VN10 - Headed North

 VN10 - Headed north

This morning, we woke up too early (don't we always) for breakfast. Apparently it's important I wake up and we all go to breakfast together, even though we all know I'll be done in 10 minutes while it takes them an hour to raid the bar. (The eat like people who have known true hunger, which they very well may have. 5 courses at any buffet, a single plate when you have to pay for it, and never skipping a meal). 

That meal survived, we went to one of the kings tombs. Each king has an entire burial complex, designed while they were alive, even though many of them aren't buried there. That would be too large a clue for the graverobbers - instead they were buried elsewhere, unmarked, and with such secrecy the gravediggers were often executed to assure their silence.  This king was different, however, and instead designed his entire tomb complex so that it would collapse on anyone foolish enough to attempt a robbery, and let everyone know. As you may be able to guess by the level of detail, our tourguide was back with us today!

The complex itself was on the side of a hill, because of fung-shui. And stairs, they love their steps. Built with french materials and techniques (meaning a lot of concrete, mostly), it featured buddhist, indian, and christian motifs in an attempt to bring unity or something.  The inside was far more impressive than the outside, with extensive mosaic work covering nearly every surface except for the ceiling. The ceiling was painted by a master, who insisted on using his feet. He claimed he needed the distance to get the scaling and perspective right, and this flex impressed the king so much he won the job. A few quick passes with the drone (Nothing amazing, I still need practice) and we wrapped it up and headed back down all those stairs.

Our second stop was another instagram-trap, the incense store! Really, the incense district, because they have instagram trapping down to a science so they can capture entire busloads of asians at once. We tried our hand at the traditional technique of rolling incense, Lou got pictures in the stacks of colored sticks (which form the core of the incense), and I stalked the cat sitting on an empty insta-trap chair. If insta-traps all featured cats I'd like them way more.  I pay $4 for some lemongrass incense, which is very much a tourist-tax... but it's hard to be angry about $4. 

Right next to the incense was another tomb / burial complex, this time for the 4th king. He had to design the entire complex himself, since he died childless (a symptom of the smallpox that afflicted him in his youth.) He even wrote his own epitaph, <link>.  This complex was much larger, and featured a manmade lake at the center surrounded by tombs, temples, the whole 9 yards, however it was not as ornate.   It was also filled with schoolchildren, apparently one of the highschools from further up north had a field-trip that day... and these highschoolers couldn't stop staring at me. Apparently I look a lot like another traveler (tall white dude with long hair) who rented a car, drove deep into the backwaters of Vietnam, and got hopelessly lost. He had to call the car-rental agency for a rescue, which went viral and ended up with me taking selfies with the kids (who were all very polite and had decent (albeit limited) english. 

Lou wanted some drone-shots here too... but right as we were about to take off, security told us it wasn't allowed. So we did what we had to. Packed it up, walked across the grounds to the far gate, and took off there! Despite being somewhat under the canopy I got it out and up pretty easily, took the drone shots from enough altitude that it wasn't too obvious, and then swung it back in, tucking under the branches and landing right in front of the gate. (I'm getting better! Drones are so fun - especially in more-relaxed countries).

The last event at the tomb was another insta-trap, this time down on the lake, as lou got probably 100 photos from our tour-guide (who we should remember, only studied for her guide-certification so she didn't have to pay to do photoshoots for tourists.). This was, obviously, quite boring until Lou said she needed more fish, so I grabbed one of the emergency granola bars (which are entirely untouched, since they stuff me with food any chance they get), and started throwing crumbs whereever I thought would fill in the picture. Any excuse to throw food at fish, especially gorgeous koi. 

From there we hit a local market, where we stopped at a desert stall. There were 16? Different pots and bowls of various semiliquids, from stewed fruits to tapioca bowls to puddings and syrups in all different colors... You would yell at the woman behind the counter, and she would ladle these concoctions into a glass (if you were eating there) or a plastic bag (to go), mixing half a dozen into one delicious? goo.  Hard pass. Not a single one looked appetizing, let alone an admixturation of mushy diabetes. Thankfully, lunch wasn't there, but at a restaurant down the street. Fish, rice, peppers, pork... real food, and nobody yelled at us.

Then we swung by the hotel to pick up our bags and headed back over to the fort, where our tourguide showed us the gatehouse on the 50,000vnd bill! We got back into the car, pulled away, and just like that our tourguide was gone, vanished where we found her, and we were on our own (with the driver, who asks me to let you know is excellent. And he is, so if you're going to be in Da Nang look him up <LINK>.  

From here we headed north. Far north. How far? I'm not sure, I was just told "long drive". Thankfully, we broke it up with a few stops. The first was Our Lady of Da Vang - standard apparation of the Virgin Mary story, so they built a church there... They're currently in the process of tearing down that church and building a megachurch, full on cathedral size, but in an interesting mix of eastern and christian design language. This megachurch is very much still under construction, but you can walk right in... so we did.  And there was a sketchy stairwell with no railings headed up, and you can't drop me in an construction site and expect me not to roof it... so I gave it a shot! Unfortunately it only went to the balcony level, and (after checking for alarms) the door to the extreme upper regions was locked.

Then we saw the rest of the site, mass was in session in one of the side buildings - it was novel to hear the latin intonation style in an entirely different language, and saw the industrial-scale holy-water setup. But all in all not much happening and a pretty quick stop.

Rice patties, rice patties everywhere. <Maybe put in an aside about the life-cycle of a rice patty once I learn it)

Even further north, we saw a memorial to the fallen in the war with the french. Basically a park, even more boring, and an even quicker stop.

I apparently fell asleep, because I woke as we pulled off the side of the highway at the 77th parallel (CHECK), the river where the north-south divide was officially set. Statues and flags on both sides (especially the North, since, well, you know...) We walked out the somewhat-rickety historic bridge to the line and started hearing a voice on the loudspeaker. I thought it was classic propaganda being played for historic effect, but then the dude coughed during a long pause. Turns out it was a security guard telling us we weren't allowed to take pictures on the bridge without paying for a ticket to the museum first. Didn't stop me, since I don't speak VN, but we headed back to the car and continued down the highway. 

Gas dictated the next stop, and we headed out into the wastelands. This was miles and miles of sand dunes, scrub pines, and windmills peaking through the mists. The sun set on this wasteland and we continued north, to dinner. We only got a little lost once the planned dinner location was closed, but a few cuts down the back roads through some --slums-- neighborhoods, and we were back headed north on the final leg.

Around 8pm, we drove past some glowing letters floating in the darkness, and entered a town where they had advertistements in English. After seeing almost no english for hours, suddenly most the advertisements had english on them. Then we started seeing white people, for the first time since Hue (LETTERS). We had arrived in what is clearly a backpacker town.... and then we pulled into our location, which is a fancy hostel. We have a room, for the five of us. I thought we were done with one-room living, but here we are. Thankfully a bit larger, but still, only three beds, so apparently I'm sleeping with grandpa since the driver is with us tonight. Small mercies: The driver showed grandpa how to work the volume buttons on his phone, so tiktok is only half volume tonight. But so much closer.

This time I did refuse Lou's invitation to go out, so she took off with the driver. I'm taking this early night to hopefully catch up on blogs. We'll see. Today down, two days to do.