Hue: This city needs more toy stores

12-4 - 12-7
Another point that made this Vietnamese train experience great--even though we knew we were at our destination, they walked up and down the cabin and checked with everyone to let them know where we were.  This was not the case in China or Korea.
I got off the train with my new French friends and found Ashely and Helen.  We had booked at the same hotel and got a taxi to it--we paid too much but we had no idea before we got in how close it was (it was so close we could, and should, have walked).  No wonder the taxi drive was dancing like a bugs bunny in a fat suit as he ran to open the trunk for us.

The hotel was incredible nice.  Binh Duong 2 (there were 4 Binh Duongs in this town.  I haven't looked it up, but I'm wagering it means something like, Good Hotel or something really obvious).  I booked a single room but got a room with a quadruple bed--2 double beds touching and an amazing balcony.  All for about 14 dollars a night.  Unbelievable.  The staff at this hotel were helpful too, and did all the things youd expect at a hostel, like booking tours, transportation, and general tourist information.  While we were in the lobby I bumped into Relf from Germany, whom I had met in Hong Kong.  I had known he was going to Hanoi but had failed to find him there, so it was a bit funny that we ran into eachother in Hue.
 
The four of us, me, Ashely, Helen, and Relf hung out togethor for our time in Hue.  The first afternoon there we went up and visited this Citadel area just north of the river that divdes the town.  Most of it had been destroyed during the war and was in the process of being rebuilt.  It was like a set to a play--from the outside the wall was perfect and sturdy and totally convincing, but then once you go inside most everything is just wrecked.  Maybe the walls were built by ancient aliens and were imprevious to the bombs, or maybe they spent a lot of money rebuilding the walls to get people to pay the stiff entrance fee to be disappointed that its just a junkyard.  It was still a cool junkyard though.

We saw some guys on the side of the street selling dog tags.  At first we thought it was just junk, because they had so many, but then we took some closer looks.  Most of them looked to be Vietnamese names, but I saw a few western names and I definitely saw one that said USMC.  We weren't sure what to make of it, if these were real dog tags, is it appropriate that they are being sold on the sides of the street like trinkets?  I wouldn't buy them, but I took some photos.

Later that night we met up with my French friends at a bar in a more tourist part of town.  It was called "Why Not" bar, and since seeing this one, i've found a "Why not" something in the next 4 towns.  "Why not have a place called Why Not".  I'm really not sure what they are going for there, but the beers were cheap and the ambiance worked.  After the bar we kinda got ferried into a fancy-ish Vietnamese restaraunt.  The prices were pretty low though, dishes still average 2 bucks.  But the portions--oh yea.. major miniscule.  So we ordered about 12 dishes for the 6 of us and were still hungry.
We walked around the water after this, chatted it up with some locals, laughed at the crappy boats and the captains that were stewading them, and thought we saw ghosts walking on tops of the bridge supports.

On our second day in Hue we arranged for a car to take us to a local Hot Spring resort place.  We didn't really need to arrange the car through the hotel, but we are dumb tourist, ignorant to the fact that it was only 5km away and would have been a lot cheaper to take a cab.   Every hotel has a gotcha. where they get ya.  The hot spring was totally deserted and run down.  Maybe it was the place to be 20 years ago, but not anymore.  Despite this, the water was great, and the sulpher aroma indicated it was probably natural.  I mean, maybe they could have been using sulpher fragance to trick us.  In all it cost like 2.50 to use it.
Ashley didn't like that there were so many gross spiders hiding in the little roof structures around the pool (it was raining so we were keeping out stuff under them).  Relf laughed at her and poked fun, but the he was karma revenged upon later, as a phantom spider drew quite the girlish scream out of him.
We became frequent patrons at this restaraunt next to our hotel.  It was my favorite food shop in town, and I had no problem dining there at least twice a day.  The menu was huge, the food was cheap, and there were 2 dogs to play with.  This was my first place where I had "Bahn Bao", the vietnamese equivalent of BaoZi.  I liked this version a lot;  it had meat, egg, and vegetable in it--a nice balanced meal embedded in sphere of bread.  It was a lot less greasy than the Chinese variety too.  They also had lots of juices here, for about 40 cents a glass: mango, banana, passionfruit, pineapple, and durian (the stinky fruit--didn't try).
Ashely, Helen, and Relf all left for Hoi An on the 3rd day, but I stayed for a little bit of culture.  I rented a bike from the hotel and planned to ride south towards a bunch of Tombs from various Kings over the past couple hundred years (Hue was the Ancient capital, I think?).  Hue was a much smaller and quieter town than Hanoi, so I wasn't as nervous about biking on their roads, but still a bit nervous.  I only had to bike on busy roads for a km and then I was outside of the city, where there was just one road that was of crappy consitency but light traffic.
As I was riding I came up behind 2 other westerners.  I road up next the girl in the back and asked if they were going to the tombs, she nodded, so I joined them and we road togethor .  They were a couple from Belgium.  We had terrible maps, but between the 3 of us, we managed to locate the first tomb--Kahn Dien or something like that.  It was the best tomb.  The outside looked like it had been used as reference for the game "Shadow of the Colossus".  The inside looked like something Matisse would have done if he were a potter.
Next we found the Ming Tombs.  We were told they were the best--maybe what those people meant was "furthest".  They weren't nearly as cool as the first, but it was a worthy bikeride.

I took a morning train to Hoi An on my fourth day.  I found Antonin and Damia at the station too!  We weren't in the same car but we were going to split a cab to a hotel.  I made friends with the guy I sat next to--Tim from UK.  He was traveling in generally the same route as me, but at a faster speed as he had less time.  We shared snacks with eachother and made 3 attempts to get beer from the dining car; The first time it just had a sign on it and was locked, the second time the sign was gone but it was locked and all the workers were sleeping on the chairs.  The third time we got it.  It was a really scenic train ride that hugged the coastline and crept along steep cliffsides.  The train arrived in Da  Nang and Tim, Dabia, Antonin, and I shared a cab to Hoi An.

Halong Bay:Pirates and Monkeys and it smells of purple

12-1 - 12-3
Halong bay trip today.  Every possible source of review that I have read has been consistent in its high praise of this trek, such that it seemed unnatural, like when people are so nice that it seems strange.  Ashley and Helen were on the tour too, but they had just signed up for 1 night wheras I had chosen 2 (for about 100 bucks).  We had to take a 4 hour bus ride.   The ride was not the most relaxing--to put it in perspective, I was reading at a pace of about 1 page every 5 minutes due to the bounciness caused by either the crappy roads or the lack of a suspension system on the bus.  The tourist trap that we stopped at on the way was worth it, because they sold mangos for like 50 cents and peeled and cut them for you.  I've had a hard time describing the amazing flavor of the mangos in Asia, but I've finally found an apt way to do it: they are sweet and chemically in a good way.

So the harbor looked like something out of Pirates of The Carribean or Monkey Island.  If only our boat was called "The Threepwood", that woulda made it.  All the boats were of a similar construction, dark wood, very old feeling.  Nothing that looked even remotely out of the last two centuries.

We had a guide and his name was Bien.  Despite being what I would consider "one quarter fluent" in English, he had no problem talking a lot.  I mean, really a lot.  His introduction speech lasted for over an hour (on the bus).  It kinda became a joke among the other passengers, the verbosensss.  I know he meant well, but wow, that mouth was running on Uranium.
Overll the tour was amazing.  The scenery was beautiful and the weather was perfect.  There were a lot of other tourist boats around, but it didn't detract from the experience.  In fact, it was really serence to see a hundred boats an chored in the ocean, within reach from many small islands, rocking in the moonlight.  It could have been the set to Captain Blood.
On the first day we went inside some caves the origin of which I never figured out, but Bien lectured us for 30 minutes about as we stood at the entrance and watched 10 or so other tour groups march in past us.  I only had my sunglasses though, so I really got little out of the experience, as it was dark inside the cave, so it was either see clearly but only darkness or see blurry.  At least I got pics.

After the caves we got to do some sea kayaking.  I got paired up with the other solo traveler on our boat, Jess from South Africa.  We got gutsy and treked off kinda far and kinda pretended we didn't hear Bien say to go for only 45 minutes.   We went through this tunnel and found little secluded inlet.  It was like this giant rock was the head of a giant Neandertal floating in the water, mouth open, head hollow, with a little stream of drool marking the pathway in (and out).  Inside this "Neandertal Head" we saw a bunch of little monkeys climbing on the sheer cliff walls.  When I first noticed them out of the corner of my eye, I thought "spider" because that was how they were moving, but they were monkeys. Crazy.
Despite our tour being on the bottom end of cost I found it to be quite luxurious.  For example, our meals  included multiple courses and were usually served with artistic garnishes--this is not what I'd expect from a budget tour.  Honestly I would have been cool with sandwiches or instant noodles.  We slept on the boat the first night.  I was fearful that our global loquacious guide would attempt to lead us in song and possibly dance, but we were lucky to avoid it.

 Because dinner was at 8PM and I was still hungry at 9PM, and given the breakfast was to be served at 8 AM, I was the first one at the breakfast table, which was fancy, but only 1/4 the amount I would prefer.  Actually everyone was complaining not about the quality of the food, but the quantity.  We think they estimated based on what a normal Vietnamese person eats, which is far less than a Western person needs.  Let's face it, we are like twice their size.

The 1 Dayers left, which brought our group down to about 6.  We were taken to Cat Ba island where we did some biking to a small Village.  It really should be called Dog island, or Dog Zealand, because there are like 5 dogs for every person.  We cringed at the thought that they might have been the main food source.

After biking we did some more kayaking.  We treked to a small empty island and swam a bit.  It was fabulous.  There were lots of ladies rocking around in row boats selling stuff--ocean 7-11's.  Too bad they didn't sell cold beer.

 We spent the rest of our trip on a more populated portion of Cat Ba island.  We had the evening to ourselves.  The first thing Jess and I did with our freedom was visit a restaurant and get spring rolls, mango juice, and some random rice dishes.  Then 3 hours later, we ate the dinner that was provided with our tour, no problem.

On our last day we basically just road the boat back, met up with some more people on the way, and traveled back to Hanoi togethor.  I got back to the Rendevouz hostel with 30 minutes to spare before my train to Hue.  Ashley and Helen were there and were also on my train.  We got some quick eats and shared a cab to the train station.
The train was a sleeper and quite simply, a tropical bungalow on wheels.  It was as if they had hired an interior designer for it.  For some reason we got to board early.  Our hostel had booked our tickets for us, through a hotel that was next to the train station, and told us they would assist us in boarding.   My cabin had 4 beds, some complimentary snacks, tea, and sanitary wipes. We had to trek through all 11 train cars to get to the car that sold beer though. A couple from Paris were with me in my cabin, Antonin and Damia.  Antonin had been working in Hanoi for the last half year and gave a lot of education on Vietnam, like how they use a crap out of pesticides but all the farms were small and family owned.  Or how you could get fresh unpasteurized beer on the side of the road if you look for a sign that says, well, "fresh beer", but in Vietnamese.  The journey took about 12 hours.  In the morning we woke up and were in Hue, in Central Vietnam