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Dan&LJ RTW
...so how much have we spent today?? Can we afford a Snickersâ„¢???"
Lj fully gets to grips with back-packing budget priorities.
HOI AN
After three hours in yet another over peopled mini bus, followed by 15 hair raising minutes on the back of a motorbike taxi, we arrived in the attractive little town of Hoi An. An old merchant trading town, recently awarded world heritage status, and it is the compelling sense of history in the mellow streets of this small town which make Hoi An a delightful place to while away a couple of days.
The adjacent river is still the main focus of the town & the numerous small fishing boats all rival each other for the best spots to get their daily catch. Chinese fishing nets line the harbour & it's easy to spend time watching the fishermen in action with these incredible devices.
Hoi An is also the tailoring capital of Vietnam, a great place to get yourself a made to measure suit, but also an impossible place to walk more than 10yards without someone trying to measure your inside leg!
Our time in Hoi An was somewhat marred by the fact that lj, whilst aboard hawk 5 back in Quaing Ngai, suffered a particularly nasty exhaust burn to her right leg which caused her to hobble around, fully bandaged for a few days. Our initial worries were somewhat put at rest by the helpful chemist who merely pointed at the said wound and laughed:
"Motorbike??"
"Err, yes, how did you know??"
It turns out that on further observation, around 90% of all western girls have the same customary bandage or scar. Lj's leg has healed perfectly though so no worrying mums please.
Also, Hoi An was the place where we realised 3 things;
1 - How much money we've spent on the trip so far
2 - How much money we have left
3 - How much this will effect the remainder of our time in Vietnam.
It's fair to say that a made to measure suit and T-bone & chips for dinner was definitely off the menu & for the past 2 weeks we have lived on the princely sum of a fiver a day.......between us!!! So this is what back-packing is all about.
In truth, it has suited us fine and Dan enjoys nothing more than arguing for up to an hour about the price of an apple. You can take the man out of Yorkshire......
HUE
It had been somewhat strange that for the last 3days there had been no mention whatsoever of the war. A fact that we knew would be soon straightened out upon our arrival in Hue, as the nearby DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) saw the most bombing of the entire conflict.
Hue, the former capital of Vietnam, is centered around the old walled 'Imperial City' from where ancient dynasties used to rule. More recently it was the scene of many protests from Buddhist monks around the time of the war, including the infamous picture of one monk who set himself alight in defiance of the current rule of the south (the cover of Rage Against the Machine's 1st album, if you don't know what we're talking about).
With limited time we briefly visited the Imperial City which was built to replicate the Forbidden City which we saw in Beijing and we also took a day tour to and around the DMZ.
The first stop on the tour were the Vinh Moc tunnels, another network of underground passages used during the war, this time by villagers & civilians rather than soldiers. Now, can we refer you back to our journal entitled 'Saigon - Quaing Ngai' where we visited the Cu Chi tunnels and reported that it was high up on our list of worst experiences of all time. You can imagine that the prospect of repeating the experience filled us with not a small amount of dread, especially after being told that it was a 600m journey which would take up to 15minutes!!! But relief - the tunnels were twice the size of Cu Chi, were cooler & even had a small amount of light.
The tour also took us over the former border of north & south Vietnam, an area which represents not just the physical , but also the psychological divide between the two halves of the country. The occasional destroyed tank & bomb craters are still clearly visible as you pass through paddy fields & it's another example of the continuing presence of the war. Finally we visited the former American military base of Khe Sanh, significant as being one of the first US bases to fall and again a ghost town of old helicopters, shot down planes & disused army bunkers.
From Hue we headed to the capital, the stepping stone to trekking in the north and cruising Ha Long bay. Journal to follow.....
Lots of love, Danny & lj xxx
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