Hue :: 12/13

When I got to Hoi An four days ago, I had a few pants and a few t-shirts tucked neatly into my backpack. Now, after three nights in a place where the words "you buy something" haunt you in your sleep, I still have my pants and t-shirts, but I also have, tucked neatly into a NEW bag, two suits, three dress shirts, a leather jacket, and three pairs of shoes. Seriously. What the hell just happened?

Hoi An, for all it's old world charm, is nothing more than a tourist trap. Custom tailor shops line the streets, and I failed to meet even one person who didn't have something made. I kid you not, I met one girl who purchased 13 pairs of shoes. The post office is open all day, every day.

Besides the tailor shops, the city is flooded by merchants selling the exact same things at the exact same prices with the exact same sales pitch: "Sir, you buy something?"

But the narrow streets were quite beautiful, the nightlife is quality, and the beach even had a gentle peace about it, discovered on the designated no-more-buying-shit day, when Nathan and I rode bicycles to the water, set up the hammocks, and wasted away an entire afternoon listening to the sound of crashing waves. "Sir, you buy something?"

And a little of that, too.

After Hoi An, we took a bus to Hue, a bustling city along the Perfume River. There are about five universities here, and the youth adds energy to the night. From the balcony of the DMZ Bar, we could watch the main street below, and I noticed that the bikes were nicer, the clothes were fancier, and the streets were cleaner than other places we had seen in Vietnam. The market sucks, but it still seems like a very livable city. The Citadel, which we toured this morning, was also quite impressive. But not as impressive as Hue Beer... the best lager we've found so far in the country.

Now, as I write this, we are waiting for a 2pm bus to Da Nang where we will make like American GIs and chill out for a night on China Beach. We understand that there's nothing much to do in Da Nang, but we have to be there for an early morning flight to Saigon in the morning. So, we'll get up early, hopefully watch the sun rise over the South China Sea, and then get on a scary metal tube flying south.

We have some rather ambitious plans for Saigon, so we'll see how that goes. But as we near the end of the trip, we're moving full steam ahead toward the finish line where I, no doubt, expected to be greeted with a friendly Vietnamese face at the airport terminal.

"You buy something?"