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It was an epic 24 hour trip from Hanoi, involving a surprisingly comfy 9hr sleeper train ride and a nerve-racking 6 hours of Daytona through Vietanmese highlands in a 20-seater bus, but last night we safely arrived in a rather chilly Phonsavanh and christened our arrival back in the country with a bottle of wonderful, wonderful Beer Lao.
Phonsavanh is an unassuming little Laos town that is on the map due to its proximity to the Plain of Jars * and because the old city was bombed by the Americans and Phonsavah had to move down the road to its current location. We have just spent a beautifully warm, sunny day driving through truly gorgeous countryside, coloured by the golden-greens of the ripening rice, to see the three main Jar sites and the surviving relics of the old city. Photos to be posted.**
The last weeks of Vietnam were typified by our last night; sitting on a street corner in Hanoi drink bia hoi (the local brewed light draught beer) at 2000 dong (~13 cents) a glass, talking rubbish with fellow travellers and an 83 year old Viet man who was an interpreter in the war.But perhaps i should try telling the tale forward, starting back at the historical town on Hoi An where I left you last...
The photos of Hoi An (http://picasaweb.google.com/astuartmuirk) will amply explain why we stayed so long in that beautiful town. Hue (pronounced 'hway'), next up the coast, was less beautiful but was surrounded by relics from when it was an Imperial city: a walled citadel in which traditional theatre was recreated; an arena where they fought tigers against elephants, rigged so the elephant would always win; the temple of compasion, named for a monk who bought fish and meat against his beliefs to feed his sick mother, which was the most beautiful temple and at which the camera of course ran out of batteries; tomb complexes of old kings that were set up like summer palaces and used as such before death; pagodas and bridges etc - ALL of which we saw from the backs of two motorbikes the next day *** before leaving on the night bus to Hanoi.
Hanoi is busy and the old quarter is a maze in which we happily got lost. It never helped that the roads kept changing their names every couple of blocks for no good reason. We took a tour to Ha Long Bay, which involved a lot of doing nothing while cruising around on a nice junk, though we did spend a day on the island of Cat Ba and trekked up a mountain in the rain to get a misty view from the top. Ha Long Bay, and everything in it, was stunning. It was very hazy, which disappointed us at first, until we realised that it gave an wonderful layering perspective on the peaks rising out of the water. Photos have been posted - please enjoy.
* The stone jars are approximately 3000 years old, attributed to an ancient kingdom whose name i can't recall. They come in all sorts of sizes and shapes, and they aren't absolutely sure what they were used for, but our guide seemed pretty confident that they were used for brewing rice whiskey - lao lao - because in a field of hundreds of jars, there is only one stone lid. The thinking is that, as it only takes 2 weeks to make lao lao, a temporary covering of hide would do while a stone lid would be unnecessary and difficult to remove for such short term storage.
** We HAVE posted all our photos from Vietnam to the website, but even after hours of running recovering programs on his iRiver MP3 player, Alec didn't manage to get any of his music back intact.
*** I persist in referring to this tour as Hue in a Day.
Phonsavanh is an unassuming little Laos town that is on the map due to its proximity to the Plain of Jars * and because the old city was bombed by the Americans and Phonsavah had to move down the road to its current location. We have just spent a beautifully warm, sunny day driving through truly gorgeous countryside, coloured by the golden-greens of the ripening rice, to see the three main Jar sites and the surviving relics of the old city. Photos to be posted.**
The last weeks of Vietnam were typified by our last night; sitting on a street corner in Hanoi drink bia hoi (the local brewed light draught beer) at 2000 dong (~13 cents) a glass, talking rubbish with fellow travellers and an 83 year old Viet man who was an interpreter in the war.But perhaps i should try telling the tale forward, starting back at the historical town on Hoi An where I left you last...
The photos of Hoi An (http://picasaweb.google.com/astuartmuirk) will amply explain why we stayed so long in that beautiful town. Hue (pronounced 'hway'), next up the coast, was less beautiful but was surrounded by relics from when it was an Imperial city: a walled citadel in which traditional theatre was recreated; an arena where they fought tigers against elephants, rigged so the elephant would always win; the temple of compasion, named for a monk who bought fish and meat against his beliefs to feed his sick mother, which was the most beautiful temple and at which the camera of course ran out of batteries; tomb complexes of old kings that were set up like summer palaces and used as such before death; pagodas and bridges etc - ALL of which we saw from the backs of two motorbikes the next day *** before leaving on the night bus to Hanoi.
Hanoi is busy and the old quarter is a maze in which we happily got lost. It never helped that the roads kept changing their names every couple of blocks for no good reason. We took a tour to Ha Long Bay, which involved a lot of doing nothing while cruising around on a nice junk, though we did spend a day on the island of Cat Ba and trekked up a mountain in the rain to get a misty view from the top. Ha Long Bay, and everything in it, was stunning. It was very hazy, which disappointed us at first, until we realised that it gave an wonderful layering perspective on the peaks rising out of the water. Photos have been posted - please enjoy.
* The stone jars are approximately 3000 years old, attributed to an ancient kingdom whose name i can't recall. They come in all sorts of sizes and shapes, and they aren't absolutely sure what they were used for, but our guide seemed pretty confident that they were used for brewing rice whiskey - lao lao - because in a field of hundreds of jars, there is only one stone lid. The thinking is that, as it only takes 2 weeks to make lao lao, a temporary covering of hide would do while a stone lid would be unnecessary and difficult to remove for such short term storage.
** We HAVE posted all our photos from Vietnam to the website, but even after hours of running recovering programs on his iRiver MP3 player, Alec didn't manage to get any of his music back intact.
*** I persist in referring to this tour as Hue in a Day.