vietnam 3

after hoi an, it was a short bus trip (4-5 hours i think?) up to hue...another ancient city, it used to be an imperial city...it seems that whereva royals have lived in the world, the food is always better, even centuries later...there was certainly a lot more variety of food available in hue...YUM!!
before arriving in hue, i met a girl on the bus, we chatted a bit...thinking nothing of it, we both got off the bus and were approached by two representatives of the same hotel, offering a decent rate...we figured we would check it out, and if nothing else, take advantage of the free ride to the budget accomodation area...anywho, somehow we ended up deciding to share a room...and what a room it was...HUGE...HUGE...HUGE...the ceiling was equivalent to the 2nd floor ceiling...we both had queensize beds too...tv, a fan, a bathtub, towels, it was pure luxury...all for $7 a night, only $3.50 each...at that point we didn't even know each other's names, but why not? hee hee....i discovered later that night that she had taught english in japan for a year, so we spent a bit of time figuring out similarities and differences...fun...
anywho, the first place i decided to explore was the citadel...not in use anymore for the original purpose, but plenty of people still live within the original walls...i had to walk across a bridge to get to the citadel, and to hear all the offers from the motorbike and cyclo drivers, you would've thought it was a 3 hour walk to get there...but it wasn't...the largest flagpole in vietnam (37m, or something like that) is on the outer wall of the citadel...the vietnamese flag isn't anything exciting, just red with a yellow star in the middle...but it was neat to see it flying strong with the blue sky background...i wandered around the imperial city area of the citadel, with it's former temples, palaces, theaters, etc...there is a temple in there where women weren't allowed in!! not even the empresses...my favourite area was the living quarters of the empress mother, or whateva she was called...maybe i liked it most because it was totally deserted...while wandering through the imperial city i came upon the area where they keep a couple elephants...i don't know why the elephants are kept there, or what they do, but i decided to say hello, and perhaps have my picture taken with one of them...i tried to be polite, but apparently he didn't like me, because his hello consisted of shoving me away with his trunk...i tried again, but again he rebuffed me...sad...hee hee...the amusing part is that a british couple had volunteered to take my picture for me, and the guy took the picture just as the elephant was pushing me away...lol...
the next day i took a tour of various locations around the former DMZ...the DMZ (the 17th parallel, it basically follows one of the rivers in the country) was once the border between north and south vietnam...i got to see the rockpile, (there was a US base on top of it, reachable only by helicopter,) the former doc mieu base, (only the remains of a tank are left, it was part of the "electronic eye/wall" built by the US in an attempt to stop the north vietnamese from getting into the south,) the former khe sanh base, (sight of one of the largest battles, but the area really didn't mean much of anything, given where it's located...it ended up costing the lives of too many on both sides, for a hill that didn't matter,) dakrong bridge (over which the POWs were exchanged when the US pulled out of vietnam in '73) and the tunnels at vin mohc (sp?)...the DMZ area was bombed, a LOT, by the US, so villagers in several areas built tunnels...unlike the tunnels down south which were used more for fighting, these were used for living...people stayed in the tunnels for as much as five days straight...they're much bigger than the tunnels at cu chi...i could stand up properly through most of them, i only had to duck my head a little...they had family rooms, a school room, even a maternity room...17 babies were born there!!
my last day in hue i hired a bike and rode out to some of the tombs just outside town...(another advantage of imperial cities, there are often grand tombs to see...these guys liked to be buried in style!)...the tombs were great, and BIG...i again missed a turnoff, and ended up riding quite a bit farther than i expected...so i didn't see the three tombs i had intended to see, but i did see two others, so life was good...i was the first customer at one of them, the money guy had to get change from one of the local vendors...
that night i took a bus to hanoi, the capital...i arrived just after 0900 the next morning, to more touts...one showed me a brochure for a hotel, and we settled on a price that sounded good to me...($6) but, surprise surprise, when i got there, they said they didn't have any of those rooms left...but, golly gee, they could give me one of their $15 rooms for $12...ummm, no...i told them the reason i went there in the first place was for the price of the room, not the hotel itself...so i picked up my stuff and left...i've heard about that scam before, and i'm sure that it works much of the time...but i'm too cheap...so i started walking, and soon enough found a room for $6...it wasn't great, but i knew i'd be meeting up with layna again that night, so i only needed one night...
hanoi is supposed to be laid back compared to saigon...i was expecting a big difference between the two cities...but i didn't feel much of a difference...traffic was slightly less crazy, but that's about it...there is certainly a lot more to see in hanoi and it's a lot more aesthetically appealing...the vendors are more apt to try to charge foreigners high prices though, which is always disappointing...and by high prices, i mean even higher than the tourist norm...after being in vietnam for three weeks, i know what most prices are supposed to be (well, at least what a tourist can get) so i know when to walk away...
while in hanoi i visited the mausoleum of ho chi minh...when he died, his wish was to be cremated...but the government wasn't about to respect the wishes of their idol, so they built a HUGE mausoleum for him...it's a lot like lenin's mausoleum in moscow, russia...you're not allowed to take a camera or handphone in the mausoleum, they've got a check area for those...you walk in, walk past several military guys in dress whites, then enter the room itself...i counted the number of military guys in dress whites in the room itself, 13!!!! the room is temperature and humidity controlled, it's pretty chilly...it's total silence, except for the whir of the air conditioner...the guards aren't moving or talking, so it's all a bit creepy...plus uncle ho looks rather uncomfortable, and waxlike...no one stays in there for long, it's not a place for lollygagging...by the time i walked out, my camera had already been transferred from where i turned it in!! later that afternoon i visited the literary temple...i've forgotten the history, but needless to say, it's been around for a while...there were a number of temples in the complex, and since it had been used as a university at one point, there were also 82 stelae, one for each of the professors...that was probably the most crowded sight in hanoi...from there i walked south, and saw the former prison at hoa lo...most people wouldn't recognize that name, but during the war, it was known in the states by a different name...the hanoi hilton...it was originally built by the french to house rebels, and communist supporters...the north vietnamese government used it to house american pilots shot down during the war...there were pictures of many of the former inmates, from communists to pilots...they even have the flight suit and parachute that used to belong to john mccain, the former candidate for president of the US...there are also a couple pictures of him...one during his visit in 2000, and one of him being hauled out of a river after being shot down...(in that one i have no idea how they know it's him, cause the picture isn't clear, and the angle is terrible)...there was an entire video dedicated to the american pilots who lived there, telling how they had great living conditions...lots of smiling photographs...i felt like it was more propogandized than the war remnants museum in saigon...
we were sad to be leaving vietnam, as neither one of us felt like we had seen enough of the country...another country we'd both like to return to...