Hue & Hoi An

One of the difficult things about a blog with two contributors is trying to work out a free flowing thread of discourse. For example: if Marie talks about Hoi An does that mean that any thoughts I have on Hoi An are redundant, and vice versa? I think I will just stick to commenting about things on our trip which interest me- hopefully this will not make for too much repetition between Marie's and my posts.

Anyway: my last post was about Hanoi. From there we caught a twelve hour night train to Hue. We were planning to go to Halong Bay, which everyone says is beautiful, but unfortunately tropical storm Frances came through and sank a bunch of boats the day before we were due to go out. Rather than wait for the storm to clear, we decided to head down to Hue.

For me, there was one primary reason to go to Hue: the Demilitarised Zone just to the north, which marked the boundary for a number of years between the Vietnamese Communist forces in the North and US affiliated forces in the south. The picture in the top left of this post is from inside the Vinh Moc tunnels. These tunnels were just north of the Demilitarised Zone, and were used by communist forces to assist in the resupply of nearby artillery placements. The artillery placements happened to be on an offshore island within range of the US emplacements, so any time they were running low on supplies the villagers from the Vinh Moc area would resupply them. By rowboat.
Now you don't have to be Donald McNamara to realise that this resupply depot would be extremely vulnerable to US air strike. Thus the Vietnamese got around this problem by building a tunnel complex large enough to sleep 200 people, with the depth underground ranging from 12 metres to 25 metres. There was a maternity ward down there, with I think 12 babies delivered underground.
The tunnels themselves were small but not to the point of claustrophobia. The average height within the tunnel complex is anywhere between 1.6 and 1.9 metres, so I couldn't stand up at any point underground. It is definitely worth a look if you are in Central Vietnam.

The other thing I found of particular interest in Hue was within the old Imperial City. I think the Imperial City was very impressive until the French and then the US took turns bombing it, so there is not too much left standing now. However, there is an area where you can put on the vestments of Imperial Emperors or Empresses. Very touristy, but dress ups is fun. Pictures of our dressup fun and my thoughts on Hoi An below the fold:








I think Marie covered the highlights of Hoi An quite comprehensively- made to measure tailoring and food. One point I would like to add is that I think Hoi An has a lot going for it. We spent 4 nights there, and the only reason we moved on to Nha Trang was that it rained constantly. Not that the rain was bad as it was 25 degrees and not windy, it was just wet. We were never bored in Hoi An, but there were a couple of things we didn't get to do because of the weather.
For example, on our first night there we wandered down to the waterfront, where some enterprising soul had put out a bunch of paddle boats for tourists to make fools of themselves in. Not just any kind of paddle boat mind you, these were in the shape of swans. Now I am not sure how your brain is wired, but when I see swan paddle boats, I can think of only one thing: swan boat racing in the cool evening air, washed down with a bia hoi or two. I am not sure whether the optimal timing of this racing would be before or after dinner- really there is no downside, this is swan boat racing we are talking about here. Unfortunately this was not meant to be as there were no dry evenings, so this will have to wait until next time along with a trip to Halong Bay.