Left Hoi An this morning. The day was quite gray and we had a downpour during breakfast. However, we were lucky again and the rain stopped before we started touring. Our first stop was Marble Mountain, a group of five mountains composed of marble. Plenty of shops selling marble carvings and statues, some quite large. They will ship to the US for $150 a cubic metre. Lots of caves and Buddha statues, temples and pagodas. Arrived in Hue and toured the Citadel...

Took a tour to an old Hindu Holy site called My Son, about 2 hours from Hoi An. This was the major religious centre in the Cham Empire until about the 12th or 13th centuries, when the Cham were conquered by the Khmer. The temples were constructed around 400AD and are mainly brick. They withstood time reasonably well. The area is quite small compared with Angkor Wat in Cambodia and, as a result, was not very impressive. Nevertheless, their age and state of preser...

Flew from Hanoi to Danang in central Vietnam. Danang is close to the old border between North and South Vietnam and was a major U.S. air base during the Vietnam War. We were met by a guide and car and visited a museum dedicated to the Cham empire that ruled this part of Vietnam from about the 4th to the 12th or 13th centuries at which point the Khmer empire in Cambodia conquered this area and the Cham people dispersed throughout southeast Asia. We then drove t...

Off to an early start on Nov.8 as a minibus picked us up from our hotel in Hanoi to drive us to Halong Bay. Five hours later, on less than great roads, we arrived. A small boat met us and transported us to our "Junk", which is small cruise boat (about 16 cabins). Quite comfortable with a great deal of wood throughout. Halong Bay is a unique and quite beautiful landscape. It is over 1600 sq. kms. and consists of nearly 2000 islands. It is a recognized world ...

This was a full day in Hanoi. For those on the tour who are leaving tomorrow, it was too short. We will be back in Hanoi twice more so we can do some additional touring.Our first visit was to the Ho Chi Minh Memorial. This is a mausoleum of the same nature as Lenin's in Moscow and Mao Tse Tung's in Beijing. His mummified remains are quite lifelike. We also visited the grounds of the Presidential Palace and the spartan home where HCM lived most of his life while i...