Another day, another blog post. I'm really getting into this blogging thing...
We just got into Hoi An which is a nice little beach town along Vietnam's central coast. They are famous for their silk and tailoring here and you can get a new suit made starting at $20 or so. Later today Marc and I are going to check it out and get our measurements taken. Maybe I will get two suits since it's so cheap and then just mail them home.
Anyway, yesterday and the day before we were in Hue. It's a little further north and close to the former DMZ. On the first day we rented bicycles and cruised around town. The thing is, traffic here is a little crazy. People don't signal and basically everyone just goes with the flow. Indecision is bad, because if you're not moving then people don't know what you are going to do. Whereas if you keep moving everyone else will 'flow' around you and avoid you. Everyone here rides a scooter and it is by far the most common vehicle. If you need to pass someone you honk so that they know you are coming up on the left. At first it's a bit nuts, but it's fine once you get used to it. People also go really slow, so that helps.
We also biked through a more rural part of town and about 20 kids were running after our bikes cheering 'Bye Bye' when we left the area. In general, whenever we get off the beaten track and run into kids they come running up to us to say 'Hello' and get a high five. It's a neat experience.
Hue is a really nice town with an old Citadel in the town center. It's a lot more quiet than Hanoi and I liked it a lot better.
The next day we rented three scooters and a guide to tour the DMZ. It's 70km outside of Hue, so we had to scooter all the way there and back. It was an excellent idea to get our own guide since we didn't run into any other tourists all day! The Vietcong tunnels are quite amazing and a lot more extensive than I thought. They had 300-500 people living in the tunnels and had underground schools, hospitals, meeting rooms, etc. During the war 18 babys were born underground. It was a really neat thing to see. We also looked at a number of other sites and took many rural roads with our guide, so we saw a lot of Vietnam's countryside. It's very beautiful with rice fields, patches of jungle and the mountains in the background. The heat was intense and at the end of the day we were very tired. We scootered more than 200km to see all the sites and get to/from Hue. The weather in central Vietnam is not as humid as Hanoi, but the sky is blue and the sun beating down makes it feel just as hotter.
Our guide told us that up until 1991 Vietnam was a closed country and living conditions were 'very bad' as he said. It's very noticeable now how much infrastructure has been added in the last decade. The roads are all brand new and in excellent condition. Even the rural areas now have cell phone reception and power. Construction of infrastructure and housing seems to be happening all over the place. I think in another 15 years it will look a lot different. The country has a great feel to it with everyone looking to the future very positively.
