A door
A table
A woman with so many vegetables, in front and behind her, that all we could see were her head and arms.
A pile of hats
My final words on the last post were spoken too early - the bus ended up being even bouncier than the previous one! And the driver was crazy with the horn. It seems to be a normal thing to beep the horn here, and we noticed this in Cambodia too. People seem to beep to let people know that they are overtaking; to go around corners; to let you know that you are in their way; if someone overtakes in the opposite direction; and if its very early in the morning and they aren't bothered waiting for the lights to change to green, they will beep and carry on through.
On top of that, the overtaking is quite mental. At home, if someone overtook with oncoming traffic, it would almost certainly cause an accident. Here it seems to be the norm, and is therefore relatively safe. People expect it to happen, and so they barely react. They just move over a bit. However, the problem arises when one is overtaking a vehicle, and said vehicle decides at the same time to overtake another vehicle. Or when one is overtaking and the oncoming car is also overtaking. Or when the road is not wide enough to accommodate 3 cars. Or when one is overtaking, and the vehicle you are overtaking decides to swerve. Or when one overtakes a vehicle and there is no space to pull in front of it, so one must continue to overtake three or four more vehicles. Surprisingly we have seen all of the above, and we are still here to tell the tale! You'd be in real trouble in a car with only one headlamp too!!!
Anyways, on Sunday morning we arrived in Hoi An. After a poor nights sleep we checked into a hotel, and slept for a few hours. We got up to find lovely bright sunshine, and a beautiful town. The town is quite old and quaint, and has quite a French feel to it. It is very pretty, with many galleries and craft shops. There are also many tailors, who will make you any clothes you want, at quite a cheap price. I got a top and skirt made for me. In the afternoon we went to the nearby beach - it was a seriously beautiful beach. It was very very clean, and a huge stretch of golden sand. Possibly the nicest beach I have been on.
Still stalking us
We had the night there, and then got the bus the next morning to Hué. From here we had planned to get the night bus to Hanoi, but the bus company messed up, so we ended up getting the train instead. (They were not very nice about the mess up either, even though it was the company's fault). That late the train was fairly full, so we only got seats, rather than a sleeper carriage. We spent a few hours in Hue, visiting a Pagoda, and the citadel - an ancient palace which was quite interesting. The train was interesting too. The lady on the seat in front of us had a few fish in a water bottle. Not sure if they were pets or what, but they seemed happy enough swimming around the bottle.
We arrived in Hanoi very early on Tuesday, and had to wake up the guy in the hotel we were staying in. Fortunately they had a room available, and we could check in . The bed was such a relief! We slept in a bit late, and some of the stuff we wanted to see was already closed (They closed at 10am). However we did get to visit the history museum and the military museum, neither of which I found that interesting.We visited a Temple of Literature and another Cathedral.
Today we took a tour our to Ha Long Bay. This is a UNESCO world site, and is one of the most famous places in Viet Nam. It is very beautiful, with 100's of limestone islands in the bay. We didn't get to see it at its best though, as it was very foggy. We did see a floating village, where people live in floating houses, and I had fun doing a bit of kayaking.
Tomorrow we are leaving Viet Nam, on our first flight in over a month!
Please note: Vietnamese museums are awash with propaganda and don't believe everything.
Anyone who offers you a book is selling poor counterfeits- including shops.
DON'T be expecting to be treated fairly by service providers, everyone wants to rip you off and the locals would climb over you to get off a train 1 second quicker.
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