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Good Afternoon Vietnam!

Luckily for us, we bumped into an American girl, Meaghan,  we met in Ventiane in Savannakhet, and changed plans to get a better bus the following morning, instead of a slower overnight bus. Stopped at a roadkill restaurant, where they appeared to be selling skinned badgers and foxes. This was later made perfectly normal by the guy sitting next to me who had a good few duvet type things wrapped in plastic underneatyh various seats. When he reached into one and pulled out a net bag, with a 4-ft long, live, giant lizard in it, well, what else would you expect ... I reckon he had three of them altogether, and after bribbing the bus driver with 80,000kip and I think some cash for the border police, smuggled these beasts into Vietnam. We figure they were going to eat them .. although, god knows what else they could do ...

The eastwards journey was a gradual slope up to the border in the mountains. A grey mist hung over everything. Down towards the pacific on the other side f the Annamite mountains, there was more hills (less abrput mountains), We passed a good few rivers, all looked tlike they had plently of rain shorlty beforehand (maybe remanants of the typhoon). WE chaged buses in Dong Ha for the 75km trip south to Hue, dowm Route 1, the main North/South road. Flat, coastal landscape. Lots of fields full of water. Lots of motorbikes.

Vietnam factoids :

• Population of 80+ million people
• Country is a bit bigger than Italy and bit smaller than Japan
• Obviously, most people assocaite with Vietnam War - more on that later
• Flanked by China to the North, Loas and Cambodia to the west, Hanoi is the capital, in the North. Narrow, mountainous countryside south down to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) 1600km south.

Hue was the capital of Vietnam for 1000 years. It's famous for the Nguyen Dynasty who built three walled enclosures in a concentric citadel in the centre of Hue; with the forbidden purple city at the centre (most of it destroyed between natural causes and various wars). Also famous for the mausoleums that were built on the Perfume River to house the remains of the family - they ruled Vietnam for 150 years from 1802.

The Vietnamese are definitley a lot more confident than Laos-folk. Kind of remind me of Irish, as they're all up for a gag, and plenty of cute-hoors out there too. It's renound for people trying to extract as much cash form toursits as possible - and we've seen a fair bit in one day already! All are really friendly though - so far, so good!

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