twelve countries twelve months

It was time to face our first Vietnamese night bus and we were intrigued to see if it would live up to the standard we had grown used to in Argentina.  The short answer is NO!  Although Rach might disagree.  There were no allocated seats but in the rush she somehow managed to nab the best seat on the bus - a fully flat bed long enough for Peter Crouch, while I ended up on the “bench” seat at the back, snuggling up a little too closely with four strangers!  Twelve hours later and we arrived in Hue where we were greeted by a bunch of hotel touts.  We wondered what effects the long bus ride (or maybe just the toll of eleven months of travel) had done to our appearance, as when we mentioned to the touts the hotel we intended to go to (which cost nine pounds a night) they all said  “no, you can’t afford to go there, that hotel is too expensive for you!”  

Hue was a great place for us to swot up on our Vietnamese history.  The central Citadel, contained within 2m thick stone walls, was the ancient capital city of Southern Vietnam under the Nguyen Dynasty, and while here we also visited the demilitarised zone (DMZ) along the Ben Hai river.  This was the dividing line between North and South during the Vietnam war, and featured some of the bloodiest battles of the war.  The American bases are now long gone and have been replaced with rubber tree plantations, so we had to use our imagination, but it was strange to think such a peaceful and serene spot could have been the scene of such heavy fighting as little as 40 years ago.

With only three weeks of our trip left, and especially after the Hue incident, we decided it was about time to smarten up so we hit the famous tailors of Hoi An.  The initial plan was to each get a suit tailored for our imminent job interviews.  However, having bought no clothes for a year we went slightly crazy.  After several days of fittings across four different tailors we emerged with a job lot of suits, coats, jackets, trousers and even some custom made shoes!  There was a tense moment at Rach’s first fitting for some trousers when she couldn’t even get them on (too many spring rolls I suspect!)  but we are really pleased with all the end results, and are now trying to work out how to get it all home.

Squeezed in between our fittings we went to cookery school and learnt to cook some of the local dishes.  We went to the market and a herb garden to pick up the ingredients then proceeded to cook up a tasty four course Vietnamese meal.  We’ve kept all the recipes, so who wants to come round for dinner ?

~ by robcheek on June 17, 2010.

Posted in travel
Tags: cooking, vietnam