Same Same, But Different

Next stop; Ninh Binh, where our hotel found the need to include the line “No Prostitutes Allowed in the Hotel” in their list of rules. Despite this strictness regarding the good working women of the street, it was pleasant and relatively cheap.

It was a short stay, but we managed to pack plenty in, including a half day of cruising through the countryside on a motorbike. Touring on two wheels is undoubtedly the best way to see this part of the world (SE Asia). Most back roads in to small villages and in between rice paddies are too far out to walk to, and too small for cars. US$5 a day is fully worth it, as long as you’re willing to brave the traffic of course.

After one night in Ninh-Binh, we took yet another overnight train, this time to Huѐ (pronounced “Hwaay”). Not much doing here to be honest. It’s quite historically significant, yes, but I’m not really a ruins kind of guy, (unless it's the soon to be seen Angkor Wat) and I’ve seen more than my fare share of Pagodas on this trip already. However, the weather was pleasant (we’d crossed the old North-South divide in to a much more tropical climate), and it was nice to finally walk around in shorts and thongs (the ones that go on the feet). After a couple of days though, the travelling circus moved on.

And so on to Hoi An, a tourist filled town with a ridiculously out of control tailor scene.

I’ll avoid using Mastercard ads as cheesy analogies, but to be able to get some clothes tailored to my normally irregular size was indeed “priceless”. Some of the items needed more work than others, requiring several fittings before it felt right, but for the price, it was well worth it. US$100 for the suit and shirt to the right.

At this point of the trip, three months in, as we edged close to the end, Lise was beginning to imagine what might be awaiting her in Australia. I’d of course built the place up a bit, leaving Lise eagerly anticipating the prospect of a kind of Utopia. They have an Australian channel on television in Vietnam, and one night we managed to catch “The 7.30 Report”. It was all good news – the summers in Melbourne are getting hotter and longer (and more unbearable), and apparently, due to global warming, box jellyfish are moving further South, and will be terrorising the beaches of the Sunshine Coast (our destination and where I grew up) within 5 years. Fantastic! Lise was suitably chuffed.

We witnessed a model of Communist efficiency when we paid a visit to the Doctor for a problem Lise was having with her foot. We arrived without an appointment, entered the doctor’s office within two minutes, were promptly asked “What is wrong with you?” (no social niceties that would waste time), he gave us some medicine, and we were out and done within about four minutes. Who said nothing gets done under Communism?

When we were eventually to leave Hoi An, we sent 14kg of clothes back to France via sea freight. I’m sure, if given enough time, Lise could have filled her own container.

The next few days were quite uneventful. We spent a night in the beach side town of Nah Trang, and moved inland then to Dalat, a spot in the highlands popular with Vietnamese honeymooning couples. We spent three days catching up with Lise’s parents, who were making their own journey northwards. It was, for me, an ideal time to do nothing and rest whilst Lise swapped endless stories with her mum and dad in a language I could only half understand.

The French tongue would not lay unconquered for me forever however – I was now doing daily lessons with Lise and although progress was slow, it was there. Lise meanwhile discovered that fluent and even perfect English didn’t necessarily mean you could devour a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses without a struggle. She bit off slightly more than she could chew when she acquired it at a book exchange in Hoi An. She read about three pages and gave up. I didn’t mention that the book in question would be a struggle even for me... I do of course have a reputation to uphold.

We were headed to Saigon and the Mekong Delta after this, and I promise this part of the blog will be more interesting!