On the back of a Motor Bike

June 11

10:10pm

Today was crazy.

I have never ridden on the back of a motorcycle before. Today was another first! And, it was in Vietnam... A country full of motor bikes. It isn't as crazy as India though so I don't feel overly accomplished. Definitely feel a little accomplished though. Even rode without holding on for a fair amount of time! BAMF!!!

We each got our own driver and bike and we had a tour of Hue and all the sites on the back of the motor bike. We started off at the citadel which was nice. What I ended up learning from here probably wasn't what I was supposed to actually take away... The emperor had a lot of concubines. And he lived in the palace with them by himself. Unics were allowed to live in the palace as well though to serve the emperor. Not many people were natural born unics so a lot of men volunteered. If they volunteered it meant that their family would get land and money because they were sacrificing their life to work for the emperor. They had to castrate themselves with a knife. They also kept their nuts and put them in a bag and hung them from the ceiling. When they were old and had to retire they collected their nuts again. Not related to the nuts, we also saw the oldest bank and oldest theatre in Vietnam. They are both on the palace grounds. The inside of the theater was beautiful. Like stunning. It was made of wood.

I am now writing this June 27... Epic fail.

When we entered the palace there were flower Lilies surrounding the area under the bridge. Once you walked in, there was another area with large ponds that were full of fish. Some people (Ed) chose to feed them and the fish are the Japanese fish you always see in those gardens. They're nasty when they fight for food though. Robyn was concerned for the smaller fish further away who were maybe not getting fed as much. She kept telling Ed to throw food to them. It was cute.

Our guide took us around the grounds. He was a really great guide actually. Very knowledgable and talked a lot which is rare for our guides (other than Matt and the people in Cambodia) on this trip. He was funny too. I couldn't tell when he was joking and when he was being serious though... That seems to happen a lot with the language translation aspect.

There was one point when he was taking a group photo for us and a bunch of Asian teenagers stopped and were standing there just taking pictures of us. Oh my Buddha! 21 westerners all gathered together! Definitely a photo worthy moment! No... I did get a photo of them all gathered around trying to take pictures of us. It was pretty funny.

The guide gave us a lot of information but I had a hard time hearing everything he wa saying and it's also been so long I don't remember too much anymore. The outside of the palace was actually really cool. It was kind of mosaic like but it had cracked plates and cups and such in the design. You could see it if you got up pretty close.

After that, we got back on the motorbike. You always had to get off and on from the left side. The exhaust is on the right side (when facing the bike) and you can burn yourself if you get off on that side. We could hold onto the driver if we wanted to. If I felt like I needed to, I held on to the back part of the bike behind me on the seat. Later I was told they prefer you hold onto them because you move with them and the bike. Whether or not this is true I do not know.

We then zipped on over to see the summer home for the royal family. It was nice I guess. It was just down the street from the original palace so that seemed strange. It's not like its on the beach or anything. It was made out of all wood and there were a lot of windows. Maybe it a cooler place to be? It was filled with royal trinkets and weapons. Some of the spears and knives were pretty cool looking. You had to remove your shoes and carry them in a bag with you while you walked around. Then you returned the bag once you left from a different place than where you entered.

On the motorbikes we rode over bridges and through fields and forests. It was really cool actually. We drove through villages. There were so many animals and people on the side of the road selling animals. There were a lot of ducks that I think were still alive but had their feet tied together. We went through a green field of tall grass with graves in it.

We finally made it to the Thien Mu pagoda. It was near the river which was really pretty. We walked up and around with our guide. I did a bad job of sticking around him because I was so fascinated with everything else that I just wanted to take pictures of the cool things I was seeing. Then I was annoyed I hadn't listened.

There are tall men statues at the entrance to a lot of the doors and they all had real horse hair as their mustaches. There was also a car on display that was the car that a monk drove from Hue to Saigon on June 11, 1963 to protest the discrimination of Buddhists and violation of religious freedom. Once he got to Saigon he sat down in the lotus position and burnt himself to death. That is a hard core protest... (During the Vietnam War).

Here we also saw all the monks eating (it was before noon) at a long table. They aren't allowed to talk. They also were surrounded by people in gray robes. I forget exactly what they did. I don't remember if they were monks in training or if they were there to take care of the monks. There was an area with many bonsai trees growing as well. All small ones on little table stands but it was really cool. I'm fascinates by the bonsai tree. It's so unique looking.

We went to a huge arena that was made out of brick. It was all locked up so we couldn't go inside. He said it is locked because there are still snakes inside and they are dangerous. They must not come near the edge? It was used a long time ago as an elephant-tiger fighting arena. The tigers weren't given food so the elephants always won the fights. It was good entertainment back in the day apparently. I don't think I would have liked it too much...

While we were getting back on the bikes, Lois and Charley were finding out their Uni marks. It was a little awkward because we were all sitting on the bikes and watching them. They got good marks so that was great! Andy made a joke about how they were pregnant and just getting the test results. I believed him at first too because I had no idea what was going on other than seeing the 2 girls hugging and crying and looking nervous while starring at their phones before that haha.

We rode to a little shop on the side of the road that showed us how incense sticks are made. The stick is basically rolled in colored dough that is then dried and hardened. Different colors are for different things. I think purple was Christianity but I don't remember for sure. There was purple, pink, yellow, and green ones. Each color was dyed with a powder. It was cool to see. The shop had some pretty amazing paintings as well. I didn't buy any though. The workers were very adamant we buy things. It was kind of awkward.

Mars and Robyn both were a little skeptical about the motorbike thing so they followed us around in a taxi. I was a little nervous about the safety too but all the g adventure groups do this and it had been fine so I put aside my initial thought of "don't you dare get on the back of a motorbike" and just did it. I was so glad I did though. It was a really great experience. Plus, that is how most people in Vietnam get around so it was also a lesson in local transportation!

A really cool stop we made was at bunker hill. When we got here we all lined up and got to have a photo with all of us on our motorbikes together (a group photo). I didn't manage to get one on my camera so ill need to make sure I can steal one from someone else. They turned the engines on so we could honk the horns. It got pretty loud at that point. Sarah went a little horn crazy too haha. This area was forested and was on a hill overlooking the river. Aka, more beautiful landscape photos. Yey!

At the end of the tour we got to have lunch at the monastery which was actually really good. It is all vegetarian and people were a little skeptical about it but I knew the Thai vegetarian food had been good so this would probably be wonderful as well. It definitely was. I don't remember everything we had to eat now. Shoot. We definitely had the traditional Hue dish like we got at the restaurant the night before. And spring rolls. I think there was a soup. There were many dishes. They were all great.

When we got back to the hotel we had about half an hour before we had to leave for the train station. A bunch of us went out to find food for the train. We actually had the restaurant we ate at the night before come take our order for take away earlier this morning. I just got a pizza. It was a good choice for the train.

We headed to the train station for our third and final overnight train experience in Vietnam. This was supposed to be the best train of all 3 of them. The Reunification Express is supposed to be really nice.

It wasn't as nice as the first sleeper train we had, but also not as dirty as the second one we had... Thank god. The toilet didn't smell rank. It's always nice when you can use the toilet without gagging. Like really nice ha.

We had a loonng time on the train to look forward to. I think we boarded around 2:30 or 3pm. I was in a room with Mars, Saskia, and Kat. We had a good conversation. It was fun. Played cards. Talked about boys. Talked about life. Leanne came to chill with us for a while. I love Leanne. And Kat left our room and was hanging out in Andy's room. Everyone thinks they like each other. They are always around one another and seek each other out.

Everything was going really well... And then there was a lot of commotion in one of the cabins. Sarah and Charley had seen a mouse. They were freaking out. They both have legit phobias so they can't help it but it was still a little funny. The mouse was so tiny and cute. Robyn and Courtney ended up stuffing all the holes under the beds in their room. And then Sarah decided to sleep in the same bed as Charley so she would be protected. (The beds are really small so that seems kinda silly). And then Sarah ended up waking Robyn, Courtney, and Kara up in the middle of the night wanting to come back into her room. She wanted a top bunk though so the mouse couldn't get her and so Courtney had to switch beds with her. It sounded like a pretty crazy night to say the least. The mouse was in all of our rooms at one point. It really wasn't too bad.

The scenery we were passing was really beautiful as always. Vietnam is just amazing.

Ed told us that Andy had told Kat she didn't need to go back to her room and that she was sleeping there. We didn't want to be awkward and ask her about it in front of everyone so we just locked up and went to bed. Maybe half an hour later I heard Kat shouting Mars' name from the hallway. We unlocked the door for her. She thought it was silly that we thought she would sleep in Andy's cabin. She had knocked on a few doors before she found ours. Oops! We should have told her we were going to bed. We just didn't want to make it awkward if she was wanting to stay with Andy. It all worked out in the end though. Hopefully it'll be stopped at some point during the night and we will arrive later... Fingers crossed!

Random:

Since I have spent so much time with British people recently, I have noticed a lot of words that are different... Either pronunciation wise or the actual word.

Garage... They say it gaerage
Aluminum... They spell and say it aliminium.
They say pants for underwear and trousers for pants.
They call pop "fizzy drink"
A plaster is a band aid.
A torch is a flashlight.
They say keen a lot. (I'm not too keen on or I am keen on that... Like excited or down for).
Pegging it instead of booking it but maybe not the same meaning as booking it. More along the lines of a dine and dash type feeling.
For 10:30 they would say half 10.
There are so many other things. I just can't think of them off the top of my head!

In Ireland they say "a wee bit" a lot. At least Robby and Zara say it a lot. Maybe no one else.

I found out how to spell tocque (the winter hat the way Canadians refer to it). They apparently also have a game called "Iced" where you hide beers or whatever in places and if you find it you have to get down on your knees and chug the bottle or can.