Moving South

Tomorrow I will (hopefully) be in Saigon and Emma's apartment (with a pool and a washing machine)- phew! Will try and upload some photos when I get there...

From Hue I did the tour of the DMZ. There was a guide who was quite useful, but obviously assumed that we had no previous knowledge at all about the Vietnam War/American War (depending where you are!). We saw the Khe San Combat Base which had quite a moving museum in it and lots of crashed planes/left over tanks/bombs that you could wander around. Much more disconcerting was the guide's own stories about blowing up dud bombs when they were younger and trying to use explosions to kill fish! He also told us how bomb craters are often now fished in... The other particularly impressive we saw was the Vinh Moc tunnels. A whole village essentially lived underground in a tunnel system to avoid the war. Unlike the Cu Chi tunnels, they were more lived in than used for soldiering and were a bit bigger but I, embarrassingly, went about 3ft in and then had to turn around - turns out I'm more claustrophobic than I thought. Most of all, it was a good trip for just seeing the kind of terrain - you could get a good idea of what it might have been like.

Then I went on southwards to Hoi An, which is a beautiful town with older architecture. Unfortunately, I was started getting ill here and had some nasty throat thing that is now a cold with a cough, but fortunately I think Hoi An is the sort of place you would sit around in cafes/restaurants anyway, whether you were ill or not. Sleeping in a buff to keep my ears warm seems to be working and I am recovering.Visiting the pharmacist give me an insight into marketing - all moisturiser here is 'whitening' although seems to be exactly the same as what is 'nourishing' in the UK.

From Hoi An I went to My Son, which were old Cham temples. I think what is meant to make them particularly impressive is the way they are set against these big hills, but it was raining so much we couldn't see those! (Am getting very tired of the tropical storm...) It was still a nice place to walk around for a bit with this Canadian girl I met and also to see how much had been destroyed by American bombs (again). I also caught the bus up to Danang, which is a bigger and much less nice city, and saw lots of Cham sculptures (the ones that didn't end up in France from My Son). Just outside are the 'Marble Mountains', more like steep hills of marble and limestone, with some cool caves in. Getting to the top included clambering through some very small holes - marble is quite slippery to climb up! Then I went to the beach, which was a bit over resorted and, as a result of Gaemi again, not very safe for swimming. I could see how it might have been a  nice place to R&R as many Americans did.

Final stop before Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh, I can't decide which I should be saying) was Dalat. Dalat is 'the town of four seasons', as it starts in spring, is summer by lunchtime, autumn by evening and winter overnight. Really, it's in the Central Highlands and a bit more like a summer's day in the UK, which is quite nice! There is much less rice and jungle and a lot more flowers and evergreens, making it quite a nice place to wander around, of which I have done a lot, particularly around the lake. I caught a rickety old train into a nearby village with some pagodas that went past miles of greenhouses (plastic, not glass). Then wandered over to the king's summer palace, which was a surprisingly small and slightly ugly thirties building. Apparently the fact it was yellow made it royal... Then, because I was spending the day with a Chinese girl, Ruby, and a Slovenian guy, Zoman, we went to this kitschy 'crazy house', which is a sort of fake Alice and Wonderland-like tree house. Both Zoman and I, although much more so him, spent a lot of the day grilling Ruby about China. It was quite interesting, especially as I am reading 'Wild Swans' and am in a bit of Chinese whirl but was also quite interesting how unimpressed with Vietnam she was; China is more beautiful and, whilst she would take a lot of photos, none of the temples and pagodas, we have those in China!

Overall, I like Dalat's climate and surroundings but am a bit disappointed with the city. Ideally I would have had time to come southwards through the central highlands and do some more walking. Frustratingly, Vietnam appears more touristy than elsewhere, but I think actually it's just a little bit harder to get around away from the tourist routes, so you spend a lot of time with tourists following the same path. It is much harder to get off this path than in Thailand, for example, unless you speak Vietnamese. Anyway, 5 days left in Vietnam and then on to Borneo!