A couple of day tours

In some of the rural areas of Vietnam, traditionally when there's no
farm work to be done, the people have to find other work so they can
feed themselves.

Bat Trang is one such area. There were two main seasons when different
crops were grown, but outside of those seasons there was no work, so the
locals turned their hands to pottery. These days there isn't much
farming done in Bat Trang, most people work in the pottery or ceramics
factories, hand making some really beautiful stuff.

We visited Bat Trang as the first part of our tour on Thursday with
Ming, our guide, and Ho, our driver. Ming is a mine of information on
all kinds of things about Vietnam. At the ceramics factory (the five
story factory with no lifts), we were shown how they make the stuff they
sell and I was invited to have a go at painting a dragonfly on a cup. I
can sort of draw with a pencil, but I'm no good with a soft brush with
three or four people watching me. I got to keep the cup as a souvenir
though. I just hope it makes it back to Australia without getting broken
as it's unglazed and therefore not as strong as it could be.

The next part of the tour was But Thap pagoda, a very old Chinese style
pagoda. Even though Vietnam is communist, they don't seem to be
repressing religion here.

From the pagoda we went to another village where they make paper. We
were given a demonstration of how they hand print pictures before having
a traditional, sit on the floor and eat with chopsticks, Vietnamese lunch.

Next stop was another village with yet another speciality. All the
restaurants serve snake meat and snake wine. Not just any snakes though,
only poisonous ones are used. We did have the opportunity to try some,
but turned it down. Ming admitted that he'd only ever tried it once and
he nearly threw up.

Which reminds me of something Ming mentioned about dogs in Vietnam. Dogs
are considered lucky, so most people try to keep at least one dog for
good luck. The practice of eating dogs in Vietnam is not as widespread
as we in the west think. Sure, it's not hard to find in the markets, but
not many people eat dogmeat.

Friday was another day of touring, starting with a trip to Ho Cho Minh's
mausoleum and a look at the two houses he lived in. One in particular
was only two rooms and would have made a nice little weekender somewhere
near the beach.

From the mausoleum we headed to Tam Coc. Tam Coc is known as the inland
Halong Bay, as it has the same limestone karsts as Halong. We had lunch
in a restaurant here then took a two hour sampan ride through caves and
rice fields.

If you ever make it to Tam Coc, there's a few things you have to allow
for. You'll be expected to buy drinks for the rowers when you get to the
other end, they'll put the hard sell on you, trying get you to buy
t-shirts etc, on the way back, and they'll expect a tip. All in all
though, it was an enjoyable trip and very photogenic.

It's now the end of our last day here. Tomorrow we fly back to Brisbane.
We have window seats, but not as good as the flight here. We're just
hoping we can get a bit of sleep this time.