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Greetings!
This is our last post from Nam. We sent our last message from Hue but didn't say anything about it. It is yet another UNESCO world heritage site mainly because of an ancient citadel that is in the old part of the city and also several very well preserved emperors' tombs. We had expected the city to be really nice and quite similar to Chiang Mai, another walled city that's in Thailand where we spent New Year. But in reality, the citadel area was very run down and although there is a lot of restoration work going on, it just feels like a building site and isn't as pretty as it could be.
We also took a dragon boat trip in the rain down the Perfume River to see the tombs. After the citadel, we had fairly low expectations but were pleasantly surprised at how well maintained they were. We particularly liked the Khai Dinh tomb which was very beautiful as the interior walls are all inlaid with mosaic. It took about 11 years to complete and it's easy to see why as the mosaics must have been painstaking to do. We also visited the Minh Mang tomb which is a garden tomb, it is literally set in acres of gardens and lakes. This tomb was very different and much more Chinese in design. Our guide enjoyed telling us the history of Minh Mang and that he had had 330ish wives and around 140 kids. He was a busy man but apparently liked his weekends off from the women which is why there were 330ish...!
We left Hue on another sleeper bus, this time the driver tried to deep freeze us to death with the AC! It was so cold that the driver was wearing gloves and had a jumper wrapped round his head. He either didn't understand our complaints or just didn't care! But we arrived in Hanoi in one piece and found our 'hotel' down the street that is also the meat and fish market. Nicky was delighted! But we've actually been really pleasantly surprised with Hanoi. We've heard a lot negative things about Hanoi from people we've met during our travels and were expecting the worst. It's a typical SE Asian big city with lots of traffic, noise and dirt, but there is a real charm here once you see past the fleets of motorbikes and cyclo-rickshaw drivers, all who continually pester you for a ride.
We've not done a great deal during the day here, but have enjoyed the nightlife greatly. We went to a really cool jazz club that felt like it didn't quite fit in Hanoi. We've also enjoyed sampling the very cheap bia hoi, draft beer that's sold at street vendors for about 14p a glass (more than a half-pint). You sit on a small plastic chair, or stool if you're unlucky, and watch the crazy world go by.
We also went to the famous water puppet show that we'd heard was a must-see. It was actually quite weird and a little bit freaky. It was made all the more entertaining by the Chinese men sat behind us who burped constantly and chattered on their mobiles.
We've loved our time in Vietnam and are already planning our next trip out here!
Here's the link to our latest pictures. Those of you who have complained about the sunshine in our last ones will be very pleased to see the rain and us in our anoraks. We're still pretty brown though..!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=398439&id=840245275&l=80a3a3cc32
As always, we hope all is well with you and look forward to hearing your news.
Sending very much love
Clare and Nicky
xxx
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