The Japanese Bridge
The Ancient City of Hoi An
Vietnam
Hoi An: Land of Lanterns
After a fairly miserable few days in Hue, we drove down to Hoi An, a quaint ancient town on the banks of the Thu Bon River. Immediately, Hoi An lifted my spirits. It was a beautifully picturesque town, with narrow winding streets of yellow buildings lit by delicate lanterns. We spent the afternoon walking around the ancient town, seeing temples and visiting a traditional house that was absolutely beautiful, and totally serene. The house was long and thin with a partly open-plan layout – different ‘rooms’ were created with small dividers and furniture placement and the whole place felt very light and airy. Hoi An was a fair bit warmer than Hanoi and Hue had been, but inside the house air flowed easily and it was cool and relaxing. A very well-designed house!
Another major attraction of Hoi An is shopping – the town is famous for high-quality tailors at very reasonable prices, as well as some wonderful shops selling handmade lanterns, silk embroidery, and some of the most beautiful paintings I’d seen so far. Me and my new friend from the tour, Monique, had a nice afternoon browsing the shops and I set about finding my favourite lanterns to take home.
Hue: There’s No Hue I’d Go Back
From Hanoi I took a sleeper train down to the ancient town of Hue (pronounced hway), boarding at around 7pm and arriving at 8.30am the following morning. The sleeper train was much the same as the one I took in China, except this time I was sharing with westerners. Overall, though, the feel of the train was much more grimy and less modern. Western toilets, though, so I can’t complain. I ate my instant noodles and we had a few beers in the train bar before they kicked us out at 10pm, and I went to bed. I slept pretty well, the rocking of the train was perfect to put me to sleep, although the mattress was fairly hard so I woke up the following morning feeling quite stiff.
We took a taxi from Hue station to the hotel, checked in and then me and my friend Monique headed out to explore the Imperial Citadel. It was very pretty, the citadel walls and buildings felt far more ancient than anything I have seen so far, and a lot of them are really more ruins than buildings, now. It was nice to see an ancient town that hasn’t been so heavily restored.
Hanoi: Good Morning Vietnam!
After just over 3 weeks in China and Hong Kong, I finally headed into Southeast Asia, where my first stop would be Hanoi, Vietnam. My flight was a rather frustrating one; they changed my gate at the last minute leaving Hong Kong, then the flight was delayed while we waited for several lost passengers, and when we finally arrived, I waited over an hour for my bag to come through. After about 40 minutes waiting, as other passengers from my plane began to peel off with their bags, I was starting to sweat. Having lost my bag once before, when flying out to Honduras, baggage claim is always a nerve-wracking wait for me. Thankfully, it did eventually appear, and the relief of seeing my bulging gray and red backpack emerge onto the conveyor belt was wonderful. I caught a taxi from the airport into central Hanoi, and after about 20 minutes the fear of being robbed or swindled somehow died down. It took about an hour to get to my hostel and when I arrived I quickly discovered that I’d managed to mess up the booking. I booked a lot of hostels for the trip, a long time ago, and apparently for this one I had failed to change the month when selecting dates (which is automatically set to the current month), so I’d unwittingly booked a room for July, rather than December. Oops! Thankfully the hostel had space for me, but only a private room, which I was happy to accept rather than try looking elsewhere – at least in Vietnam a private room only cost me about ten pounds!
