Back from Hoi An

Back in Hanoi now, and will fill you in on the rest of Hoi An and the train ride back (which has me swaying from side to side, even as sit in this desk chair) but first, this is the perfect way to end the trip.  I got in to Hanoi this morning around 5:00 am, picked up by the hotel, and my room is perfect!  Remember when I was almost going to stay at the Sofitel, but it was $200 + dollars?  This was the hotel I picked instead, for $75, about double what I paid everyplace else.  But the bed is so comfortable, the pillows are perfect, it's a suite, so it's really large, TV is at the right spot for watching from the bed, and for breakfast I had a bowl of pho in their charming (and free) breakfast room.  Great shower, third floor, back in the old hood.  It is as luxurious as I have had so far. And the weather is cool and drizzling outside...... Happy Day!   Happy Julie!

OK, back to Hoi An.  I decided on one of th
e days (they all blur together) to walk to the edges of the small map I had, torn from a guidebook.  I figured it would get me out of the main tourist area and it did.  It was a hot, humid day but that seemed OK.  I walked and walked, got to the edge of the map, made a turn, still on one of the map streets, and saw a nice little park in the distance, decide to walk to it, thinking I could just turn around and come back.  That would have been the wise choice.  I, of course, chose unwisely: I didn't turn around, I made another turn, left, then left, thinking I would just be back on the street at the top of the map.  Nope.  Making another unwise choice, I decided to just wander around a bit in the general direction of where I thought I wanted to go. HA!  Didn't work.  After another half hour, now very hot, sweat dripping off my forehead, I had no idea where I was.  I asked a few English speaking folks, they had no idea either because it WASN'T ON THE MAP!   At one point I saw a sign that seemed to be saying "now entering Hoi An" which was odd because I thought I was already in Hoi An.  Oh, the frustration.  The embarrassment. (Well, I would  have been embarrassed if someone else had been relying on my knowing the way, but that wasn't the case, obviously.)  

I walked some more and there was the river in front of me, but in my hot and befuddled state, I now doubted everything I should have known, like which way was north!  So I asked a guy in a restaurant who only laughed at me for a short while, and he pointed me in the right direction.  I walked another 15 minutes and there was the covered Japanese bridge!  I knew where I was all the time!  

By now I had been walking for close to two hours and I was really hot, my face was no doubt the color of the red shirt I was wearing, but I didn't care how creepy I looked,  I just popped into the Tam Tam Cafe and had a really cold beer, and it was the best beer I had had in many days.  

The next day I sort of retraced my steps to see where I went wrong, and had no trouble walking out of the town and back in.  It just takes practice. 

Hoi An is a nice town. The hotel I stayed at was on the main street, closest to the water, and the most commercial, tourist-wise.  Once you got a block or two off that street, things were a little less crazy. There are some nice building, temples, cafes, trees, flowers, and it was pleasant. It's also really nice at night, when the river is lit by lights. There are women and girls selling small floating votives, in paper cartons sort of like chinese food cartons only shorter and with no tops.  For a small fee you can get one and set it adrift on the river. I suppose it has some good luck benefit or is an homage to ancestors, I don't know because I didn't buy one, just watched them floating around.  The shopkeepers calm down a little bit at night as well, so no one followed me with a tray of pig brains to see if I was sure I didn't want to buy some. (Exaggerating, of course.)

I saw all the things you were supposed to see and some things off the beaten path. Supposedly, ten years ago it was much simpler. Today it is a tourist mecca, people from all over wandering around. I read that what made it a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999 has almost vanished.  I guess it was quaint and colonial. During the war it managed to survive unscathed, one of the few cities that did, and thus the World Heritage designation.  Now it is on everyone's list to visit and everyone does.  It makes me worry about other small towns in SE Asia: will motorbikes and tourists inundated them, too, eventually?  Will there be any small towns left that retain characteristics of their origins?  Will even the tribes in the hills eventually be on the tourist path?  If the floating villages in Halong Bay have cell service and internet service, how long can anyone maintain some sense of integrity about their past?  That's not to say that cell service and internet connectivity negate the past, but it's one step towards globalization, if even in a small way.

But maybe I am wrong.  Maybe being connected to the world will make it clear to those tribes and those small villages that they have something worth saving, something too valuable to trade for tourist dollars.  And who am I to say that whatever that "something" is, it's better for them than the influx of money?  I see things from the Western perspective, of course, and I see value in the "old ways" but maybe the people who live those old ways don't see it the same way.  

Ah, such deep, philosophical questions.

On a lesser level of discourse, the train ride from Hoi An to Hanoi was long.  14 hours.  The first two hours were beautiful:  graceful, lush green hills and waterfalls on one side, the ocean on the other. I had a 4 person sleeper car to myself.  Then it got dark and there was nothing to see, just now and then a lit-up inside of a small house near the train tracks as we zipped by.  For 7 hours I had the car to myself, which was fine.  Then one Vietnamese gentleman got on and promptly curled up and went to sleep.  Fine.  At 9:30 I turned the Kindle off and tried to sleep.  Tried and failed.  Got up and stood at the window in the dark corridor for a while.  Went back to "bed" around 10:30, only to be awakened at midnight by a guy climbing into the bunk above me.  Fine.  Basically drifted off and on until 4:00 am.  It was a fine ride, although the trains are rather grungy and you want to use the toilets as seldom as possible.  
The main thing is that a train ride of 14 hours is BORING when it's just you.  No one to talk to, no one to joke with, no one to play cards with, or share cookies, or peanuts or complaints with.  Ah, the life of the solitary traveler.  I actually wished there had been an English speaking person, a stranger, in the cabin with me, and I am usually the one who wants to be alone.  It must be a sign that I have had enough alone time.

So this is my last day in Hanoi, I need to go out and spend some of these dong that are worthless anywhere else.  Souvenirs! Stocking stuffers!  What shall I buy!  Oh, commerce calls me..... plus I need to go do the walk around the lake, see if I can get nabbed by Chatty Postcard Guy again.  

will report in later.