Early in the morning we had a heated discussion at the reception of the hotel about the green marks that had appeared over our laundry. Money, threats and insults were thrown from both sides, tears wept and the possibility of police intervention was not unlikely. But we had a bus to catch. Interaction with the Vietnamese can often be a sweet and sour experience (... now if only I was talking about the Chinese, that would have been poetic!).
The bus passed through the marble mountains, with crinkley pillars sprouting out of the fields. Andrea and I went for a walk in the caves. The fuse had blown in the lights so we chased after the guide with the torch, tripping up over ourselves to keep up with the spotlighted part of the floor. Even interpid Indianna Strein had a bit of a flap in the dripping darkness with bats squeeking and weeing above us. Climbed rusty damp ladders to come to a precarious ledge half way up the mountain, to be engulfed in the smoke from the tar burners coming from the road workers below.
Stopped again at the Hai Van pass, the crossing point of the Troung Son Mountains that spearate the northern and southern Vietnamese climates. More old American bunkers were set in the hillsides, looking over the roads weaving up and down below.
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