Train from Da Nang to Hue

I know you would think that we would NOT ride the Vietnamese trains after the last experience. But we decided to take the train from Da Nang to Hue; this journey is only three hours and goes along the Vietnamese coast, and really has spectacular scenery.

We arrived at the station early; I wanted to take a few photos of the train. The doors opened to the platform for a North to South train and I went out and started to photograph, always vigilant for guards saying No Photos. I walked to the end of the yard and back.

Yes, it is a government run train, there were many people standing around supervising. 

When I returned to the doors that I had come out of, they were locked and there was no one around! Hummm, I know the door will open when our train is called but I would like to go back inside and sit down. I was looking around and a vendor pointed to a door down the tracks a little, it was a small shop and inside there was a door into the waiting room.

We boarded the train about noon; watching vendors up and down the station sell everything from treats for the ride to gifts for relatives.

The seats were the same, way too small but I knew it was only a short journey. The scenery was spectacular. The photos were taken through rather dirty windows. The coast was beautiful, we were traveling along a single track that was at times perched on the edge of the hills.

The train descended and we rode past several bays where fish were being raised.

This train journey was ok, but we still decided to fly to Hanoi.

Sanitary conditions – not really

While walking though the Kandal market looking for a particular breakfast dish, noodle soup with green sauce, I must have seen 20 other things for breakfast but not what I was looking for.

I was getting hot and tired and turned toward an exit, along the narrow aisles I saw a young child moving chairs around for customers. This vendor happened to have what I was looking for; I looked at the conditions of the stall, and decided that the sanitary conditions were below my very low standards. I know it is hard to believe that I have standards after living in Cambodia for over a year, I do, they are very low but this stall did not measure up.

A little further on, I watched a boy back his moto out of the market, just about knocking over a person and a vendor's stand. As I made it to the street there was a vendor selling what I was looking for. She was dishing up from one of the pots on her bamboo yoke. I looked at this arrangement, not seeing a seat and the conditions of the water she was using to wash the dishes, I again decided to pass.

 I went home without breakfast.

Fishing village Duy Hai

Anita and I signed up for a sunrise photographic tour of Duy Hai, a small fishing village, with Etienne Bossot of Hoi An Photo Tours. We were picked up before sunrise, on the ferry just about the time the sun came over the horizon. The boat ride was smooth and short. The photo below is later ferry, not ours.

Etienne was a very good leader, he gave instruction to those who asked for it and had his assistant David lead the rest of us to the most promising areas for photos.
Duy Hai is a village of about 2,000 people at the mouth of the Thu Bon river who's livelihood is based on catching and processing fish to be shipped to China.
Conical hats are an iconic image of Vietnam; I never had any idea how hard it is to photograph a conical hat. Because of the shape, they are almost always reflecting sunlight and therefore burned out to white. How then do I create a portrait of someone wearing a conical hat without having the hat overpower the face? After some trial and error, I came up with the solution, you shoot from below, get the face and the underside of the hat. In the portrait below shooting from below worked, unfortunately, the sky did not cooperate.

There were two other items that caught my attention other than portraits, coracles (the round boats) and

fish processing plant and drying process.

Lanterns

Lanterns must come from the Chinese influence, I saw two types of lanterns in Hoi An; decorative hanging and floating lanterns.

Lanterns decorate the modern bridge across the Thu Bon river, and many places in town.

There are numerous shops making and selling lanterns.

Every evening as the sun sets several floating lantern sellers congregate next to the river. You can purchase a lantern and set afloat downstream. Unfortunately there were never enough floating down stream to make a photo.

Old bridge in Hoi An

There is an old bridge in the old city, it is not large but the architecture and details are worthy of a visit.

For details of the bridge, click here.

The bridge spans a small canal that flows into Thu Bon River.

Looking onto the bridge from the old town.

Pagoda in the bridge.

Looking onto the bridge at night

Hoi An

The train stopped in Da Nang, we knew it was only a shot bus ride to our destination Hoi An. After Saigon we were weary of taxi's right outside the station. We were standing looking around getting our bearings and a man approached us and four more foreigners, all of were looking for the bus station. He was a minivan driver, he had to pay to park his van at the station but it was a block away and he would take all of us to Hoi An for a reasonable price. We all agreed and off we went. This ride would be about the same price as the bus and shorter.

The ride to the edge of Hoi An's old city was about 30 minutes; it was about a 15 minute walk to the hotel. As we crossed the bridge over the river that separates the old town from the new town, we were set upon by two professional hustlers. I took this photo and then the requests for money started. We hurried along to our hotel.

Anita would be in a class tomorrow from Tranh Diem Vy at Morning Glory Cooking School, we decided to go to the restaurant for dinner. Dinner was a great start to the Morning Glory experience, Anita and I were fighting over the stuffed squid it was so good.

After dinner we walked around the riverside area of the old town. There are several beautiful old French colonial buildings.

Vietnamese trains

Anita and I like train travel and the web site The Man in Seat Sixty-One had some very good things to say about Vietnamese trains. Our plan was to take the train from Saigon to Hanoi with intermediate stops.

The web site said you needed to book early, it was certainly right. I tried to book a soft sleeper from Saigon the Da Nang four days in advance and they were all booked. There were two top bunks available in a hard sleeper, I decided that we would take soft seats for this stretch of the journey.

We boarded the train about 23:00 and headed into the night, I soon learned that soft seat is not an accurate name, they are not soft and they are very short. I'm six feet tall and these seats are made from someone about 4 and a half feet tall. If I pushed back in the seat my head was a foot above the headrest. The other end was also a bit of a problem; my knees were in the back to the seat in front of me.

This was not a problem for the lady in the seat ahead of me, she gave her seat to her son and she curled up on the floor. I gave that a lot of thought but I decided against it.

It was a long night, the lights stayed on until about 04:00. I have been known to sleep in all conditions; this was a real challenge even for me.

There was an advantage on the train over the buses in Cambodia, the TV screen volume was not very loud.

During the morning part of the journey I walked around and looked at the soft sleepers. Another misnomer, hard rack would be more like it. The base of the bunk was metal with a 1/2 inch mattress on it.

There were other things that The Man In Seat 61 said that were not true on the trains we traveled on, leading me to believe that he has never been on a Vietnamese train.

Rainy season sort of in Cambodia

This year the dry season ended a month or more early and the rainy season has sort of started. We have been having short blasts of rain every few days. When the rainy season decides to really settle in, this will be a daily occurrence.

If you have ever lived in a tropical area, you know what real rain can be. In about 15 minutes the street has filled with water. Part of that is due to a large volume of rain and the other is people plug the drains to prevent the smell from coming out during the dry season.

My kitchen is on the west side of the building, and my small window has a tendency to let in rain when there is a wind from the west. Next to the window, decorative ventilation holes in the wall let cool air in and hot air out. But they also let in water when there is a west wind. I had the opportunity to mop the kitchen floor this afternoon because with the rain there was a west wind.

Pho Vietnamese noodle soup

Pho is a national dish in Vietnam and is Vietnamese noodle soup, usually served with beef or chicken. The soup includes noodles made from rice and is often served with Vietnamese basil, lime, bean sprouts that are added to the soup by the diner. One of our goals was to try this meal. Guide books and the doorman at out hotel pointed us to one of the many PHO 24 restaurants in Saigon, "this one has the best pho in the city".

Traditional Pho is normally served with beef or chicken but at PHO 24 there are many options; Anita had a deer-in-the-headlights look when presented with all of the options. It was very helpful to have pictures of everything.

Pho comes with vegetables that can be added to the soup

It was great!

Wandering around Saigon’s ChinaTown

After visiting several pagodas, Anita and I happened on one of the numerous street market, which was very much like a street market in Cambodia, vendors hiding from the intense sun under huge umbrellas.

There was the standard sleeping vendor

Fish and fruit vendors

People making snacks, we stopped to watch a young lady make small white balls coated with a green sticky covering. Of course none of us spoke the others language so we do not know what it was called or contained. We watched as the young lady carefully cooked the green sticky covering on a banana leaf grill, yes the grill was a banana leaf stretched over a dish of hot water with a heat source below it.

To me the snack did not have any flavor but it was fun to watch her make them.

Saigon Chinatown pagoda

Pagodas in Saigon appear to be just for worship, as compared to in Cambodia where they house monks and schools. There were several pagodas listed in the guide book and we visited three. The temples are actively used for worship, we saw numerous people making offerings and praying.

Each pagoda had a large number of places people could light incense and in some there were large sticks and huge coils burning. Smoke from the incense was a great photographic topic but very hard to capture well.

Decorations in the pagodas were very detailed and done in the most part with bright colors. In Quan Am Pagoda there are two sections and between them there is an outside fountain.