Hue

I'm currently in Hue, the Middle Kingdom. This is where the capital was located when Vietnam was ruled by royalty. Saw a couple of temples today...men were hella short as evidenced by the actual size statues. Visited the tomb of the last king. Pretty ornate stuff, man had an ego. My mom has a theory about the king. She thinks he was gay. The reason being that he was known to have several hundred wives but no children and his demeanor was flamboyant. :)

Sort of died on the plane and am slowly recovering.

Before I continue, I am going to regress a little. Came back from Ha Long Bay and it was quite lovely. We were able to have a huge ferry boat to ourselves and the people were very nice on the boat. There are villages floating in Ha Long Bay (land is too expensive) and we bought some seafood to cook on the boat for lunch. Pretty cool. Also, there are some natural caves in the area and we were able to walk in. Conservationists would cringe at the Asian take of displays. Very well lit with variuos colored lights to show off the natural grotto. However, I think that it somewhat erodes the natural beauty of the caves. It was a very different experience than the caves I visited in Tennessee where we weren't allowed to take pictures, lighting was low, etc.

We came back to Hanoi and did a couple of things. Some sightseeing, some souvenir shopping with our guide, Giang. Pretty cool dude. We got into a conversation about accents. Apparently, because our parents are from Hanoi and Saigon, they have "city" accents. Since it is old school, most of the locals can identify that my parents are Viet Kieu, overseas vietnamese. Our vietnamese confuses people because we interchange dialects of the Northern and Southern accents and people assume we are foreign born. Suprisingly, we received alot of compliments on our speaking skills...alot of Viet Kieu have come back and brought their kids. The norm is that the kids cannot speak the language at all. Such a shame to lose a generation....

We also visited my father's home town and the gravesites of my grandparents. In addition, we visited a smaller version of Ha Long Bay, Dinh rivers?? Instead of a bay in the sea, it is a small lake with similar rock formations. Very nice to canoe in the lake; however, the constant peddling detracted from the experience. I understand people need to make money selling these trinkets but it can be very irritating when you've repeatedly say no and trapped on the boat with them.