Visiting Relics with Relics

10122016


Earliest wake up we have had yet on the cruise, made it to the buffet breakfast. This was subsequently the busiest we have seen the boat, I guess everyone was waking up for their excursions at the same time.

We sat with Ray, one of the gentlemen we met at trivia the night prior, chatted and inhaled our breakfast before rolling to the showhall for our gathering of the tour group.

The boat was docked at a container port, probably because it is the only one in the area big enough to service this ship

The port is Da Nang, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danang) which is one of the bigger cities in Vietnam. Mostly we drove through it to get to Hue which is another major city of Vietnam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu%E1%BA%BF).

pics here

immediately off the boat we went through Vietnamese customs and hopped on the bus.

There was to be about a 150min drive to our first destination. Including ourselves there were about 20 people on the tour, including my veteran friend that had been carried out of Vietnam full of bullets 50 years prior.

The tour guide was very knowledgeable, a group of older Americans started asking questions, apparently too many, because a German lady lost her shit and stared yelling at them about how this isn't a private tour and we want to hear the narrative the guide is giving.

The German lady was basically ostracized at that point, i think it was a bit to early to be riding these people for asking questions.

The ride took us along the lagoon that appears here

To include rice paddies (which are off season right now) and water buffalo, as seen above.


The cities are pretty clearly ‘third world” i think that the weather here really exacerbates this perception, it never gets cold here, so people can without much difficulty survive in corrugated steel shacks, and cinderblock-only buildings. Everyone has electricity, and most people have a scooter, if not car, and cellphones and whatnot, it is a modern nation, just less developed than anywhere else we have been on the trip.

Our first stop was the Citadel, as our guide called it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_City,_Hu%E1%BA%BF). As i understood this was the imperial palace, much like the Forbidden City in Beijing.

The tour guide was also very knowledgeable here, pointing things out and explaining the significance of this or that. He was also able to illustrate for us what it would have looked like before the 20th century*

I also asked some questions about Vietnam:

Have the Catholic minority, or Buddhists been negatively impacted at all by the Communist government?

The guide explained that for the most part, no. While religion is outlawed, unless you are very very public about your practices, or are looking for a distinguished position in government, no one was going to have a problem with your being catholic or Buddhist or Taoist or whatever.

How much Chinese money have you seen?

The guide said it is pouring in, both public and private monies. The Chinese government is helping to develop major infrastructure, and Chinese businesses are opening ventures all over Vietnam, very clearly trying to break into the 94ish Million person market that is Vietnam.

When and why did Vietnam adopt the Latin alphabet rather than the Chinese or their own script?

He said that Vietnamese has its own script

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabet

that was used alongside Chinese. Despite Vietnam (much like Korea) hating the Chinese for being the imperialist monstrosity that it was until the 1780s, they still saw the power and majesty, and much of their (Vietnamese and Korean respectively) royal/official goings on were modeled after the Chinese. It wasn't until the late XIX century that the Latin script was introduced. The french missionaries adapted the Latin script with all kinds of accents and phonetic notations to work for Vietnamese. And that's the one that stuck

After this we were hurried into Hue proper to an old hotel. This hotel goes back to the early 1900s, and has been used since as a fancy hotel for receptions of dignitaries and what not. This meant the food was very good, it was a spread of some of the less exotic foods of Vietnam, alot of shrimps, some fish, some chicken, rice, fried stuff. All of it was very good.

Our second stop of the day was the Tu Duc Tombs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_T%E1%BB%B1_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c). This tomb complex was built by one of the monarchs to provide a nice place to visit while honoring his ancestors. It was essentially a small palace, with a throne room from which the king could receive important guests, King and Queens quarters, the harem for all the concubines, and a man made lake and island for some pretty nature to enjoy.

this again suffered pretty badly under the circumstances of the XX century, even after the fighting was over Vietnam didn't have any money to restore none the less maintain these places. Despite that it was still amazing, and the restoration work that has been done is excellent.

We piled back in the bus and made the 2 hour trip back home before traffic got too bad. We did stop at one point near the lagoon to take pictures of the fishing nets and huts over the water.

re-boarding the ship was easy. We claimed our scrabble board and sat on one of the upper decks to play and watch us leave port.

We also attended the trivia game, though this time didn't do quite as well. And afterwords chatted with our friend Ray more before hurrying to one of the last seatings for dinner.

When getting to dinner we sat with an English Expat living in Cypress, shortly thereafter joined by a Scottish couple. We had nice conversation, they asked us about the election, and how we felt. We chatted about global politics, and our other travels and we thanked them for being so welcoming and nice, explaining that we would rather be on the bottom of the age range of a ship and have conversation like the one we were having, than hang out with other 20 somethings and get drunk all day (we needn't travel halfway around the world to partake in that activity).

I had pork medallions that were so far the best meal of the cruise, Laura had turkey, a sort of belated thanksgiving dinner. And for dessert i had an exquisite Nutella Cheesecake.

We then went again to our favorite evening bar, for some wine before heading to the cabin for bed.

*If you didn't know, the 20th century was real bad for Vietnam, first the West began colonizing, then the Japanese invaded, then the French occupied, than the US occupied, then the Communists took over. Vietnam had people shooting at each other for 75 of the last 120 years.