Hue, Vietnam

Xin chao from Vietnam! This is our third day in Vietnam, in Hue specifically. We are waiting for a bus right now that will take us to Hoi An. This computer access is FREE in our hotel, and FAST. I am so impressed. There is this wierd chain of service set up for tourists in Vietnam. There's a specific track of cities they take you through and its really easy to travel city to city and do the tours and stay in the hotels. We are kind of taking this path because we are so short on time and would like to see as much as we can in the next few days. It can get old very fast to spend every day being bussed and boated around to look at ANOTHER temple or tomb. So we are also trying to break it up by making as much effort as we can to meet local people. We try to find places to eat where there are only Vietnamese people and make friends if possible. It is hard sometimes because when you ask people about a good local place to go, they usually will first recommend the popular traveler spot. You show up and see only foreigners and everyone speaks English. Its weird that this is frustrating, since in Chico I always like to be places where there are foreigners and we of course speak english, but this is different.

Yesterday, we caught an 8am boat cruise up the perfume river and saw three famous tombs, a pagoda, and a temple. You can see a some in the pictures. I would tell you the names but I do not remember them at the moment. We had lunch on the boat too, which was semi-delicious and cramped. There was a group of girls from Hanoi on the cruise who were taking a holiday after graduating from university, and they were fun to talk to.

Later we ate dinner at this popular local place near the old city, on the edge of the citadel. There were a lot of older men ordering whole cases of beer which we unfortunately did not take pictures of. We ate some very delicious grilled squid and spring rolls as well as some sort of soup with egg and crab. Today, we went to the citadel and the Forbidden Purple City. No longer forbidden of course, and mostly destroyed in the Vietnam/American War. Here it is called the American War (or the American War of Aggression depending on who you talk to).

Something interesting here is that you can use American dollars everywhere. Many prices will be quoted in dollars and then they convert into dong since thats all we are carrying. People sometimes give us weird looks when we say we don't have any dollars. Next time I come to Vietnam, I'll remember this...

Here are a few pictures from our last night in Savannakhet with our friend Yah and his friend Mr. Lee. Yah calls everyone Mr. and Ms. I think it is translated from how you address people in Laos. We are Ms. Katie and Ms. Kiley. We went to their favorite restaurant and they ordered us eel. It was all chopped up and in a stir fry that tasted similar to a lot of Thai dishes. Eel is good, but it had the vertebrae and little bones in it which was kind of weird. The next morning, we were off on our bus to Hue, and lastly, there is a picture of the border crossing into Vietnam, where it seemed like every single official needed to check out our passports and then spend a few minutes looking at every stamp and detail. It really seemed more like it was for personal interest than any sort of security reason.

Our bus is coming soon, so I'm off, I hope you are all well and I will be seeing you soon!

Much love,

Katie