Hello again from Vietnam!

So far I've managed to stay ahead of the rain. The weather has been beautiful for the past week and hopefully it will continue to stay so. For those of you who are keeping up to date on your tropical storms I will be far away from central Vietnam by the time Parma hits it again, and by then Parma will only be a tropical depression anyway. Where did my last entry leave off? Oh yes, just before I left for Hue.

Well, the Vietnamese sleeper bus is a pretty awful experience. Vietnamese drivers seemingly refuse to slow down for anything - they much prefer to swerve into oncoming traffic to pass a slower-moving vehicle. And they use the horn to warn everything within a twenty-mile radius that they are on the road, as though the large bus wasn't quite obvious enough. So, if one is unfortunate enough as I was to have the top bunk in the center aisle of the bus one will spend the night avoiding sleep because every swerve of the bus threatens to send one falling into the aisle. If one does manage to fall asleep despite this, one will then be woken up every ten minutes as the driver leans on the horn to alert the water buffalo in the road that the bus is coming - not that the water buffalo cares.

Anyway, after this thrilling experience I arrived in Hue, found a hotel and tracked down Indian food for lunch. I just wandered around the town on that first day. Hue isn't a very large town and one doesn't have to spend much time there to see its main sights. The town is located on the Perfume River and has some lovely parks and gardens. Its main attractions, however, are the imperial Citadel and the tombs of the Nguyen emperors that dot the surrounding countryside. I visited the Citadel, which served as the home of the emperors during their reign (from the early 1800s until 1945). Then I went to see a pagoda located in a pretty little garden overlooking the river. Then it was off to the tombs! I only had time to visit three of the emperor's tombs, so I chose the ones I had heard were the best. The first was the tomb of Minh Mang, which was quite simple but located within a stunning park. The second was the tomb of Khai Dinh, which was quite grand and seemed rather more like a French chateau than a Vietnamese tomb. The third was the tomb of Tu Duc, which I could have skipped because it paled in comparison to the other two. For dinner I went in to a little cafe. The owner turned out to also be a photographer whose photographs of Vietnam had been exhibited in Paris and Bologna. He proudly presented the photo album filled with those photos, and since he was selling copies for just over $1 I ended up buying several.

Two days in Hue was enough, so the next day I hopped on a bus to Hoi An. Only a few days before the town had been completely underwater. My hotel was set quite far back from the water, but the water level in the lobby had reached about 4 feet. There were a few buildings that were still abandonded and covered in sand, but the vast majority had already been swept out and cleaned. It was hard to believe that they had repaired all the damage so quickly, but I guess they must be used to it. One of Hoi An's specialties is custom-made clothing and shoes, so I decided to splurge on some items. I met a few girls who were doing a tour through Vietnam and Cambodia and tracked down some dinner with them. After dinner we wandered around the town, looking through shops and cafes. We stopped at one cafe for incredible desserts and met a couple of women who had taken a cooking class that day - the same class I was planning to take the next day.

My cooking class turned out to be wonderful. I signed up for the "deluxe" class and ended up being the only one who had done so - most signed up for the half-day course. So my "class" turned out to be a private lesson with the chef! We went to a local village to pick organic herbs that we would use in the recipes and stopped by a local's home for a drink. Then we went to the local market to pick up the rest of our supplies. Sadly, banana leaves and banana flowers could not be found - the typhoon had blown them all away. So we had to improvise with methods that I can actually use back home. We went back to the cooking school and started in on making pho, a traditional Vietnamese soup. I successfully made rice noodles and we made a fruit salad with marinated chicken and roasted rice paper to munch on. Then we finished the pho, made lemongrass shrimp and claypot fish with dill. Since I was the only one in the class we were able to cook at a much faster pace and ended up finishing at about the same time as the other class, so I was able to catch a boat back to the center of town with them.

The next day I went to My Son, the sight of some ancient Cham ruins. The bus dropped us off and we walked over rivers and through the forest to the ruins. I met an Israeli girl named Bali and we ended up exploring the ruins together. I'm glad I came here before going to Cambodia because most who had already been to Angkor Wat ended up being disappointed with My Son, though we agreed that the setting is quite beautiful. We went back to the entry point for ice cream to cool off, then caught the bus back to Hoi An. I picked up my clothes and shoes (less than two days for custom-made shoes? not bad) and wandered around town.

Today is my last day in Hoi An. I've just been walking around town taking pictures and wishing it would cool down. Tonight I have to catch another sleeper bus (joy) to Nha Trang and then another sleeper bus (double joy) to Saigon.