Central Vietnam - Hoi An & Hue

Hoi An was a real highlight on my trip! It is a lovley small town, with old beautiful buildings, the countryside with rice paddies and nice beaches...and last but not least a great boulangerie (Cargo Club), where I enjoyed some espressos and really, really good cakes. ;-) Lucky as I was, I've been there right at full moon, where a festival takes place every month. It was a beautiful scenery, most of the electricity was turned off around the river and everything was just illuminated by candles and laterns. It is really worth spending some time in this town linger around through the streets! My Son is not that far from here, a temple site of the Cham Dynasty, like Hoi An also a World Heritage site. Well, if you've seen Angkor every other temple is 'ok', but nonetheless it's worth a trip. :-)

Danang, the main port of the region, is not far and easily reachable by motorbike. The town itself is not that worth visiting, but there's a nice museum with the world's largest collection of Cham artefacts. And cruising the hills around the city is very enjoyable, granting some breathtaking views of the town and beach area till you reach Linh Ung, a collosal new Buddha statue that looks south to Danang.

Hue, also a World Heritage site, was once the capital of a Vietnamese empire, with a large Citadel, the former palace of the emperors. There is not much left of the main buildings, they were destroyed during the American war. But there are still some buildings left and you can get a glimpse of how it must have looked like. As everywhere in Vietnam, also in the area around Hue you find remnants of the last war, e.g. some tunnels where the locals hid to escape the bombings. But if you don't see them you won't miss anything... :-)

Again, here you find some pictures... Enjoy!
:-)
Best wishes,
Rainer

hills and beaches...

After the heat of Cambodia it was sooo refreshing to come to Dalat in the central highlands.... ok, a little bit too refreshing, it rained very hard and finding a room swimming through the streets was a little challenge... ;-)
Dalat is a really lovely town, I enjoyed driving through the countryside exploring waterfalls, pagodas, weird houses and - the valley of love. That's something like a "Love Theme Park", a strange experience, but I liked to watch the locals posing at these sculpures taking pictures..and so did I. ;-)
After some rainy days I was searching for sun again and headed towards Nha Trang. The beach there is really beautiful and if you like to meet hordes of Russians, Australians and British then go there. :-)
Overall, there was not that much to see... take a look at the best pictures and enjoy the hills and the sunny beach... :-)

Rainer

temple hopping in Cambodia...

Although I'm supposed to travel Vietnam, Cambodia was too near to miss out the famous temples of Angkor... :-)
So, after a few hours by speed boat I reached Phnom Penh and got there in touch with the younger history of Cambodia when visiting the Killing Fields and the Genocide museum. It's hard to explain what had happend in the years of the Khmer Rouge doctrine... it must have been terrible. Almost every Cambodian family had to suffer losses...

Angkor Wat!!! Wow! I was so looking forward to this place! After seven hours by bus from Phnom Penh you're in the middle of the eighth wonder of the world. And I think I can say it right now, it's probably the highlight of my Vietnam trip (Ooops... ;-))...

Angkor, as I experienced it:

• Temples! Lots of them! I always mixed up the names, but finally I managed to visit a whole bunch of them, at least all the major and big ones. :-)
• Beautiful! The temples where amazing beautiful! Angkor Wat itself with awsome stone carvings, others with wonderful big stone heads, others utterly subsumed by the jungle giving the ultimate Indiana Jones feeling....
•  Touristy! :-( That's the bad part of it all, the whole site looked more like a big Theme Park and not like a historical site anymore... This at first dissapointed me so that I couldn't enjoy the experince that much in the beginning... 
• Beng Mealea! For god sake I found this temple off the beaten track. 65km away from Angkor, almost unvisited by tourists, huge and in the middle of the jungle! Jippiiieee! :-D :-D That's what I was looking for!!!
• Siem Reap, the town beside Angkor, turns at night to a party zone, and you can get seriously drunk there... ;-)
• Hot! It was so hot and humid, I was sweating like crazy...
• ATMs just give US-Dollar!?!?! Everything is paid and quoted in US-Dollar, they barely accept their own currency...!

Now, if you like, you can follow me to the temples again....see you there!! :-)
Rainer