[This is posted on 14.02.2013 from an original hotmail email]
Wow! This is really a belated report. The last few days have been hectic but a real eye opener. That's why I only replied emails but didn't send any long write-ups. Anyway, here's a catch-up of day #8.
Started the day slow with a lie-in and MTV. We went to a local economy rice shop to try the local food. Not really to my taste as the meats were generally tough n the food, saltier than what we are used to back home in Malaysia n Singapore.
Then it was a slow walk hrough the streets n local market to the train station since the nice station master told us we can only purchase the tickets at 1:30pm. As we were early, we went back to the previous night's cafe place for a snooze. There were quite a few people doing the same thing. Guess Vietnamese people know a thing or two about taking a break too, eh?
Anyway, the train station is a real lesson. First the ladies are these severe looking old women with a perpetual frown - a regular dragon lady. Then they have computers but used for checking only time n rates, not generating tickets etc so it was manual. It gets worse. We queued up 15 mins to get to the front of a booth marked FOREIGNERS. The lady said we have to go to the next one marked LOCAL as the one we queued up only sells tickets to SAIGON. So we wasted another 1/2 hour n then, to really piss me off, they sent me back to the first one.
Geeez! And to top it off by the time we wasted an hour, they told us there were no more seats for the 8:30pm train only 11:30pm. Do we have a choice but to accept it? Oh yes. Foreigners paid about 3 times more than locals. Wonderful system, huh?
Since we have so much time to spare, we walked all the way across town to another tourist attraction, a CHAM (ancient people) site. It's really cool though inspite of the bloody heat. We passed a charming river and this place was just at the top of a hillock. There were leftover ruins of the original temple/palace base left and u can see the weather has done some damage to it in addition to mankind. The originals were of Hinduism inflected designs while the Chinese have added their deities to it. So it's a fusion of sorts.
After that, we just trudged around town n ended up sampling the local roast duck. Half a duck for USD1.50. Not too expensive n quite nice too. The place was really dusty though. Then it was looking for souvenirs. We bought nothing. And finally, we stopped by the beachside to chit-chat with some other tourists b4 heading back to our hotel to collect our bags and went for another round of yummy Vietnamese food. There is so much more to Vietnamese food than spring rolls n noodle soups.
The train - yeah! This one is another shocker. We found our compartments to be occupied. Apparently, there were free upgrades. How nice. Then they took us to another compartment and asked the people there to move back to their own compartment. So it was like a cubby hole with "rubber" like mattresses and a fan. Very hot, stuffy n dark n they expect u to sleep. One old man from the top bunk advise us to lock the door and also put our bags further away from the doorway as someone may reach thru the grill n slit open our bags to look for stuff to steal. Like I said - there are nice people n then there are others.
V9 - HUE.
V10 - HUE.
V11 - HOI AN.
V12 - DANANG.
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