Hoi Ann

DSCN0786, a photo by Heather April on Flickr.

Yep, I finally came across one. I didn't use it though.

Hoi Ann

We traveled over the mountains from Hue to Hoi Ann in a bus. It was a terrifying ride because I am fairly afraid of heights and do not really like mountain driving. On the way, we stopped at marble mountain and looked at many huge marble statues. The hotel in Hoi Ann is damp and there is a huge carpet stain outside of our room. The sheets are moist. I wrote that up on our room evaluation. Otherwise, it was a decent hotel. The food was great. I made a video blog about this city-check it out.

Hoi Ann has been my favorite city thus far. I love the quiet pace of it and the people are super nice. The weather is tropical, in the low 80's with a very high humidity. On Day 10 we traveled to some ruins and hiked them. That was really fascinating. The Champ people lived there and they are a minority ethnic group here in Vietnam. There are only about 100,000 of them. This is the same ethnic group that the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was wiping out decades ago. The Champ people have more Indian than Asian features and they mostly practice Hindu, not Buddhism. The ruins were dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva and the temples took serious damage over the years, some from the Vietnam War. One of the displays had American bomb shells in it next to the historic tablets.

We have had a lot of time on our own in this city. I have been relaxing and shopping. I wanted to rent a bike and ride it but they don't let us go anywhere alone in this country and no one else wanted to. I am struggling with constantly being around other people. I like my privacy and alone time and at my age, I am used to being able to do what I want to do. Overall, though I have met some cool people some of the kids and I have connected on facebook so we can share pictures and video later. We even made an asian friend at the Hanoi University and he is also on our facebooks. haha More later, ttys!