Da Lat

We were excited to leave Hoi An and get back to our normal traveling routine. Da Lat seemed like a good place to go, but we quickly discovered we could only get a room there for one night. We arrived just before two big Vietnamese holidays, Reunification Day (April 30th) and International Worker's Day (May 1st). That meant we could only stay about a day and a half, which was a little disappointing, but we still enjoyed our time there.

Our favorite new fruit we discovered on the trip is jackfruit, we we bought a great big slice and ate it for our lunch and dinner (it's a big fruit). We did end up getting a little sick of it by the end, but we knew that in less than a week we wouldn't be able to buy any more so it's good we got our fill.

The next day we did some real sightseeing. We went to the crazy house which is a series of Alice in Wonderland type structures and gardens. The woman who built it lives in the house which doubles as a hotel. It was fun to explore, stairs that went up, down, and all around. Leading you to the giraffe room, from roof to roof, or sometimes back where you started. It was a fun place to spend the morning.

Next we hiked over to the king's summer palace. Also an interesting place to visit, but not quite as grand as it sounds. Not at all like Buckingham Palace, or the palaces we visited in Thailand. This "palace" was very, very communist. It was communist in the sense that it was very simple. It served its function without an excess of adornments. Not built to impress, built to serve its purpose. To me the palace represented what communism should be, but wasn't. I would never expect to see a "palace" like this in Moscow and didn't expect to see one in Vietnam. But Vietnamese culture is very different, maybe its leaders were more serious about their own commitment to communism.

Sadly, that was it for Da Lat. We left that evening on a night bus for Saigon. Ugghh...another night bus. At least we could take comfort in the fact that we knew it would be the last night bus of the trip.

Hoi An

Hoi An's old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but that isn't really why people come to visit. They come for one reason and one reason only. That's the shopping. Everywhere you look, it's all clothing shops, tailors, shoe stores, and more. We went out to buy a loaf of bread and came back empty handed because literally every store is geared toward selling clothes to tourists. There's nothing else around. But there are good deals to be had in a place like this. Everything is custom made just for you. You can pick out any fabric or style you wish or you can even create your own design. They will replicate clothes you bring to them, make something from a picture, or even a sketch. It is truly every shopping lover's dream.

Usually, this is the sort of place we would avoid at all costs, but at this stage of the trip we're starting to think about returning home. We don't have many material things waiting for us, so it's a good chance to pick up some custom clothes at cheap prices before we make the trip.

We spent two overwhelming and exhausting days shopping. I picked up two suits, two ties, one pair of casual shoes, one pair of dress shoes, two pairs of pants, two pairs of shorts, and four pairs of boxers, most custom made, all for $170 (haggling was required). A custom fit really does make a difference too. The moment I tried on one of my new suits I realized that for my entire life I've been wearing clothes that don't really fit me. It was a big realization and an odd feeling, but that doesn't mean I'll be buying everything custom made from here on out. It did give me a new perspective on clothes though.

The people of Hoi An have had tourists coming here and buying clothes for a long time. The sad part of that is that everyone knows the drill. The locals put up with their town being overrun by foreigners and they make us what we want. We bring the money, buy lots of clothes, and pay the hotel bills. But the smiles are few. We aren't guests, we're customers. In a place like this, you have friends only as long as you keep shelling out the American dollars.

The fundamental truth we've found in all our travels is that people who stand to make money off you usually are not interested in being your friend. Sometimes they're not even interested in being friendly. They look at you and they don't see you, they see dollars. When they talk to you, they don't care about getting to know you, they only want to find out how they can squeeze another dollar out of you. Sometimes it really gets us down.

The good news is that there are exceptions and there are also many people who don't make their money off tourists. These people will treat you like a person. Many tourists spend their whole trip without talking to locals like this, but they're out there. We're lucky to have made some friends on our trip. We exchange e-mails regularly with a monk in Nepal, we have a letter waiting for us at home from a friend we made in India, and we will never forget the family we stayed with in Sri Lanka. The people we've met like this are really the ones who have made this trip worthwhile, much more so than what we've seen or done. For them, we are grateful.

Hue

We knew coming in that Vietnam would be more like Thailand and Malaysia than Cambodia and Laos. More touristed, more amenities, and more expensive. We crossed the border in our preferred manner. We took the local bus to the border, walked a few kilometers across the border, then negotiated with the same tourist bus that left from Savannahket for a lower price to take us the rest of the way. We were asked "How did you get here?" by a SE Asian traveler. Most tourists travel on the tourist buses even if they don't come from so far away, people often don't even know how to get around any other way.

Often the truth is neither do we, but between our past experience mixed with a significant amount of guesswork we're able to predict pretty well that we'll be able to get from here to there. Or more accurately, from here to somewhere else to I don't know where to how did we end up here, to there. But we get there. We each saved 20,000 kip by traveling our way. That's about $2.50 to you and a dinner in a nice restaurant to us.

It took the whole day to make the trip and we arrived in Hue in the evening. It was about what we expected. Higher standards than Laos and Cambodia for restaurants, hotels, and everything. Not just for us, but also for the Vietnamese. Everything is much greener now that we're on the coast and there are conical hats everywhere. We saw a few in other places, but it really is a Vietnamese thing.

So we got acquainted with the new types of food (fried rice and noodles are still the staple), did some walking around and sightseeing, some little shopping, and settled into the last major country of the trip.

Savannakhet

The day we traveled to Savannakhet was the last day of the Laotian New Year. So, in the continued spirit of the last few days, in every town or village we passed through we endured buckets of water being thrown on the bus. It got in through the windows and got us pretty wet, but we didn't have it nearly as bad as the bus driver. In parts of the world like this, bus drivers often drive with the door open for increased ventilation. This works pretty well most of the time, but on this day it meant the people with the buckets had a clear shot at him and they took advantage of it. Sometimes he'd be going along slowly and whoooosh! a big splash comes in and drenches him. Oh well, we all kept cool.

Savannakhet is a small town, smaller than Pakse, but bigger than Champassak. But you wouldn't be able to tell the size of the town if you saw the size of the party happening on the main street. Traffic was bumper to bumper and completely stopped. The street was full of trucks loaded with people, tailgates down. They were so stuffed that more than once we watched people falling out the back of the trucks. And of course, everyone had water. The people in the streets, the people in the trucks. At our last stops there were distinct groups of people celebrating and throwing water, here one group just blended into the next. There was music blaring and it was madness! We enjoyed the fun a little, but we were mostly partied out by this point. We went to our guest house and got some much needed rest.

Our main intent stopping in Savannakhet was to get our Vietnamese visas (last visas of the trip!), so the next morning we did that with surprisingly little difficulty. Our Laos visa took several days, our Vietnamese visa 10 minutes. I guess it all averages out. We spet the next few days seeing some of the minor sights like a dinosaur museum (many fossils have been found in the province) and various temples.

We also spent a great deal of time at the local bazaar. We're nearing the end of the trip and don't have so many material things waiting for us back home. So we're taking advantage of the good prices and buying clothes and things we'll need when we return to our old lifestyles. The only thing is that it's much more difficult for us to buy clothes than we expected. In the United States, I fit well into a medium sized shirt. In Laos I am an extra large and no one has extra large sized shirts. I feel like a giant whenever I try to shop. Female travelers be warned, unless you have iron clad self-esteem, don't go clothes shopping in Asia.