Melting in Hoi An

Since I last wrote we've been to Halong Bay and Hue, and now we are in Hoi An. Hoi An is lovely - old French buildings, a river and a beach and all along the river there are little cafes and bars with lanterns - but it is just far too hot. Yesterday we went to the tailors to get fitted for some clothes and today we have to go back and try them on, which I'm not particularly looking forward to but at least I didn't buy a winter jacket like some people!
Halong Bay was as beautiful and spectacular as you would expect from the postcards, but still different to what I expected. For a start the bay is massive - it's like Cook Strait or something - just on a much bigger scale than I expected so often you're out in the middle of sea and all the little limestone islands are further away. We went for a swim on one of the islands and had a seafood lunch on the boat and it was all very pleasant.
When we got back to Hanoi, Jules, Fran, Ed and I got in a taxi and went to Cha Ca, a street where the speciality is (strangely enough) cha ca - hot simmering fish and noodles that you combine over a little stove on the table. Very good. Then we went to the highly recommended Revolution Museum, which I would not recommend at all if you can't speak Vietnamese. It's all very well seeing actual letters from Ho Chi Minh or propaganda brochures or whatever but if you have no idea what they're on about...
After that we stopped in a bar for a drink and there was a thunderstorm and it just bucketed down. All the people on bikes just put on these poncho things and the little kids were under the ponchos, not even their heads out. Then we visited the Water Puppets theatre, which was mildly entertaining.
The overnight train to Hue was OK - quite comfortable compared to the one in Thailand. We sacrificed Donald's jaffas and Marmite to the good of the group as the food we'd managed to bring with us was a bit skimpy.
In Hue our hotel was inside the citadel and had a pool - yay. The best thing we did in Hue was hire motorbikes and drivers to go on a five-hour tour of the countryside. You just saw so much more of how people lived - working in rice paddies, drying the rice beside the roads, the kids riding their bikes to school, people driving buffalo attached to a plough etc. We also stopped at the emperor's mausoleum (where he isn't buried, as it turns out) and a pagoda but they weren's as interesting. After a quick dip in the pool, some of us hopped back on the bikes and went for a 40km ride to an amazing cemetery where wealthy people from overseas build tombs for their ancestors (and themselves). It's hard to describe them - like a small house covered in mosaic dragons, all in vibrant colours. Well worth the trip although we could hardly walk by the time we got back.
Jules is standing over me chomping at the bit so I'd better go. Off to the tailors now...