Maria and Helge’s great escape

19 June

Yesterday we arrived in Hanoi, and today we are celebrating the completion of our 5th week on the road since leaving Pauanui, which was about to close shop for the winter and start it’s annual hibernation phase. No such luck anywhere in Vietnam, friends, no matter where you are, the place is humming, and before I tell you about Hanoi, uncle Ho and some other attractions let me recapitulate some of the action of the last 6 days.

We took the bus from Hoi An to Hue, the old emperor’s city and site of a great citadel with palaces, pagodas, temples and lots of monuments. I better let the pictures do the talking:

  

And we were impressed, once more, about arts and crafts “made in Vietnam” especially in the area of wood working and silk embroidery on display at a permanent exhibition on the banks of Hue’s “Perfume river” (Song Huong):

  

Lots can be done in Hue and, for that matter, anywhere on a trip through Vietnam. But sometimes travellers need a rest so the impressions can settle. For that purpose, some put their feet up and do nothing, others prefer sitting in buses going on low key sightseeing trips, which was my choice.

I went to the famous DMZ (de militarized zone), which once upon the time was a 17 km wide no-man’s land between North and South Vietnam. The most exciting bit of the 12 hour trip was a visit to a village, Vinh Moc, which during the war had been almost entirely shifted underground. Inhabitants were forced to spend days and weeks at the time in a labyrinth of tiny, narrow tunnels and even babies were born “underground”. 

 

I only lasted 20 minutes in the “pipes”, which often did not measure a meter in width and more than 1.40 meters in hight; no bus ever felt as spacious as ours after that experience.

Next on the program was our day-trip from Hue to Hanoi by train in the luxurious “soft- sitter”, a journey which took almost 14 hours. But it was fun, we watched TV at full blast, we were continuously fed some local delicatesses and had plenty of leg space. We did not miss the permanent honking of bus drivers and also enjoyed the relative safety of the train when a heavy thunderstorm dumped its load on the region. By the time we made it to Hanoi at 10pm, the rain had stopped and some nice person from the hotel was standing at the station with a welcoming sign. The room turned out to be shoe box size but we did not mind, it was significantly bigger than those tunnels.

And yesterday we went to see uncle Ho’s mausoleum (everybody seems to call Ho Chi Minh “uncle”) and the house he used to live in. I cannot help it but somehow envy the Vietnamese for their dedication to one of their greatest politicians and heroes. At the same time I am looking in vain for an equivalent in the Western world …

  

Tomorrow we are off to another beautiful spot a couple of hours east of Hanoi, Halong Bay. We’ll keep you briefed.

Tags: Travel

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