Hoi An and Hue: shopping, culture and magical surroundings

Hoi An and Hue

Vendredi soir: a 3 jours du TET, le festival qui celebre la nouvelle annee chinoise et vietnamienne, c'est l'effervescence dans les rues. Marches envahis par la foule, confiseries de fete, abondance de fleurs et de decorations florales: tout cela cedera bientot la place au calme le plus total puisque tous les commerces ferment durant au moins 3 jours, voire 10 pour certains qui ont un interessant concept du "pont". Nous avons decide de quitter le vietnam avant cette paralysie annoncee, et demain nous traverserons en bus la frontiere de Lao Bao, direction le Laos.
Nous profitons de l'excellente connection internet de Hue pour mettre en ligne nos derniers cliches. Ceux de Hoi An tout d'abord, une ville extremement photogenique et si agreable a vivre; les echoppes de tailleurs et les petits stands de cuisine locale (Mr RIN, nous te decernons une etoile Michelin!) nous ont maintenus bien occupes. L'etape de Hue a ete plus culturelle, avec la visite des tombes des empereurs de la dynastie NGuyen et la Cite Imperiale. Pour Alexis ce fut aussi l'occasion de mettre ses talents de conducteur a l'epreuve au volant d'un petit scooter quelque peu deglingue!

Hoi An and Hue brought us 2 activities that our trip was somewhat lacking of so far: shopping(I bought 3 hand-made dresses after swearing for 2 days that I would resist temptation) and a good dose of cultural sightseeing with the Imperial City in Hue and the NGuyen Emperors tombs. Shopping and endless cultural sightseeing may not be Alexis' cup of tea, but he had his share of fun too: indeed Hue gave him the opportunity to finally emulate Top Gear guys, as we hired a motorbike and had loads of fun (and the odd argument) getting lost and narrowly avoiding hundreds of vehicles coming from all directions on busy streets.
We have to say goodbye to Vietnam though, as indeed TET festival is starting on Monday and will paralyse the whole country for about a week while everybody is with their families enjoying this new year celebration. We have thus decided to head off to Laos tomorrow, and since there are no tourist buses anymore ("TET, closed, closed, no buses, no buses"), we will no doubt have a great day on board 3 different local buses crossing the Lao Bao border. We've done something similar to get to Hue and it's been quite the experience! Wish us luck, and we will post another update when we have some good pics from Laos.