| Lea's Latest Writing |
| AIDS |
| STDs |
| Mattie Stepanek |
| Highlights Magazine |
| Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah |
| Cell Phones for Soldiers |
| Staying Connected-Tidewater Parent |
| 2004 China Journey |
| 2001 RTW Trip |
| Supported by |
| Hampton Roads - Site of the Week 11/1/00 |
| Lechinois.com |
| Best Viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer |
|
|
[ Up ]
Hoi An Journal
(Lea) Hoi An is a fantastic small riverside city filled with Chinese,
Japanese, French and traditional Vietnamese pagodas, temples, churches, assembly
halls and houses. The night journey we experienced to get there made it even
more wonderful upon arrival. Keith talks about our visit itself, but I will tell
about the 'interesting' trip to get there.
To start, we were in Nha Trang and needed to reserve train tickets to Danang (30K from Hoi An) This took over half a day as every travel agency wanted us to travel by their minibuses rather than get us train tickets. We requested a soft berth for each of us, so we could sleep. The agent told us that the soft berths were full. So we then opted for a soft seat. We sat in these before and they were quite comfortable - cushioned seats with A/C. All seemed well and the train tickets were delivered to us that day.
The next day, Valentine's Day, we arrived at the train station at 7:00 pm. As our train arrived, we pulled out our tickets and thought we would simply show them to the conductors and they would show us our seats. (Wrong.) We showed them to about 5 different workers and all pointed us in different directions. Finally, we thought we found the right car, got on and found what we thought were our seats. They were taken. The train was about to leave and both were quite flustered and confused. A Vietnamese woman and man came up to try to help us. Then another man, an Vietnamese soldier, also came over. The man and the soldier seemed to get into an argument about where we were supposed to sit. Finally, the army soldier brusquely pointed out 2 seats. These were not the soft seats I thought we booked. These were hard seats and the back of mine was broken. By this point the entire car was staring at us, my face was red from pulling the backpack back and forth, so we decided to sit down. We were about to spend 12 hours in what I thought was the most uncomfortable place on the train (Wrong again).
As the train started, a woman conductor came up to us and made the sleeping sign. I realized she was offering us berths. I nodded and she wrote down 100,000 dong (roughly $7). I realized this was an under the table kind of offer (kind of cool!). We quickly calculated that 100,000 dong more each would come out to about the same as what we would have paid for a berth. We nodded. Next thing I knew we were following her, with all of our gear, through 5 cars. I bumped almost everyone as I passed and wished I could say "excuse me" in addition to my two Vietnamese phrases - "thank you" and "hello." We came to another car and she pointed into a compartment. I saw 6 bunks, 3 on each side. The bottom 4 were already filled and she pointed out the top two. I realized these were hard berths, basically slabs of wood that do not cost much more than the seats, and not the soft berths, bed like berths that do cost more, that we were expecting. But by the time we realized this, the conductor was gone with our money. We realized we were taken.
As we climbed up, the others in the compartment helped us get our gear up. Once on the top berth, we realized this was the worst place to be. It was stifling hot, the 'beds' were only inches from the ceiling, I could see bugs on the fan which was right next to me, and the berth was as hard as a rock. Tied to that was the awful feeling of being taken. Keith and I lay there the next few minutes not speaking, just eating our bread and chocolate to drown our sorrows. Then something else happened...I could smell the guy below me smoking. Keith looked at me and told me that it was not a cigarette he was smoking. At this point, Keith jumped up and said he was going to see if our original seats were there, and if so we would go back. I told him to see if there were any nice soft seats with a/c (like the ones we sat on the previous train ride) available. Keith soon came back. He said we could move back to our original hard seats, but the woman who sold us our "upgrade" was sitting in the compartment of the nice soft seats.
I sat there and thought for a second...remain here, move to original seats, or try for the soft a/c ones. It only took a second to decide. What this trip continues drive home is that once you know what you want, go for it. I walked into the nice a/c compartment with the soft seats and saw the woman conductor. She and another conductor giggled as everyone turned to watch me. I gestured to 2 open seats and then to myself. It took a minute but then she understood what I wanted. She gestured to 4 open seats (so that each of us would have 2) and nodded okay. 5 minutes later we hauled all our gear (and the conductor helped) to the seats, and I was now happy (or at least not as upset)! So in the end, we spent too much, but we did get the seats we wanted and hopefully this conductor, who actually seemed nice, enjoyed her money.
(Keith)
Hoi An has been a nice stop on our trip up the coast of Vietnam; the
architecture has been a real pleasure to photograph. Hoi An was once a
bustling seaside trading town. Its inhabitants included Vietnamese,
Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and French; each ethnicity left its mark on the
city.
21st century Hoi An also provided us some great entertainment. We watched a traditional Vietnamese dance and music performance. The music was particularly enchanting because of the instruments and sounds that are uncommon in Western music, e.g. the 16 string zither and a 1 string instrument that made extensive use of note bending and vibrato. We spent most of our nights in the Tam Tam Cafe . . . yet another Vietnamese oddity . . . a bar that could hang with Manhattan's coolest.
We spent a day in the ancient Champa city of My Son. Much of south-east Asia was heavily influenced by India as can be seen in Ayuthaya (Thailand), Sukothai (Thailand), Angkor Wat (Cambodia), and My Son (Vietnam). Each of these locations was once a large and regionally dominating city. My Son was built to revere Shiva, The Destroyer; the Hindu god. The city prospered between the 2th and 15th centuries, AD.
As with many of these cities, My Son fell to ruin and was lost to the jungle for hundreds of years. Luckily, My Son is now a UNESCO site and (along with many surrounding sites) has undergone some renovation and preservation.
It will be interesting to compare these ruins and architectures with the ones we will see in India in several months.
Check out more Hoi An Photos.