Hue Day 2

I got up in time for an 8:00 boat ride down the Perfume River to see some tombs and pagodas that lay a bit outside of the city. The people coming to pick me up were late, so I actually got there around 8:40, just when people on the boat were starting to complain about the boat leaving late. It was hot on the boat until it started moving, and then the breeze from the river was very cool and nice.

Emily and Sam from the bus happened to be on the same boat, so I spent most of the day with them. Another new set of friends, another new set of lies. Oh, how good I'm getting. This time, I was nineteen years old, going to Williams (a school I know something about but it's likely they haven't heard of) and didn't know what my major was. What classes are you taking? Oh, a little bit of everything. I explained how the American college system and liberal arts education worked, which seemed to mystify them – apparently in British schools you really only study one subject your whole way through.

We saw the Thien Mu pagoda – on a hillside overlooking the river, with a large, octagonal tower and then temples and gardens stretching back for a long way. Monks actually live and work there and seem to be operating a school. I wonder how they feel about tourists tromping all over their home every day. The pagoda also had on display the car that Thich Quang Duc drove in to the site where he committed self-immolation. They had a picture.

We also went to see some of the royal tombs, which were incredibly beautiful. The emperors actually spent time at their tombs while they were still alive, using them as quiet places to relax and compose poetry and whatnot. The tombs take up a lot of space because there are many buildings involved – the actual tomb, temples, tombs for mothers and wives and children, a courtyard for ceremonies, and ponds and moats and pathways. Extremely beautiful, extremely peaceful. Not bad for a final resting place. It makes the Egyptian pyramids seem positively tacky in comparison. They just seem to be saying, look how much power I commanded while I was alive, that I could force slaves to build this for me. Just big blocks of stone – power, blunt force, indestructibility.

It makes me wonder about the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh's body is kept in a large, imposing, stone block of a building. Just cold, hard stone. That seems to be the message the Vietnamese Communists are sending about HCM and what he represents. There's no grace there, no consideration about giving him a beautiful, peaceful place to put his soul at rest (never mind the fact that he himself wanted to be cremated.) There's just a bold, blunt statement by the Communist party.

When we got back on the boat to return, I was getting anxious, because it was three o'clock and I was told to be at the travel agency to catch the bus at five-thirty. Our guide assured me that it would only take two to two and a half hours to get back (!) and I spent those two hours hoping and praying. We hit the dock at five on the nose, I ran to the hotel, got my backpack, ran to the travel agency, and got there, sweating and gross, at 5:18. Go me.

The bus back to Hanoi was very frustrating. For some reason, they wouldn't let me sleep on the bottom bunk. I don't know. So it was even more difficult to find a comfortable position up top when I was always terrified I was going to fall off. I could barely get any sleep. The only redeeming factor was the movie they played – this crazy Chinese Kung Fu movie about Mo Kei trying to avenge his parents' deaths and taking control of the Ming Sect, set in a crazy fake Ancient Chinese time. There's the running theme throughout that you cannot trust a woman, except of course Siu Chiu, who's adorable and lovely and Mo Kei falls in love with. She says she's a maid, but I think there's something she isn't telling us, because she was locked in unbreakable chains by Mo Kei's grandfather, and she knows all these crazy secrets, apparently because someone “told” them to her. Right. Then there's No Mercy, some sort of fighting Buddhist nun with a crazy sword, and whenever she shows up, everyone says, “Damn nun!”

The quality of the movie was terribly, so a lot of the time it was hard to tell what was going on. All the female characters keep the same elaborate hairstyles the whole movie, though, and they always look perfect even after being in battle, so it makes it very easy to identify female characters. All the old men have the same crazy long white beards, eyebrows, and mustaches, so that's a bit more difficult. The problem was that the credits rolled without anything being resolved, so I assume this is the first part of the series. I need to find out what it is and watch the rest of it. It's so crazy but Mo Kei and Siu Chiu are so cute.

The bus dropped us off in Middle-of-Nowhere, Hanoi, so I took an overpriced motorcycle ride back to Peace House, where the lovely man didn't even see fit to give me correct change, so there you go. I was very annoyed and discouraged, especially by the fact that there wasn't any water, so I had to use the spare water in a big plastic barrel to wash myself. It turned out not being too bad, because the water was the perfect temperature to cool down with but not freeze, and it's always refreshing to dump a big plastic saucepan-full of water over your head when you're a bit upset. Clean, dry clothes, a fan, and everything is all right. There's no internet either, so later, I'm going to head into Hanoi, stop at a restaurant with Wifi, get a nice lunch, post this, post some pictures, check up on things on the home front, and then go wander and look for some last-minute gifts for people. Writing this has calmed me down and I feel better. So now I think I'll take a nap. Good bye.