Traveling from Hoi An to Hanoi

Written by Daniel:

Traveling from Hoi An to Hanoi

Today we woke up at a decent hour and had breakfast in the hotel at 8:00. After breakfast we decided to take a tour of the old buildings in Hoi An using a ticket system set up by the city: you pay for a map and five tickets, each good for entrance into one of the 18 historic locations in the city. The first we went to was the Japanese Bridge, set up by Japanese merchants to conduct trade with the other side of the city. The bridge also housed a small temple that was added on after the bridge was built. Next we visited the under water house (not its official name), which, although not currently submerged, apparently has been submerged several times during the rainy season. It was still owned by the same family that has owned it for seven generations. The house is an example of a Hoi An traditional family dwelling. The next site was the Cantonese Assembly Hall, a mandarin meeting house, furnished with elaborate carp and dragon sculptures covered by a complex and colorful mosaic, along with various painted statues and a model Chinese boat the size of a small car. Large red cones of burning incense hung from the ceiling throughout the main hall. Our final stop on the tour was the “Articraft House”, a medium building which essentially consisted of a concentration of tourist craft shops just like the hundreds of others throughout the city, although slightly more convenient as one didn’t have to walk more than a few feet to reach the next one. As it was about 110 degrees outside, or at least felt so, it seemed logical to return to the hotel before the weight of unconscious/dead bodies would begin to slow us down. We had lunch at the Western/Vietnamese restaurant directly across the street, taking our usual two hours to savor the flavors of our Asian penne and our alcohol lacking “mocktails”. After lunch we had free time, then were picked up by an oversized, 30-person tour bus to take us to the airport in Danang. Upon arrival we checked in, went through security without too many problems, and sat down in the wonderful, luxurious plastic seats of the Danang airport to watch the same commercial loop on one of the dozens of TVs for the two hours until our 5:20 PM plane arrived to take us the one-hour flight to Hanoi. The flight was short and we were in Hanoi before we knew it, our only obstacles in getting to our hotel being the “misplacement” of Jim’s folding knife and spoon, which had been seized by airport security, and not being able to find our pre-arranged driver for 20 minutes.

Visiting My Son

Written by Maddy:

Visiting My Son

We woke up early and were greeted with the morning heat of Hoi An. A bus met us at our hotel at around 7:30 am, and we all filed in for an hour and a half long ride to My Son. When we reached our destination, sunscreen was reapplied and groans were suppressed as we stepped off the bus into the heat and prepared ourselves for the visit. First we saw a smaller exhibit that told us about what we were about to see, with explanations of how My Son was originally built by the Cham people and, of course, its slow demise while being swallowed by the jungle. We then walked along a wide stone path with other tourists. Jim took us off the main path and led us up a narrow dirt road. We trekked through the suffocating heat, looking at each remaining structure one at a time. What we saw was mostly brick structures that had been glued together, and then carved. Nobody knows what the glue originally used was, but most speculation points to a natural resin from the jungle. Whatever the adhesive was, it has held the bricks together for a thousand years.

It was interesting to see the site where many of the statues we had seen two days before at the Cham museum had come from. We were given a map at the beginning of the tour, showing us each different site there was to visit. However, when it came to navigating what we actually had or hadn’t seen, we were still somewhat foggy. We continued to wander, and after 2 hours, we decided there was little to nothing we hadn’t looked at.

We reached a small outdoor café in My Son, and, worn out and sweaty, stopped to get ice cream. While we were enjoying the break from walking and the cool ice cream, Jim told us he had some bad news. He said that there had been an outbreak of a rare Vietnamese illness, and that before we came home, we would have to get vaccinated. As he told us about the shot we all needed to return to the U.S., literally nobody moved and nobody spoke. Glances of horror were exchanged as Jim described the 4-inch long needle, and Bryn leaned over to me and shuddered, “Promise to hold my hand?” At that point, Frederic and Ethan started to giggle.

Jim continued, “There are also forms we’ll need to fill out, and they’ll want the date. Does everybody know what day it is?”

We thought for a moment, and a look of relief swept over everyone’s face; everyone, that is, except for Bryn. She answered, with absolute certainty, “March 32^nd!”

With the help of our relentless teasing, she figured it out. “Oh,” she whispered. “April 1^st.” She proceeded to add, “Jim, I hate you.”

A long ride in the air-conditioned bus was welcomed by all of us, and we returned to our hotel around noon. The rest of the day was ours to explore Hoi An, and we were free to shop, shower, and watch movies in our hotel room. We went for dinner, and, exhausted like always, went to bed.

Traveling from Hue to Hoi An stopping in Da Nang

Written by Josh:

Traveling from Hue to Hoi An stopping in Da Nang

We left our hotel around 9:30 a.m. We were crowded in a 14-person mini-van with all our luggage. Jim made the driver repack the van so everyone had a seat. The first time we packed in Frederic was sitting on a tire well. The ride south was pretty smooth. WE We stopped at the summit of the main pass between Hue and Da Nang (the Hai Van Pass) where we were accosted by very determined souvenir peddlers, and a few of us received marriage proposals to the sons and daughters of the peddlers, which we refused. We drove along magnificent scenery between sea and mountain. We got to Da Nang around noon. We were dropped off in front of the Cham Archeology Museum. Before we went in the Museum, we decided to have lunch. Jim, up to then had been a great navigator, but he failed us that day; he led us to the place where our restaurant was supposed to be, but all we found was a huge construction site. Since our guidebook was published in 2009, the whole block had been demolished. Anne and Jim had a back-up restaurant but Jim led us in the wrong direction in the heat. The new road confused him. Eventually, we ate lunch in a pretty good back alley restaurant which wasn’t torn down. Later when we were fed and cooler we returned to the museum which was just 4 blocks up the new road from our restaurant. At the museum, there were a lot of lions, Gods, and other sculptures that were big and small. They all were carved between 500 AD and 1300 AD by Cham artists. The Cham people are Hindu and the sculptures were from Hindu mythology. There was a part of the museum which showed what type of clothes the Cham people wore. It was fun and the place pleasant and interesting. Then we went on to Hoi An, a small pleasant town that moved at a much slower pace than Hanoi or even Hué. When we got to the hotel the staff was very nice but they didn’t give us enough rooms at their location. So the staff and our teachers discussed the situation while everyone else waited. Eventually the teachers told us that two of us would go with Jim to a new location across the river, and the rest stay at the first hotel. So we finally got settled in the rooms. Then we ate dinner in a restaurant beautifully decorated with bamboo. Our meal was filled with laughter and it was good place to eat.

Visit to Pagodas and Mausoleums

Written by Aya:

Visit to Pagodas and Mausoleums

We woke up a bit earlier than usual and prepared for a boat ride on Perfume River and the many temples and mausoleums we would be visiting throughout the day. The boat captain greeted us at our hotel and led us to the docks, where we boarded onto a small and comfortable boat with a colorful dragon head at the front. We first visited the Thien Mu Pagoda, which in 1963 became famous in the West after a monk burned himself in Saigon after worshipping every story, he was protesting the South Vietnamese Governments mistreatment of Buddhists. We strolled around the temple and gazed at the colorfully painted statues of three very regal and fierce looking guardians, whose aggressive and disdainful expressions looked down at us as we made our way through a crowd of little monks-in-training. After spending a short time there, we went back to the boat, on to the next temple.

We left the boat and walked up a small pathway, up many steps to see a much smaller, elegant temple. This temple was much less elaborate than the first, it had small stone statues all adorned with offerings and incense. We spent the time there taking photos (there was a beautiful view of Perfume River) and examining the statues, before making our way back to the boat, this time headed for a mausoleum.

The mausoleum Ming Mang was very large. Most of the buildings were painted red, with many steps leading from one section to the next. There were three bridges over vast, cloudy lakes that lay in between each temple. We spent a longer time walking around, admiring the very intricate and elaborate architecture of the mausoleum, the abundance of small yellow butterflies, and the pink and purple flowers that grew from lily pads resting over the water. We gathered at one of the bridges, and headed towards a new mode of transportation, a large white van that would take us to lunch. After lunch, we went to the Tu Doc mausoleum. This one had large stone temples, all gray and scattered around a grassy hill where yellow flowers had freshly fallen from barren trees. We made our way up oversized stone steps and over bridges. The architecture here was somewhat simpler than the first, but the atmosphere was overall more relaxed and yet equally impressive.

Afterwards, we took the van to a small conical hat-making shop. We were seated on tiny chairs, and crowded around a woman who sat on the floor with an array of materials in front of her. We watched her make a traditional conical hat, also called poetry hats because when they are held up to the sun, you can see a series of images. Our woman hat-maker was born missing her right arm beyond the elbow so part of her demonstration was to show how a disabled person can adapt. Apparently she makes two each day, for approximately five dollars a day. After a few people bought recently made hats from her, we went back to the hotel and relaxed until dinner. For dinner we went to a French bistro, taking a break from only Vietnamese food, then went back to our rooms for some much-needed sleep.