Bound to happen

My liberal ways with ice and random bits of fresh vegetables finally caught up with me in Hue. My solo day ended with me scurrying back to the hotel room after dinner (no gory details, I promise). After I crawled into bed and waited for Huckleberry to return, I started to realize that I had a fever. Once again, traveling with a horde of doctors packing their own private pharmacies came to my rescue: the next morning, one of them produced a packet of antibiotics, which I have been taking religiously since then.

 

I spent all day Sunday in the hotel room working my way back to health. The morning had its rough moments, but mostly Huckleberry and I watched tv and napped the day away. At some point in the afternoon, we ventured out for a walk around the block. Well, I think we intended to go further, but by the time we’d browsed a couple of shops, and fended off more than a few shopkeepers, I’d had enough. That evening, I was craving some comfort food, so Huckleberry brought a take-out pizza back to the room for dinner. Not sure it was the best thing for me, but it didn’t seem to hurt.

 

On Monday, we started to get back into the groove. We spent the morning visiting Huckleberry’s parent’s repsective villages near Hue. I’ll have to write another post about that later, but the villages aren’t places they lived for any significant periods of time, though both lived in the villages for short periods of time circa 1945, when WWII and the French made living in Hue too dangerous for most. Rather, these are the villages where their families have ancestor worship houses, which is what we visited. Later in the afternoon, after a rest in the hotel room, Huckleberry and I ventured out to the Dong Ba market and then sat at an outdoor cafe along the Perfume River, chatting and looking over photos…and then laughing about the giant dead rat I noticed in the dirt a few feet from our table. After we moved to a new table, two cafe staff came over to bury the rat.

 

Today, we headed back to Saigon, where the motorbikes continue to mesmerize me. I could sit for hours watching them go by, amazing over what people in Saigon manage to transport on their scooters. Tomorrow, Huckleberry and I will do a one-day tour of the Mekong Delta–My Tho and Ben Tre. It’s much shorter than we would have liked, but we stayed in Hue for longer than we’d planned. On Thursday, we head to Cambodia for a quick (3 days, I think) tour of Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Ankor Wat. We’ll be back with Huckleberry’s family for that trip.

 

From there, we part ways with the rest of Huckleberry’s family and fly directly to Hanoi; we’ll be on our own in the north for the rest of our stay. We’re planning on spending ~5 in Sapa and using that as a base for exploring the smaller villages in the area. We also want to do a two-day tour of Ha Long Bay (staying overnight on a boat and doing some kayaking). And perhaps a visit to Haiphong, which Lonely Planet claims is what Hanoi was like 10 years ago. In between these trips, we’ll likely spend a day or so in Hanoi, exploring the city in installments…or just sitting in cafes drinking ca phe without the ice.