sai-gone

Greetings all, Well we have spent a few days in Hue...it isn't all that and a bag of potato chips but has it's interesting parts all the same. There is alot of ancient chinese history in this city which is fascinating. We visited the citadel in which stands the emperors forbidden palace. We though we were special for a minute when we were let in, but apon seeing other tourists inside, we realised the name was all for effect....what a sham! We have been on a couple of tours in the last few days; the DMZ (demilitarised zone tour) and today the perfume river tour. The DMZ wa interesting, we visited 'the rockpile' a group of mountains stripped bare from agent orange, Khe sanh, (i couldn't get the song out of my head for at least 3 hours) which was the largest naval base in southern Vietnam, then onto the vin moc tunnels which were built by villagers during the war to shelter from bombs. The tunnels housed hundreds of people and buried as far as 35 metres underground. Th...

Sorry, once we leave Hue the puns will stop. Because puns are very Hanoiing. Get it?? That's where we're going next!! We're only crashing there one night then we're training to Lao Cai and bussing to Sapa. We are told it will be cooler. Yay! We went pagoda-ing today and it rained heaps which was great! Big fat drops. We got a motorbike to some incense maker people stalls (they called this a village but i didn't see any villagers villaging) and it was great riding in the rain. Air conditioning at it's best. We purchased plastic ponchos to keep us dry, but in the end we just used them to cover our bags. Getting wet is much more fun. My iPod is misbehaving and crashing everytime I do a transfer. It also periodically forgets that there are any photos on it at all, which is disconcerting. Ten gig and two weeks of photography are very precious to me. I have been unsucessful at finding anyone with a dvd burner, so backing up would require hours of cd burning and reshuf...

Yes that title does rhyme when pronounced correctly. We arrived here yesterday afternoon after a 3 hour bus ride. The ride wasn't too bad, we got to see alot of the countryside which is covered with rice fields, pagodas and the occasional catholic curch. The people here are always working from the crack of dawn (around 5am) and all day till around 10pm, we often stumble into a restaurant or shop where people are having a deserving nap and have to wake up to serve us. Hue is built on an a river with the city on both sides of the bank, the beach is around 14km away. This afternoon we are going to visit a citadel which was built for the emporer and have a wander around, i would like to go to the beach at some point and bathe my wounds it is looking awful! Anyway back to the bus ride; We were quite annoyed at the service here as the bus keeps dropping us off at hotels that pay the bus company commissions. There is always a long line of scouts waiting where the bus stops to get us to go...

Hue isn't that hot, well its bloody hot, but it's not that great. We're officially shitty with our bus company for dropping us off outside a hotel that pays commisions instead of their ticket office like they said. We're also officially shitty with guys also collecting commisions by following you down the street and recommending a hotel. Literally following. One guy got on his bike and met us again three blocks away. They drop you off at reception, disappear and come back later for a reward. If we got the room that is, which we won't, on principle alone. One guy said six dollars for a triple room, and we're all, hey man that worth checking out even if it is a load of crap. So we get to reception and the woman says 12 dollars so we don't say anything and just turn around and walk out. Hopefully when the guy goes back to collect, she'll crack the shits at him and they'll both have learnt a lesson. We eventually found an okay place, but its more hotel t...

Blah. Hue. I'm bored. Don't care. This place is fairly uninspiring. There's the Citadel, which sounds big and scary but is probably just a wire fence. There the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) pretty close by, I'm gonna go into those tunnel things, fire an AK-47 and jump on some mines. Or maybe I'll just visit Khe Sahn and make a silly video to put to some awful pub-rock music. Whatever. It's hot. I fell asleep after lunch. I've started eating western food again, because 2 weeks of nothing but noodles and rice and spring rolls actually gets old. I'm sick of Cyclos, and motorbikes and being hassled to buy something. We should have stayed longer in Saigon. Next trip I suggest we try to head south as quickly as possible. - Paul Hue (yawn)