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After the pleasures of our last stop Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam, is a severe disappointment. En route we visited Marble Mountain Pagoda, which was a serious waste of time, it reminded me of China, a lot of climbing of steps to see, well, not very much, an average view and yet another pagoda. Hmmmm. Plus it was raining. You see, all this travel is not always exotic and exciting, sometimes it's just a case of hauling yourself up another mountain to be jostled by other tourists, take photos of nothing much in particular, just because it's there and then potter down the other side to try and locate a dodgy, smelly toilet for which you will have to pay to use, when really it should be the other way round.
Another stop we made was in Danang, where the main attraction is the museum of Cham artifacts, some ancient civilisation that built lots of temples, somewhat like Angkor Wat. Unfortunately, it's a little boring. We went over a high pass, and landed officially in North Vietnam, where it was cold and raining. We checked into our hotel and Brian and I went for a massage before dinner. Unfortunately the young ladies in the massage parlour seemed not very proficient in the art of massage, but they did look very cute in their short white outfits, and they did giggle a lot. Realising that we were probably in the wrong type of massage place (despite the fact it was in our hotel), like the men from the News of the World, we made our excuses and left. We braved dinner at a restaurant run by a deaf mute that is highly recommended in the Lonely Planet but which looked as if it doubled up as food poisoning central. Too cowardly to make our excuses this time we were brave, and despite the fact that the food was average, one of the plates looked as it it hadn't been washed for a couple of weeks and the toilets housed a family of cockroaches we all, surprisingly, made it through to breakfast the next day with barely a stomach murmur. We also got a free beer opener made from a block of wood and a nail that, sadly, didn't make it to our bulging suitcase. One has to have standards.
A nasty cold is however making its rounds through the group and there is lots of coughing and unpleasant spluttering on the coach each morning. Luckily Brian and I have not succumbed, but I am trying to seat us as far away from each morning's roll call of afflicted. We went to the Purple Palace in Hue. What a swizz. It was completely bombed during the Tet offensive in 1968; therefore it's only a model of what it used to look like. One might as well go to a Theme Park. On top of that it was pouring, and I mean pouring, with rain and we resorted to buying large purple plastic ponchos that made us resemble aubergines with shiny wet faces. Brian drew the line at having his photo taken in his poncho, he was getting tetchier as the water level crept us his trouser leg, so I had to step in.
We had a delicious lunch at a nunnery, with a surprisingly good plate of cold chips, that's how wet, hungry and fed up we were. We revolted in the afternoon and multilaterally cancel the proposed boat trip in order to drip dry. In the evening we took an overnight sleeper train from Hue to Hanoi, Rebecca and John introduced us to the delights of Gin Rummy and, of course, we lost spectacularly. Brian then retaliated by trying to teach them how to play 'Cheat' but managed to get the rules so hopelessly wrong and cheat so shamelessly himself that he ended up with a handful of about 49 cards and reduced our carriage to helpless laughter. I'm not sure teaching people the wrong game is the stated purpose of cheat, but in this case it seemed to be.
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