Vietnam continues to charm us. The people are very friendly and always seem to be smiling. Not much chance of forgetting where we come from since we get asked this question many times every day, from both adults and young children. Often they are the only English words that they know which you discover when trying to strike up a conversation. Rather than giving them a quick answer I usually point to the flag on my backpack and happily most of them respond with "kaanada".
We completed our stay in lovely Hoi An with a tour out to the mountains and the My Son ruins. The Americans were taking the blame from our guide for bombing the area and destroying some of the 1000 year old ancient remains of the Cham empire but who knows whether the Viet Cong were really using it as a hiding base or not. The surrounding area was beautiful and a visit to a small village where men of all ages were hand carving fabulous looking wood sculptures was a treat, as was our boat trip back to Hoi An witnessing more of the lifestyle along the river. We do enjoy our rural visits...........it gives us a deeper insight into 'real' life for the countries that we visit.
The train ride north to Hue (3 hours) was very picturesque with the coastline on one side and steep mountains on the other. We passed through 5 or 6 tunnels along the way. Our first visit was to the Citadel, a former imperial city beside the Song Huong River and a 30 minute walk from our hotel. Inside this 200 year-old large, walled and moat-protected area was the Imperial Enclosure (a citadel within the Citadel) which itself had 6 metre high walls with a 2.5 km perimeter. Inside that area was the Forbidden Purple City reserved for the private life of the Emperor and his special servants who were all eunuchs, and who posed no threat protecting his harem. He seemed like a very paranoid person.
Yesterday we took a tour to the former Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a 5 km area on both sides of the Ben Hai River which was the former border between North and South Vietnam. The highlight was going through the tunnel city created by one of the small villages (300 people) who chose to remain there rather than abandon their small fertile plots of land. Six babies were born underground during the 4 years that the locals lived in the network of tiny tunnels and very small rooms (5 feet deep, 3 feet wide, 5 feet high) which were meant to hold 4 people. Rhonda lasted about one minute before heading back out so this would not have been a lifestyle for her.
Later today we will be leaving Hue and taking the overnight train (with a sleeper berth this time), arriving in Hanoi tomorrow morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment