you would need a mobile shop.  Any explanations would be appreciated.

Why?

???

It struck me as odd at this point to have seen no more references to the Vietnam war.  Perhaps it was because we were following the tourist route, but in particular there was no hint of it from the people we met either.  I had thought perhaps we would notice some reticence from the locals, some hangover resentment directed at us as Westerners, if not Americans.  But no.  The Vietnamese were unselfconsciously welcoming, friendly, accommodating and charming.  They do shout a lot though, and the language is quite harsh.  Some people seem to interpret this as unfriendliness but it didn't strike me this way.  Language is a problem sometimes, although English it seems is truly the traveller's ideal language.  Anyway, the references to the war we did see were usually restricted to museums.  The museums were usually propaganda parades and we gave up on them after a while.  It seemed to me that the only people not willing to put the past behind them and move on in Vietnam were the government, but then they have a vested interest in that policy.  I don't think there's much to say about the Vietnam war from my perspective.  The Americans were wrong to get involved, that much is clear.  History doesn't seem to have taught them much.  War is always ugly and full of regrets afterwards.  

Anyway, on a tour around the old demilitarised zone which is near Hué we were decanted at a museum which included an old American B52 bomber and a chinook helicopter amongst other things.  Added to this were people trying to sell us old medals and bullets that they'd found in the ground.  Or said they had found.  I refused.  But the point of all this is just to say that there really isn't much thrown in your face about the war here unless you actively seek it out, and I think that is probably right.  Time to move on.

An American B52 bomber

A Chinook

An old tank rusting quietly by the side of the highway

Paddy fields.  Lots and lots and lots and lots of these...

From Hué we took a long and uncomfortable bus up to Hanoi and then to Ha Long Bay.  This is a very popular tourist destination, and with good reason.  About 2,000 islands and islets rear up from the turquoise water of the bay to give a majestic and beautiful view.  The Vietnamese name for the bay derives from the superstitious belief that the bay was created by an enormous dragon crashing into the ocean.  In reality the bay is derived from the selective dissolution over 500 million years of soluble limestone rocks amongst other insoluble rocks.  It's certainly a stunning sight today, and is yet another UNESCO world heritage site, which does help protect the area from over-development.  We splashed out a couple of hundred dollars each on a tour using a pretty upmarket boat, which are called 'junks' after the ancient Chinese design still used today.  It was a pretty special experience.  This time of year (March) the Bay is often shrouded in mists, giving it an eerie, slightly mystical beauty.  Spending a bit extra also meant we met a slightly different type of traveller.  Unbelievably I bumped into a colleague from work!  Small world.  But aside from that, and the average age being more like 55 rather than the 25 we've been used to on this trip, we met Margaret and Ian from Toronto (the Canadians really get about I've found on this trip) who were delightful company for the trip.  I'll let the pictures do the talking!

Our boat, the Treasure Junk

The misty weather is quite common here and adds an eerie feel to the beauty of the place.

Canoeing through the various rock formations

A beautiful view from one larger island you can climb up the hill of.

Friends made

An eerie but gorgeous sunset

Being rowed through the turquoise waters

Back to Hanoi again.  Big city, lots going on.  An unreasonable number of birds in cages.  I think this is done for the birdsong.   But traffic noise and other sounds of the city punctuated with birdsong doesn't quite work in my book.  It was sad to see so many birds imprisoned like this.  That said, sometimes you can pay to release them.  But since they capture them straightaway afterwards there doesn't seem to be much point to it.  They tell you it's for good luck.  I say it's for getting hapless tourists to part with their Dong.

We seemed to spend a lot of our time achieving very little in Hanoi though, partly because we were planning to fly to Burma and this requires a bit of preparation.  Plenty of Vietnamese coffee drank, street food eaten and a meet up with some friends we'd made in Hué.  You need downtime when you're travelling.  Time to just do nothing.  It's like what Sunday afternoons are meant for.  

One of perhaps a dwindling number of authentic communist experiences comes first thing in the morning in Hanoi.  There are loudspeakers attached to most telegraph poles, and at about 6am, rousing patriotic music blares from them, followed by what we were told was a government news broadcast.  It all feels straight out of Orwell, although what he didn't bank on I suppose was most human being's tendency to take no notice of anything that doesn't directly concern them.  Which means that the loudspeakers blared, and the Vietnamese just shouted louder at each other.  Bravo!

More yummy street food.  It tasted much better than it looked.

One cafés answer to the searing sun.

More birds in cages. I think if they want it to stop tweeting, they put the hood over.  Sad.

Bizarre water puppet show in Hanoi.

An enchanting traditional Vietnamese music duet.

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, Hanoi.

Don't mind if I do!

And with over a month spent in Vietnam we were then off to Burma!  An unexpected departure from our plans, but I couldn't resist the urge to visit a country I thought I'd never get to see.   Vietnam, in conclusion, epic!  There is so much to recommend this place that I would say it has been my favourite country so far.  Go, go, go!  :) xx