South of Da Nang is Hoi An, a great resort town.  Our hotel for our 2 night stay was near the Old Town Historical area which abounds in restaurants, bars, tourist shops, & tailors (over 400) that can make your custom clothes & shoes in just a few hours.

The historical district is decorated in bright lights, lanterns and has numerous street vendors.  The district is separated by a river and you can buy floating candle boxes to bring you good luck.  There is a Chinese as well as a Japanese section.  The architecture is influenced by these two groups as well as the French.  There were the usual temples & historical houses within the district.

The restaurants are great and the street life at night is never ending.  During the day it was nice to relax by the pool.

We moved south by plane on Thursday and began a tour of Hue & the city of Da Nang.  We are stayed in Hoi An for 2 days, a resort city south of Da Nang.

Hue is a relatively small city on two rivers 300 km south of Hanoi.  It is most known as the capital of the last king of Vietnam.  The historical sites include his palace and related grounds that are being slowly restored after being destroyed during the Vietnam war.  His grave is also grandiose and was mostly completed before he died.

It is interesting that we saw many more pictures of Uncle Ho on public buildings in Hue than in the north.  Hue is in the former South Vietnam where Uncle Ho was not as well accepted. As we sat on the rooftop bar of our hotel, we were entertained by Vietnamese, US & French songs from a very loud sound system at Hue’s city hall. You could clearly hear the music a mile away.

The drive to Da Nang is beautiful as it goes over one of the highest Vietnamese mountain passes with views of both Hue in the north and the modern (and obviously re-built) city of Da Nang in the south.

The marble mountains south of Da Nang consist of 5 small mountains whose fruits caused farmers to turn to higher earning careers in sculpture.  The number of carved Buddhas, animals and other figures (in all sizes) is amazing.  A cave has been transformed with images of Hell.

After our 9 hour overnight train ride back from Sa Pa, we drove the 4 hours for our 2 day cruise on Halong Bay.  It is a one of the 7 wonders of the modern world and quite amazing even in the rain & cloudy weather.  There are almost 2000 islands in the Bay.  Pictures don’t do it justice.

Kayaking was great and Jodilyn (our Trainer) would be proud.  Limestone caves are abundant with one particularly large one very interesting.  Cruise “junks” abound as do the large crowds exploring the caves.

Sa Pa is high in the mountains on the Chinese Boarder (the train station is 2 km from the border) and the area is home to several of the 54 ethnic minorities recognized in Vietnam.

Our two days in Sa Pa (before our long overnight train ride back to Hanoi) consisted primarily of hiking to several villages.  This is the primary activity as there were probably 15 similar groups as ours on the same path.  The Muong women (dressed in hand-woven black hemp clothing) walk up to Sa Pa in the early morning and walk back with the tourists using their English to befriend and hopefully, sell something.  One of the more interesting sights was a woman whose 5 year old daughter was carrying her infant brother on her back while the mother carried other items.

It is harvest time for rice now and the methods date back hundreds of years.  Cutting, drying, beating the stocks against a box to release the kernels, and smashing the kernels to break the husks.  All of the local rice is for the farmer’s individual consumption.

Off to Halong Bay for a 2 day cruise.

Hanoi is chaos!  Between the millions of motorcycles, cars & buses, narrow streets, constant vendors, and people galore, riding/walking the streets of Hanoi is challenging to say the least.  Crossing the street requires confidence and hope!

We began our private Hanoi tour at the Temple of Literature, a 1000 year old institution that pre-dated most universities.  High school students come to the campus (it is now a shrine) to bring them good luck in their upcoming university studies.  The focus is on the early Vietnamese leadership that recognized the importance of education.

Ho-Chi Minh is clearly loved by all in Hanoi.  This month Vietnam celebrated its 70th anniversary of independence from France with parades and other celebrations.  We weren’t able to see Uncle Ho’s preserved body in the mausoleum because he is sent annually to Russia for a 3 month “rejuvenation”.

We visited the “Hanoi Hilton” which before American pilots stayed there, was one of the toughest prisons in Indochina – a French colonialist legacy.  The USAF prisoner pictures focused on their free time (volleyball, basketball, raising chickens, receiving packages from relatives, etc.).  It was clearly a very tough facility.

Saturday night we left for Sa Pa in our private berth on a very old train – the overnight ride was almost 9 hours to cover 200 miles.  Thank goodness for Ambien!

Wednesday we were impacted by the typhoon that landed between Tokyo & Kyoto.  We had significant rain but not the 20 inches near the typhoon’s center.  To get away, we took the bullet train to Himeji, the site of the Himeji Castle, an iconic white castle built in the 1600’s when the castle construction technology in Japan was at its zenith.  It is a UNESCO World Culture Heritage site.  The castle is stunning and the inside is filled with great wooden beams and steep stairs.  It is highly visited and often, the interior tour is delayed for 10 minutes at each of the staircases throughout the 6 story structure.  A mid-week day and the rain kept the crowds down.  One of the disappointing aspects of Japanese temple & castle interior tours is that they are just empty rooms.  They may state the room purpose but imagination is not a substitute for furniture, armaments, etc.

We rode the Mt. Shosha Ropeway (cable car) near Himeji in the pouring rain & fog.  The views were non-existent.  We hadn’t realized how much rain the Kyoto area receives but it doesn’t deter the crowds.  Covered shopping areas abound.

We are heading back to Tokyo on Thursday, then Vietnam on Friday.

On Tuesday we took the bullet train to Hiroshima and a long subway & ferry ride to Miyajima, an island in the harbor.  It is “The Island of the Gods” and one of the top 3 scenic spots in Japan.  It has one of the World Heritage sites and numerous shrines, temples and monuments.  Miyajima has two cable cars to the top for great views of the Seto Inland Sea but time was too short.  The most famous scene is the giant Torii (shrine gate) that is in the bay.  It is walkable in low tide but provides even greater pictures when surrounded by water.  While there are several temples on the island, Daisho-in, a Buddhist temple on the side of the hill had lots of opportunities for pictures.  The island is beautiful and one of the highlights of our trip to date.

We headed back to Hiroshima for the “Atomic Bomb Dome” – detonation site where a city building survived and the related Peace museum.  The museum has all of the details of the events on 8/6/45, including damaged school kid’s clothing, etc.  It was depressing but one of the many horrors of war.

Today our plan was to take a 2 hour boat ride down a mountain river in the Arashiyama Mountains.  Unfortunately, after we took a long train ride to the country, the river rides were cancelled because of the increasing water flow from the recent rains.  We should have known – Arashiyama means “storm mountains”.  DANG!!!

We toured the nearby bamboo forest walk (once you see one bamboo tree, you have seen them all) then went to the Monkey Park.  It was questionable in the beginning but the native monkeys were cute once you hiked up a mountain.  It was nice that they had free roam of the mountain, sad that they begged for food.  The hike was good exercise.

Tomorrow we head to Hiroshima and Miyajima for the day.

A day of rain delayed us today.  We visited Kinkaku (The Golden Pavilion), a Buddhist hall containing Buddha relics. The site was the summer home of a shogun and built in the 1300’s.  The Pavilion is quite spectacular.  Unfortunately, they kept the sliding doors closed because of the rain.  In spite of the rain, the crowds were intense (it is Sunday).

We dropped into the Kyoto Station to get our Hiroshima tickets for Tuesday.  When we arrived in Kyoto on Friday, we had not been above ground.  The station is spectacular with 2 different underground malls, restaurants and a large integrated hotel.

We are trying to figure out where all of the non-Japanese tourists are.  Again two meals with us being the outliers.  We rarely see non-Japanese on the subway.

Our first full day in Kyoto (Saturday) introduced us to its numerous shrines – I think that there are probably 10+ World Heritage Site temples that you “should see” – we will limit it to 2-3.  At the Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine, there are thousands of Toriis, shrine gates that have been contributed in honor of the shrine.  They lead up Mt. Inari – the path consists of at least a thousand steps.  We hiked to the top with great views of Kyoto.

We wandered through the Nishiki Food Market as well as probably the longest shopping mall that we have ever seen.  There is quite a mix of shopping in Kyoto – large department stores and an unlimited number of boutique shops.