Hue & Hoi An (aka shopper's paradise)

Hue

Hue is a nice little town. It's still rainy and cold. Share room with my german friend and have meals and good conversations about self development, etc. I have essentially turned into a traveling life couselor at this point. I do the city tour the next day. Giant citadel where the Vietnamese emporor used to live, complete with Eliphants is surprisingly impressive. Tombs; sound boring, but Vietnamese tombs are a whole forrest, complete with man made lakes and buildings all leading up to the actual tomb. Very impressive and tranquil. From the beginning some 21 year old Vietnamese girl that looked like she was 16 started testing her English on me, which quite soon turned into her desperately inviting me to come to her home village and her sending off her friends so I could sit with her. When she gave me her e-mail address she added that she thought that I'd forget her the next day to which I replied that I probably would. I didn't though, I sent her friendly e-mail a couple of days ago. I befriend and English 'bloke' and girl and go out to dinner with them.. then go home and go to dinner with them again. In hind sight I rather liked the girl, oh well.

Next day DMZ (demeliterized zone) tour. City tour was tiring, but DMZ tour starts at 6am and goes on till 7pm. Whole day, I'm completely wrecked AND tired. Really wanted to do this tour, since I've read about the war history and this is where most of the fighting took place. The sights didn't really help imagining what actually happened. We saw the rockpile, which used to be an American helicopter base, but now is just a mountain. We saw the Ho Chi Min trail, which is now a highway. We saw the Khe San combat base, which now is the sight of a small museum filled with more propoganda. Luckily Khe San base also had a Chinook and a Huey Helicopter, which at least was something tangible. At the end we go down the VC tunnels which was really impressive and interesting. They were civilian tunnels, but they went down really deep and were actually quite spacious, compared to the combat ones I've heard of. The whole area was covered in bomb craters. During the trip my main buddies were: a really friendly Vietnamese English teacher girl and a guy from Toronto who was born in Vietnam, but escaped when he was 4 and was now back visiting. At lunch they brought us to some crapy Hotel where there was a Vietnamese wedding in progress. The wedding people saw us observing their party and invited us to come in; all of a sudden our whole group went from the tranquility of the bus to being on stage at a wedding, drinking beer, singing karaoke and dancing (where I skip the drinking of course) and then we dance on out of there. At the end I was completely done with any kind of tour and swore not to do another one for at least 5 years. I had fun making stupid jokes all day though.

Hoi An

I go look for Jen who I'm planning to share a room with. The "hey you need moto-bike??, transport??, come into my shop!, you buy something" people are pretty annoying after the long bus ride and the long tour days before. I drag myself into the Hostel Jen is supposedly in and discover which room she is in, but the room doors don't have numbers. I must've open 10 random doors with pseudo naked people having dinner going "uhmm, can we help you?", until I stumble upon a room where I'm talking to one of the inhabitants when I hear "heyyy!!! is that Roger???!!!", turns out it is Anouk! That was quite unexpected. She takes me to Jen's room, which I share with her for the next 4 nights.

Shopper's paradise: my mom and sister would never leave this place.... even I bought shit I didn't intend to and I meditate on de-attaching from material goods

Hoi An is famous for taylor shops. The whole city is covered in them and they each sport the most amazing clothes known to man. Anything you can think of and you can produce a slightly accurate picture of, they will make and it is cheap, really cheap... and it is all made to fit your body to the very last inch. Girls cannot resist this place and all end up shipping at least 7 kgs worth of clothes back home. My mom and sister probably should never go to this place...

I knew I was getting a suit made, what I didn't know was that I was gonna get a coat to go with it and a leather jacket. I mean the coat with the suit was pretty rational still, I already had the idea to get one, since I can't do job interviews in my leather jacket back home. But then I go into a the leather jacket store just to look, which leads to looking through their catalogue, continues into inquiring about the price which leads to Jen asking how much it is if we both get one and then we suddenly are both getting jacket's made.... Jen's already got like 50 things, so we're wondering what's wrong with us after.. this only lasts till we see the results of our purchase, which are indeed quite amazing. Shipped all my shit off today and have been eating cheap meals since.

Beach Party
Go to beach party with Anouk, Emma (new French friend) and (as he is known) beautiful hair man; we sit on the beach after, fun fun fun.

Walking around Hoi An in a trance
Walk around with Jen a lot. It's weird, we walk around in a trance, not sure of what is happening to our time. We have cake once a day, since we found the best cake shop in Vietnam. Slowly we start to add more discipline to our routine: more meditation for me and yoga for Jen and our fixed reading session of the day. This chilled out regime seems to be very conductive to my meditation, leading to some good insights. I remember thinking repeatedly "I can't believe the world is actually like I'm discovering it is, but is is... everything I thought I knew about it, is not ACTUALLY real".