The very helpful staff of the Holiday Diamond Hotel plotted to send us up the river. After breakfast we fell for it, paying twenty-five bucks for a private tour to see the other great attractions dotting the Huong River near Huế, specifically, a famed pagodas and one of many emperors’ tombs.
By nine-thirty we boarded a junk, just the two of us joining an old woman who spoke no English but provided service of a sort, and a somewhat younger man at the helm. Only then did it dawn on me that we had just three days earlier completed more than a week on a river touring pagodas. 
But we were committed. Regardless, it was too damned hot to do much more than watch the world go by, and in Vietnam there is no better place to do that than on its superhighways, which are its rivers. Continue reading 12. A Hot Time in the Old Town →
I cannot recall ever having bleu cheese on toast for breakfast before, but the Pullman chain is one of the Accor family of hotels, French to its core, the bread and cheese impeccable. Despite a full buffet offering anything I wanted, bleu cheese on toast it was, and it was wonderful.
We struck out for a walk along the Saigon River towards a green splotch on the map labelled as the Botanical Gardens. First we filled our backpacks with about two gallons of bottled water, having discovered that consuming less than a litre per hour each was tantamount to suicide. Off the Doxycycline, I covered myself from stem to stern in DEET in the hopes of avoiding mosquito-borne malaria. Then I bathed in sunblock. I dislike starting the day covered in such crud, but to do otherwise would be asking for trouble. Continue reading 11. The Way to Huế →
Tumbling through the infinite void
By nine-thirty we boarded a junk, just the two of us joining an old woman who spoke no English but provided service of a sort, and a somewhat younger man at the helm. Only then did it dawn on me that we had just three days earlier completed more than a week on a river touring pagodas. 
But we were committed. Regardless, it was too damned hot to do much more than watch the world go by, and in Vietnam there is no better place to do that than on its superhighways, which are its rivers. Continue reading 12. A Hot Time in the Old Town