Thursday, October 24 Hoi An last day

Thursday, October 24  Hoi An last day in Vietnam

Actually I'm in Inchon Airport in South Korea, feel like I'm already transitioned but, since I've been so conscientious, I'll try to reconstruct yesterday (today??).

Netsy and Larry were scheduled to leave earlier in the day but plane wouldn't be going until 11PM.  So, what to do, alone, for the day?  After a lot of consultation and phone calling by our super helpful hotel staff, I decided on a tour of My Son, an  ancient site of Hindu temples that was all but destroyed by U.S. bombing in the war.  The bus was a bit shabby, but filled with 50 eager tourists and a tour guide who, thank goodness, spoke clearly.  My Son temples were built by Javanese who arrived at the site in 200 AD and completed the temples a few hundred years later.  The Cham people who built them moved on a few centuries later and the temples were completely invisiblized by the jungle.  The French discovered and uncovered them in the 18th century and took the heads of most of the statues, which are now in the Louvre in Paris.  Colonialism was crazy, right?  Impunity rules.  Well, the French found 70 buildings and worked to restore them in the 1930s.  During the war, the U.S. carpet bombed the site and only a few buildings remain including a few which display some of the bombs which were found and detonated.  

Big craters, some now filled with water dot the landscape.  The tour guide is the son of a North Vietnamese commander.  He described the devastation and talked about Agent Orange and the My Lai massacre. There was some discussion of the lack of any kind of reparations for the damage, admission of responsibility, and no action in the world court in The Hague for the war crimes committed by the U.S. in the war.  I had a good conversation with a Polish guy who lives in Germany with his Romanian fiancé.  He has lived in Egypt, she in Bahrain. We've met a few travelers who make their way living in different countries, including an English guy we met in Halong Bay who lived with his family in Holland and now Rome. He works in Germany.

The way back from My Son was by boat, including a stop on an island we previously visited on our bike tour, seeing fine woodworkers making boats, statues, decorative lintels, bowls and sculptured furniture.  

Dropped off in the middle of Hoi An town, I walked home to the hotel this time and spent the rest of the day packing.  Taxi to the airport was, surprisingly, with the son of our hotel owner who had studied in the U.S. for six years. He drove past the Dragon Bridge in Danang, built to commemorate the taking of Danang from the U.S. by North Vietnamese troops.

So now I'm in the middle of the long haul home.  It's been a wonderful trip and great to spend time with Netsy and Larry who chose all the right cities and hotels and have been a pleasure to travel with.  I imagine I won't be babbling as much as I sometimes do after a trip.  You can check out  photos here

Thanks for reading this far.  It's been fun.

Gail