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After spending two days in Nha Trang we grabbed a night bus out of there to Hoi An. At this point we are running low on time due to our setbacks in Laos and Cambodia so we decide to only spend a half day here on our way to Hue. Hoi An is known for its cheap tailored made clothes, and for being an adorable French colonial town. Well after our experience in Bangkok (which we still are not ready to share) with suits we vowed not to give ourselves enough time to do damage here. A half day turned out to be perfect we were able to roam around the town; taking it all in and we found some great art here. Any more time here would have been trouble for us. Although once we arrived in Hue we wished we would have stayed in Hoi An. There was absolutely nothing of interest for us to do there that didn't involve emptying our pockets to see some sights we didn't want to see. We had originally wanted to get there so that we could have a day to go check out the DMZ. Once pricing it all out we couldn't really see the benefit in paying the price to be fed some more bogus information and running the risk in not getting back in time to catch our night bus to Hanoi. So we did nothing until it was time to head out. By far Hue was the most frustrating place we went to in Vietnam; every time you turned around people were hounding for a motor bike, cycle or if that didn't get you weed weed weed! You got to wonder if every motorbike driver in Southeast Asia really has pot on them at all times or what happens when you actually say sure I want some. We didn't want to find out, last thing we need is a "Return to Paradise" experience.
The night bus to Hanoi was actually quite nice, in fact all the bus rides we had in Vietnam were excellent. Although the one time we don't stock up on supplies ahead of time because we know two hours into the trip we'll be stopping off at someone’s shop or restaurant, our bus doesn't stop anywhere for food for a good four hours. We were starving! But after some fried roman noodles and warm beer that was cured.
Vietnam is a very curious place for us, especially as things seem to deteriorate as one moves North. On the surface all seems neat and clean and very much capitalistic but behind the scenes we are dying to know where all that money is going or how it is dealt out. There are no wooden shacks here. In fact all the housing has nice decorated shells of concrete. Yet once inside there are no partitions just open floors with multiple people living and working out of their home/shop/restaurant. In Saigon we were told that a salary of 90 US dollars a month is considered a good job. Yet, when asked how much an apartment is they said that was at least 95 dollars a month. So you do the math and figure it out. That's why in every business from hotel to gas station you see beds set up behind the scenes and that is how they live. Yet, by the looks of Saigon someone is making money because there are loads of Starbuck like coffee shops and home appliance stores and even shopping malls which are not catering to the tourists. Anyways the one thing we've learned throughout our trip in Communist Southeast Asia is how conditioned we are to be against it. We didn't even realize that the thought of communism affected us but when going through the markets and seeing all the vendors selling hammer and sickle or yellow star shirts we can't help but feel disgusted when we see a westerner buying them. Not just because we now realize as to how conditioned we are to being against it but at the irony of a Westerner sporting such a thing when the only reason they are visiting these countries is because of the freedoms and money their capitalistic homes provide them. Apparently their countries don't spew all the anti communist propaganda that ours does which although we lived through the cold war we were so young. We had no idea that we were still conditioned so well.
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