Vietnam part 2 (K)

After an entertaining and beery overnight train from hanoi to Hoi An, shared with Erica and Victoria from England, plus Victoria's ex, his twin brother and their mate (it's complicated...) we arrived to rain. It is the rainy season on the East coast so no surprise, plus we were lucky not to be a month early where the river flooded up to about 2m above the floor level of much of the old town! They managed to clear it up fairly quick, as it's very pretty, albeit very touristy with a great choice of old houses, cultural centre and museums to visit, as well as shops, restaurants, bars. In fact we had some of the best food of our trip here, not least at Phon cafe where papaya salad, claypot aubergine, spring rolls and fish with turmeric cooked in a banana leaf, were all whipped up by the master chefs... Adrienne and Kieran (yes it was a cooking course). We got some clothes made up, did some Christmas shopping and made it out to the Champa ruins of My Son, a little bit more ruined since being bombed by the Americans during the war.



A quick bus ride back up the coast lies Hue ("Hway"), with a grand citadel spread over a kilometre square - home of the royal family and their administration through the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. A mix of renovated and decrepit buildings, but impressive all the same. After a spectacular lunch where we ate spring rolls stuck into a pineapple and carrot "peacock", we headed for the museums. They were all closed but lucky for us, 2 cyclo drivers were hanging around waiting to console disappointed tourists' by offering them a tour of the old town, so we spent a relaxing hour being cycled around.

The next day - our last in Vietnam - we joined a DMZ tour out through no mans' land either side of the river marking the boundary between North and South Vietnam. We went through the claustrophobic tunnels at Vinh Moc, where hundreds and occasionally thousands of Vietnamese sheltered from American bombing raids. 17 babies were born down here, in a "maternity room" about the size of a car parking space distinguished from the rest of the rooms simply by being a slightly bigger bit of tunnel. We drove along the route of the Ho Chi Minh trail, the network of supply lines through West Vietnam and Laos that allowed the Viet Cong to continue to fight. At the time, they were mostly dirt trails dug by hand and the supplies largely carried by hand, but now there are roads and bridges, forming part of an increasingly important trade corridor from Burma via Thailand and Laos to Vietnam. We also visited some of the sites of American bases, including the infamous Khe Sanh, overrun by the North Vietnamese in what was only a decoy operation. The museum is somewhat on the propagandist side with photos of "brave" Vietnamese and "panicking" US troops.

We stayed in the one-horse town of Dong ha to give ourselves a couple of hours' start on our journey to Laos the enxt day. It was here we wished we'd learned a bit more Vietnamese but the old standbys of pointing and miming got us through.