Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

1352 comments - 20072 thread views 4d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

1352

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

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Friday Fun Thread for July 11, 2025

36 comments - 636 thread views 21hr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Transnational Thursday for July 10, 2025

6 comments - 252 thread views 1d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Tinker Tuesday for July 8, 2025

6 comments - 235 thread views 3d ago by ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad (text post)

Wellness Wednesday for July 9, 2025

10 comments - 651 thread views 2d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Quality Contributions Report for June 2025

9 comments - 4100 thread views 10d ago by naraburns nihil supernum (text post)

To the Gates of Hell

10 comments - 1099 thread views 15d ago by ThomasdelVasto Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου (shapesinthefog.substack.com)

This is an overview of my struggles with chronic pain. It's a bit of a personal post, but also in the end dips slightly into how I overcame my issues via coming back to Christ. I hope it's useful/interesting for folks.

Pasting the whole thing below here, although there are images in the Substack that I reference so I recommend checking it out if you're curious:

You’ve probably seen it before. Your friend is a broken wreck, they can’t work, their life is steadily plummeting towards the abyss. They get diagnosed with fibromyalgia, CPTSD, hypermobility/EDS, or early onset arthritis. You give up hope they’ll ever be normal.

Then all of the sudden, out of seemingly nowhere, they start drinking celery juice every day and all their problems disappear! (This one actually happened to my mom, bless her heart.)

Or they go gluten-free. Or find Jesus. Or see a $500/hr chiropractor who’s written a book about ghosts. Whatever it is, it "fixes" them.

You roll your eyes. But also… you kind of want it to be true. Because maybe you’ll finally get to stop listening to them complain. Maybe, just maybe, the cloud of misery around them that has slowly pushed away you and everyone else in their life is finally parting, and you’ll get to see them be happy for the first time in years.

Modern chronic pain causes an incredible amount of misery. The typical cited prevalence of chronic pain is somewhere around 50 million people in the U.S. daily experiencing at least some pain.

Now when you think of someone with chronic pain, you probably picture an old mill worker with a bad back, or hips, or knees. Perhaps all three.

But chronic pain doesn’t just hit the old, the worn down, the obviously crippled. There are also people like me, not so long ago. A 23-year-old man sobbing silently as his tongue goes numb, his jaw locks, and he tries to decide whether or not to call 911 for the third time that month.

That kind of moment where you stare death in the face is characteristic of what the medical field calls “high-impact” chronic pain. The dry description of “daily activities are significantly limited” doesn’t quite capture how it feels from the inside.

When you look at these stats and medical phrases, it’s easy to distance yourself emotionally. But if you’ll allow me, dear reader, I want to give you a bit of an inside look into what it’s like to go through crushing, daily, seemingly inescapable pain.

How all of your worst fears seemingly become realized.

You stare down decades of living as a cripple.

When your own body betrays you constantly, forcing you to go from a bright energetic youth to a shuffling old man over the course of a couple of years.

How you think you’ve finally found a cure, only to have the hope cruelly ripped out of your weak grasp over, and over. And over.

Hopefully, this inside look can help you understand and sympathize with those unfortunates who, like me, have dealt with the hell we so clinically call “chronic pain.”

23 Years Young, Staring Death in the Face

Sitting on the bed at my mom’s house, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the soft afternoon sunlight streamed through the window. At the age of 23, I thought I was about to die.

My tongue burned all down the left side, then promptly went numb. It felt like a snake had lodged itself in my throat all of the sudden, and started to swell. The muscles along my jaw bunched, locked and then started to spasm. I fought for breath.

Rushing in after hearing some of the noises I was making, my mother panicked and asked if we needed to go to the E.R. I told her no, by shaking my head of course. I wasn’t capable of speech at this point.

You see, I had already been to the E.R. once for something similar, just a few months ago. They made me wait for hours, spent five minutes looking at me, told me I was ‘normal’ and then pushed me out, charging me close to $1,000 for the pleasure. Would’ve been five times more if I had called an ambulance. It was not covered by my insurance via work at the time, of course.

Then I had gone to urgent care a few times. Similar story. At least those docs gave me some drugs, to try and make me feel better.

So I told my mom no, and got up and decided to walk with her. In my head, though I was convinced that the reaper stalked behind me, about to pounce, I wanted to see the sunlight one last time. We opened the door and strolled through the afternoon sunshine. Oh, the light was so beautiful. It brought tears to my eyes. At the time I still subscribed to a sort of half-hearted atheism, but if I had believed in God I likely would’ve dropped to my knees and sung out His praise.

I’ve done that a few times between then and now.

Talking shit till I get lockjaw

A$AP Rocky has some good lyrics, okay?

Rewinding a bit, my official diagnosis for the numb tongue and the locking jaw was TMJ, or temporomandibular joint dysfunction. It began a few months after my first job out of college, a stressful, boiler-room-esque sales job where we were expected to make close to 100 ‘touches’ (calls/emails) a day to potential customers. Not horrible, as far as volume of entry level sales goes, but horrible enough to break me.

The first time I felt any issue, I thought someone had hit me in the head, or something. A lightning bolt of pain shot across my face, and a good proportion of the muscles from the side of my lip up to my right eye went numb. I was on a sales call at the time! To my credit (perhaps) I finished the call, though slurring a bit, called my manager, and told him I was taking the rest of the day off.

I had dealt with some chronic pain previously, mainly in my sciatica nerve down the side of my leg. That one, I thought, was easier to explain though. I had been doing hardcore ballroom dance competitions, it came on over a period of time, and I must have overstressed the leg. This time was different - a bolt out of the blue in a completely near area of my body, that had never felt any pain like this before.

That episode started the first of my four FMLA leave periods from sales jobs, in a five year span. While I do complain about the Western medical system, I have to admit the Family Medical Leave Act is pretty amazing. It gave me a lot of flexibility when I needed it most.

So, what do you do when a random, major illness strikes you out of nowhere? Call the doctor, of course! So I did. I went to my primary care doctor. They referred me to a TMJ specialist at a big, national name hospital nearby. Of course, all of this took over a month, since every new specialist takes between 2 and 6 weeks to even get the first appointment with.

It was during this waiting period that the drama above unfolded.

Anyway, this doctor saw me a couple of times, warned that I may need surgery and may never heal, and sent me off to a dentist who specialized in TMJ. One of the handful in the country, who happened to be in this medical system that my insurance actually did cover.

Side note: It’s completely insane how many doctors will just off-handedly tell you that you may need surgery, and/or that you’ll have to live with something forever. I would be told that at least a dozen times throughout my medical journey.

I was one of the lucky ones, despite the difficulty. So far I was in only a few hundred bucks, chump change.

So I saw this dentist who specialized in TMJ. He calmed me down, told me that things would be ok. That he had dealt with cases as severe as mine plenty of times, and no I wouldn’t need surgery. He molded a night guard for me to sleep with to stop me clenching my jaw all night, sent me to a specialized TMJ physical therapist (who cost $150 per session, uncovered by insurance) and prescribed me a benzodiazepam. Klonopin, to be specific.

Now, all of these treatments together actually worked quite well! I wasn’t back to 100%, but I was able to go back to work in a few weeks, and get rid of the impending sense of doom that whispered that I was going to die, or never be able to talk or eat again. The Klonipin caused me some… other problems, but that’s a story for another post.

Sadly, the TMJ was only the beginning of my story with chronic pain.

The Carpal Tunnel of Love

Great song, by the way. Some of Fall Out Boy’s best.

After my first successful foray into getting medical treatment for my issues, I returned to work somewhat hesitantly, but things seemingly turned around for me. My focus and drive returned, even leading to me getting promoted after another few months in the job.

However, about a year after having to take leave for TMJ, I found myself forced to quit the working world once again.

The next problematic area was my hands and wrists. When I say problematic, I don’t mean the next painful area. At this point I had already started to develop tons of pain in my low back, hips, and legs as well; despite all the physical therapy, working out, and yoga I was doing. It got to the point where they started calling me the “old man” around my office, despite the fact that I was in my early 20s.

Either way, the combined stress of a high-pressure laptop job and me gaming a ton, led to my wrists basically completely blowing out next. I pushed through the pain for a while, but ultimately had to call it. Another dramatic discussion with my bosses about taking leave, this one FAR less friendly. Luckily however, they were legally obliged to let me take more FMLA, as a year had passed since my last medical leave.

So off I went, back to stay at home for a month, stress about doctor’s appointments, and generally just convalesce. I didn’t handle this period of time off work as well as the last. My strategy to cope with the pain had increasingly become mixing my anti anxieties with alcohol and cannabis in order to basically numb myself out of whatever I was feeling at any given moment. As the reader likely knows, that strategy doesn’t pan out well in the long run.

Anyway, I had continued working with my physical therapist this entire time, despite racking up a bill of thousands of dollars with him in over a year of weekly treatments, so I got him to give me some referrals to carpal tunnel docs.

Same old shtick. Took forever to get an appointment. When I did, they told me I would likely need surgery, and sent me off to another specialist. One of them spent months trying to prescribe me mild muscle relaxant type drugs like cyclobenzaprine, gabapentin, or flexeril, which are weak beer when you’re in so much pain you can barely lift a glass of water to your mouth with both hands.

I started to get all sorts of fancy diagnoses at this point. Early onset arthritis. Fibromyalgia. Hypermobility (EDS). CPTSD. Et cetera.

My FMLA leave quickly got eaten up, so I had to go back to work. I started using a program called Talon Voice in order to control my computer almost entirely via my dulcet tones. It was actually really cool, my friends even started calling me a cyborg for a minute there. I got an eye tracker to move my mouse and everything, like a real disabled person!

People can even code with this software, it’s wild:

Via a combination of wrist braces, new drugs, quitting all video games and recreational use of my hands (listened to a lot of audio books), I slowly managed to get back to a ‘functional’ place with my job. Of course, none of this would’ve been possible without the patient and loving support of my girlfriend, to whom I owe an incredible amount for sticking with me through these difficulties. I shudder to think what would’ve happened if I didn’t have her by my side.

Either way, at this point I was several thousand dollars down the drain, and still partially crippled. Unfortunately, life wasn’t done with me yet.

The Sound of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend…

When I first lost my voice, I like to think my girlfriend was secretly relieved. I do talk a lot, after all!

At first I thought I just had bronchitis or something, so I took a few days off of work to just let my voice recover. Surely it’s just a bug, right? Though in the back of my head, fear was rising that something even worse was coming for my already fractured health.

So I went back to work after my voice had recovered and, lo and behold, after just a couple days on the job, the voice went again. By this time I knew the drill, so I immediately researched the most well-regarded vocal therapist in the area, and scheduled an appointment.

Of course, it took multiple weeks to even see her, so I had to go on FMLA leave again. At this point I was starting to seriously eat into my savings I had carefully built up. Have I mentioned that FMLA leave is unpaid?

Regardless, given that my computer use had switched over almost entirely to voice, and I was still talking for my sales job, I suppose losing my voice was inevitable. At the time though, the defeat was crushing. First my legs hurt, then my jaw, my hands, and now my ability to even communicate with other human beings. What would God take away from me next?

I sunk into a pretty deep pit of despair at this point. I had struggled with suicidal thoughts as a teenager, but it’s a different animal contemplating suicide past 25 due to medical complications that multiple doctors have told you are essentially incurable. Admittedly, the drugs and booze probably didn’t help.

So I went to the vocal coach, added another set of tasks to my daily exercises to manage my various conditions, which at this point had ballooned to over two hours a day of stretching, doing vocal warm ups, doing specific exercises, self-massage via tennis ball, and resting in various positions to take the stress out of certain muscles.

At one point during this time, at the advice of my vocal coach, I completely stopped talking for two weeks. The idea was we could perhaps “reset” my vocal cords, and help me learn to speak in a more “natural” way. At first, this was brutal. I had always been quite chatty, and the silence was agonizing the first few days.

But after about a week of no talking, something strange started to happen. For the first time in a LONG time, I didn’t feel quite so hopeless. I couldn’t have explained it to you at the time (because I was silent, duh! ;P), yet I just started to get this sense of silliness. That even though my body was falling apart before my 30th birthday, my relationship was on the rocks because I couldn’t even talk to my girlfriend, and my managers were looking for excuses to fire me, there was a sort of… underlying okayness to the whole thing. I was able to laugh, and relax, despite my circumstances.

The Gates of Repentance

This priest has the best voice ever, seriously. Check out this chant, it’s amazing.

A little before the voice loss I had stumbled upon some people in the Talon Voice community talking about chronic pain being a spiritual/emotional issue. Up until now, I had sort of brushed this off while thinking eh, even if this is an emotional issue, how am I going to fix my emotions? I was already doing therapy as well and that barely helped.

So there I was, over $15,000 and years of my life spent on medical treatments that amounted to temporary bandaids at best, with little to no understanding of the deeper roots of my chronic pain, or how I was going to fix it. I had some inkling that maybe there was an emotional or spiritual issue, but I barely took it seriously. From a ‘logical’ perspective, things seemed quite bleak.

Something in the silence spoke to me, though. Despite my utter lack of belief in anything beyond the material, physical reality, I began to feel as if a presence was watching over me. I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back, it’s obvious to me that it was Christ reaching out, now that my heart had finally been humbled enough to hear Him.

Thomas Merton says:

In silence, God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

Perhaps he’s right.

While it would take a while for my heart to fully turn around, the bitterness that had consumed me slowly started to lift. Possibilities began to open up, doors opening that had seemed firmly shut. Before I began to believe in Christ, or even the supernatural, I started to believe in myself. In Life. From seemingly out of nowhere, a hope blossomed in my chest. A hope that I wouldn’t be a cripple, that I’d get to live a good life, despite my troubles, that somehow, some way, I would be able to overcome the various illnesses that had plagued me from my youth.

Glory be to God, that hope has been fulfilled. That’s a story for another time.

Don't Kill the Baby

45 comments - 4994 thread views 1mo ago by MonkeyWithAMachinegun Dancing to Tom Paine's Bones (text post)

It's three-something in the morning, an ungodly hour by any definition, when my phone rings. It's not on silent. I'm not allowed to keep it on silent tonight, because tonight I'm on what older generations called "beeper duty." To my generation, it's being on call. I am a junior Assistant District Attorney for Metropolis, and that means I get to spend one week a month on call. For that week, when I get home from work, my phone is set to ring at maximum volume, and when it rings, I answer. No exceptions. Sometimes the voice on the other end of the line is a beat cop asking an inane question about some esoteric piece of criminal procedure because he doesn't want to screw up his bust. I try and tell myself that I like those calls, because at least that means the arrest won't get tossed by a judge in a month while me or one of my coworkers stands there helplessly and the cop glares daggers at me because somehow I should have waved my magic wand to un-fuck his fuck-up. Sometimes the voice is a detective, asking about an emergency warrant to be executed right the fuck now so I had better get the on-call judge up. Those calls are more exciting, but still fairly routine.

This time the voice identifies itself as Detective Smith.

"I see a guy with a wicker basket."

Those last two words give me a jolt that wakes me up better than ten cups of coffee could. Wicker basket. For the last three months Metropolis has been plagued by a serial killer. Infants wash up on the banks of the river in wicker baskets, drowned. The only thing the medical examiner can tell me of worth is that they're still alive when they go in the water. I almost threw up when I heard that. Is this guy him? Metropolis PD has a task force hunting the guy, but so far they've come up with absolutely nothing. Trying to calm my suddenly racing heartbeat, I run through the mental checklist I manage to dredge up.

"Are you plainclothes?"

"Yeah, but I've got my badge out."

"What's he doing?"

"He's walking down the street, he's heading towards the marina."

"Okay stop him. Ask him what he's doing."

What I don't say, but both of us understand, is the razor thin line we're walking. If the officer so much as pats him down without reasonable articulable suspicion (a technical legal term with decades of law developing it and ironing out edge cases) then anything that comes of the search is tainted. Inadmissible in court. Best case scenario, I manage to scramble and pull together enough other evidence to somehow, someway, still get a conviction. Worst case scenario, and far more likely, is that the public defender files a layup motion to suppress, all of my evidence gets tossed, and with it the case.

"He says he's going fishing."

"Press him!" I try to keep my voice low and professional, like my boss does when he's in court, but I can't help myself. There's the faintest edge of panic in my words. Fishing. Totally reasonable. Anyone could be out fishing. He wouldn't be the first man up early to try and get a jump on the fish.

"He just said he's going fishing again and he's started walking again."

"Ask him if you can see in the basket."

If only. If the guy gives Detective Smith consent to search the basket that's the ball game right there. Consent is the ultimate cure to the Fourth Amendment. There's no expectation of privacy in letting a cop search your bag. Anything the detective sees would be admissible evidence.

"He said no, he's almost at the end of the marina. He's only a few feet from his boat. He's going to get away, what do I do?"

"Search him."

It's a gut call. Maybe the wrong call. I'm still not sure if we have enough to search him, and almost certainly not reasonable suspicion that he's armed and dangerous to justify a Terry frisk. In my head I'm already marshaling the arguments I'm going to have to make in court to justify the search. Three in the morning is early, too early for fishing? Probably not. Wicker basket is good, wicker basket on the marina is better, but maybe there's exigent circumstances-

Over the phone I hear a loud thump, like the phone was dropped, the sounds of a scuffle, and then a shout. "GET ON THE GROUND! GET ON THE GROUND NOW!"

"Alright, well done Mr. Monkey! Not bad, not bad at all. You did almost everything right. You hit all the high notes of exceptions to the warrant requirement, and most importantly you made the call to search the basket. You didn't kill the baby."

The exercise is over. I've passed. This whole scenario has been a test. Round two of three interviews for an Assistant District Attorney position. Every fact here I was provided in a three minute summary before we launched into the exercise, or I discovered during it. My interviewer continues.

"The most important rule of what we do here at [Major City's] District Attorney's Office is Don't Kill the Baby. Anything bad happens as a result of that in the case, we'll have your back. But we do not, ever, kill the baby. You'd be surprised how many people get that wrong. It's something to do with law school. Before you go to law school, or you ask any Joe Sixpack on the street, he'll give you the same answer. Don't Kill the Baby. But you go to law school, you get so caught up in these theoretical ideas about the Fourth Amendment and privacy, and something changes. People start killing the baby. Everything else we can teach, but we need someone who will not kill the baby as a foundation to build on."

I smile and thank the interviewer as we wrap up.

It's been months since this interview, though I've recorded it here as accurately as I can recall. In that time my opinions on the Don't Kill the Baby doctrine have fluctuated time and again. Sometimes I think it's the clearest possible moral guideline. Don't Kill the Baby. How could any normal person disagree with that? Obviously you Don't Kill the Baby. What kind of monster lets the baby die? But then I think broader. Sure, Don't Kill the Baby when there's a Baby at risk. But where does this end? Does this mean Don't Kill the Baby, and it only applies when there is an actual, literal infant at risk? How often does that happen for the city to have an entire internal policy based around it? Does it really mean "fuck the Fourth Amendment" and we don't let "criminal scum" walk our streets unmolested? What about those criminal scum's rights?

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

I like freedom. I think it's pretty great. I don't think I like the idea of cops walking down the street, conducting warrantless searches without any kind of probable cause just because. But what if the cop is right. Do the ends justify the means? I don't think that officer had the right to search the wicker basket. There wasn't enough, not really. No reasonable articulable suspicion of the man being armed and dangerous to support a Terry stop and frisk, no exception to the warrant requirement at all that I can identify. Maybe, maybe exigent circumstances but that's a hard hurdle to clear. Ignoring state-level rules for the moment, exigent circumstances is poorly defined and instead is applied on a case-by-case basis which takes into account the "totality of the circumstances." Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141, 149 (2013). Which excluding the few clearly delineated examples of exigent circumstances (hot pursuit, preventing destruction of evidence, rendering emergency assistance) in practice means "fuck it, whatever the court feels is right." But of course, the detective in the exercise did find a baby in the basket. Any judge in the country would find exigent circumstances. But of course, the court can't use the finding of the baby as logic to support exigent circumstances. That's a post hoc rationalization, and we don't do that.

I don't ask myself these questions as a matter of law, not really, despite turning them over and over in my head and trying to brute-force the law to fit the outcome. I ask them because somehow I've stumbled upon a moral quandary that I can't seem to logic my way out of. Don't Kill the Baby. But freedom is important. But exigent circumstances. But no exigent circumstances. But Don't Kill the Baby. Round-and-round I go, never with a satisfying conclusion in sight.

I didn't end up accepting this job. Not for reasons related to their Don't Kill the Baby policy, there were other factors that made taking the job unfeasible. But the exercise has lodged in my brain like a thorn under a saddle. I turn it over and over again, and never quite come to an answer I actually like. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're not supposed to have an easy answer to this problem. Maybe the fact that it confuses and annoys and exasperates me is what it should be doing. Maybe I'm so over-educated I can't recognize a simple, boring, innocuous truth when it stares me in the face. Don't Kill the Baby.

Pokémon for Unrepentant Sociopaths: A Review of Reverend Insanity

94 comments - 2480 thread views 26d ago by self_made_human C'est la vie (ussri.substack.com)

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

1470 comments - 26958 thread views 11d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

1470

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

Shaming.
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
Recruiting for a cause.
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

A Depressed Shrink Tries Shrooms

58 comments - 1203 thread views 13d ago by self_made_human C'est la vie (open.substack.com)

Why Bother?

64 comments - 3254 thread views 28d ago by Dirty_DemSoc Registered Demoncrat (text post)

There are two comments here on the Motte that have, for the past month or so, been sitting amidst the 71 tabs I've got opened in my browser.

The two comments are fairly different;

The first is a more personal meditation on the human desire to 'be a good person', and how that may or may not align with the equally-human desires to 'fit in', and 'pursue Truth'.

The second is a political argument over whether Democrats/progressives/libs are the real hypocrites, and whether or not they were the ones to 'defect first' in the game of American partisan politics; pretty standard stuff around here, really.

The thing they have in common is that I've been intending to respond to them.

And yet, I haven't.

Part of this is due to a dynamic that ought to be familiar to anyone with a maladaptive relationship with deadlines- if you're late turning something in, the longer you wait afterwards to get around to it, the harder it becomes to ever actually do it; it's easy to put it off for a day or two or three, and before you know it, a week's gone by, and length of the delay in your response might raise some eyebrows when you eventually do respond. Repeat this cycle a few times, and eventually a month or two has passed you by- at which point, you might as well just not bother to respond at all- assuming you're even still in the same headspace necessary to give a coherent response, and that events in the meantime haven't made your response irrelevant, the other person's really going to wondering about your penchant for necro-ing old threads.

A larger part, however, comes down to a much simpler -and much less easily overcome- barrier:

Why bother?

In my very first comment on this site, I noted that the 'two screens' effect is very real, and that the picture that the screen the self-identified 'Red Tribers' on this site are watching is showing a very different picture than the one the few self-identified 'Blue Tribers' still active on this site are watching.

This isn't particularly surprising. For decades, Americans have been slowly but steadily self-segregating along 'tribal' lines; fewer and fewer of us spend much time interacting with other Americans radically different from ourselves. We might live in the same neighborhoods, frequent the same shops and restaurants, and be theoretically 'close' to each other (or not; the same self-segregating dynamic increasingly applies to physical locations as well), but it's increasingly rare for us to ever actually interact with our Others to any real extent.

Combined with the general shifts in how people interact with and perceive what are 'their' communities (triply so in the online age!), the balkanization of 'common' hobbies & interests, the fracturing of the media landscape, and the overall decline in common cultural touchstones and trusted authorities, the end is result is that nowadays its easier than ever for all of us to live in our own Bespoke Realities™. It isn't just that political polarization & disagreements are tenser & higher-profile then they've been in decades (though they are!); now, we no longer even need to have similar conceptions of what it is we're even arguing over in the first place!

I can rage over how Republicans are trying to destroy the government and intentionally harm millions of the worst-off Americans with their new tariff, tax, & budget idiocies- and you can scoff and dispute my entire framing, say how I'm being absurdly hyperbolic and hysterical.

You can denounce the large-scale concerted push by progressives to trans the nations youth; to turn them into Marxist-indoctrinated eunuchs conscripted as soldiers in the frontlines of the culture wars. I can roll my eyes and say there is no such phenomenon, and it's all a conservative bogeyman.

Etc, etc.

So in light of this situation, where we not only argue endlessly about the most basic facts of any given political disagreement, without either side ever having to concede to either the opposition's arguments, or even their basic worldview and underlying framing of the situation...

Why bother?

Why bother continuing to argue (and especially why bother continuing to argue online- an exercise in futility if I ever heard one!) when doing so is unlikely to change the other person's mind?

Why bother continuing to argue when the people I'm disagreeing with seem to have beliefs & experiences so wildly opposite of my own that I have to wonder if we're even living in the same country?

Why bother continuing to argue when people I disagree with just seem like they fundamentally can't be reasoned with at all?

And especially why bother continuing to argue when doing so is only likely to be """rewarded""" with mass-downvotes and distributed dogpiles by commentators on a forum you don't even really like, and only stick around on out of some sort of... IDK, perverse masochism, I guess?

Seems kinda pointless to me, tbh.

Despite my faint hopes, the dysfunction in this country appears to be acclerating.

We seem to be waiting on the precipice, holding our breath to see if the next few days heralds the opening salvos of the beginning of true, active civil conflict.

So I ask again- why bother? Is the time for talking over?

Transnational Thursday for July 3, 2025

9 comments - 473 thread views 8d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

What it takes to source USA-manufactured components and tooling for a chainmail grill scrubber

63 comments - 1766 thread views 1mo ago by sockpuppet2 (inv.nadeko.net) Edited 1mo ago

The website is a user-friendly proxy for youtube - if it has trouble loading the video, there's a link to the youtube page (or just edit the url).

You may have read things like Why Amazon Can't Make A Kindle In the USA, but what about a hand tool with no electronics, just a few materials, large tolerances, and a simple assembly process? The same problem of manufacturing engineering being exported for greater integration with manufacturing labor applies to that, too - according to this, American "tool and die" capabilities for small-scale manufacturing are gutted. (I suspect the this video overstates the problem, because the biggest obstacle came when the non-manufacturing engineer with a small budget wanted to contract out a specific need - molds for plastic injection molding, which the molder would have sourced from the PRC - and two other engineers lent their expertise for two different ways of manufacturing plastic injection molds, and he found a mold-maker, after he needed to change the material of a part, but it's still a big deal that there aren't more American vendors advertising these capabilities.) And the video didn't even touch the materials supply chain...

(The completed grill scrubber was priced at $75 and the initial batch sold out within hours, in case you were wondering.)

If you haven't read things like that Forbes series, you might not fully appreciate that it's very easy to have a false perception of what the manufacturing capabilities of other countries are, due to selection bias in exports; there's often a wide variety in the quality of goods produced in a given country and only a narrow range of quality that's economical for you to import. One famous example is the brand images of German cars in America, which only imports expensive German cars. Less famously, there's been a secular trend of American imports of Japanese musical instruments going from the bottom to the top of the Japanese (followed by other Asian countries') production ranges and many American musicians assume each decade's imports were a representative sample. But, since manufacturing labels reflect final assembly, increasingly complicated supply chains are mostly invisible to the consumer. It'd be interesting to know what this partnership would have done differently, if they had expanded their searches to Mexican and Canadian suppliers as an acceptable alternative to American suppliers (as a larger-scale business intent on "friend/near-shoring" would), but the value of purism vs general applicability is a "six of one, half a dozen of the other" type thing.

As someone who's pro-industrial policy and also anti-CCP, I think think the supply chain problem is one of those issues with a lot of misplaced attention, wherein globalization gets projected onto various political narratives, to the detriment of analyzing capability.

(Hopefully that's enough of a conversation-starter, without crossing into CW!)

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 6, 2025

197 comments - 2659 thread views 5d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

1734 comments - 30866 thread views 18d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

1734

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

Shaming.
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
Recruiting for a cause.
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

The New Vertigo Years

2 comments - 621 thread views 15d ago by Antonomon (novum.substack.com) Edited 15d ago

Escaping the Jungles of Norwood: A Rationalist’s Guide to Male Pattern Baldness

34 comments - 1409 thread views 21d ago by self_made_human C'est la vie (open.substack.com)

Wellness Wednesday for July 2, 2025

54 comments - 1125 thread views 9d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Friday Fun Thread for July 4, 2025

55 comments - 1630 thread views 7d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Aqouta goes to China part 1

26 comments - 3537 thread views 3mo ago by aqouta (text post) Edited 3mo ago

Preamble (pre ramble?)

Almost a year ago I married a girl who is either a first or second generation Chinese American depending on how you count people who came over as young kids. Over the years I have met many of her relatives, now my in-laws, that lived or made trips to the US. The time has come to meet those who do not and did not. To my great shame I do not speak Chinese.

We're going along with my wife's nuclear family. My mother-in-law and father-in-law, hence MIL and FIL, and her younger sister. The sister is 14 years younger than her and a natural born US citizen. The gap is a result of the one-child policy. While my wife goes by her Anglicized name, her sister prefers using her Chinese one. She's pretty sharp, doing her undergrad right now with plans of going to law school. She talks and acts like you'd expect of any American Zoomer. I think she feels her Chinese identity is a little more precarious and clings to it a little more tightly as a result.

The extended family is mostly in Nanjing and a little bit in Shanghai. The plan is relatively simple: fly into Shanghai through Hong Kong, take the train to Nanjing, meet people for a few days, train back to Shanghai, meet other people, then me and the wife are spending a couple of days in Osaka, Japan on the way back with an old buddy of mine. That's the short plan. The long plan is outlined in meticulous detail in Chinese on a Google Docs form by MIL.

This series of posts will be something like a travel log, or trog.

Hong Kong

The first few days are relatively uneventful. Me and the wife fly separately to Hong Kong. The flight is probably half white and half Chinese people. We sit separately and I don't sleep a wink, sandwiched between two other guys. The website hadn't been willing to accept our visas so I couldn't check in before getting to the airport, so we were left with the bottom-of-the-barrel choice of seats. Despite this, paying $25 for in-flight internet makes the flight fly by as I let the best social media slop our finest engineers can serve melt my brain into a timeless stasis. Time travel is real; it just only goes one way.

We spend around 13 hours in Hong Kong, most of them sleeping. We didn't have enough time to get out into the city proper but we did manage to grab a meal and explore the 7-11 in the airport. For European readers, as they are mostly a North American and apparently Asian chain, 7-11s are convenience stores, frequently gas stations. Think Apu's store from The Simpsons. In America they're not highly thought of, mainly notable for their "slurpee" carbonated slushy machines. However, apparently 7-11 has a social media presence in Asia unlike its presence in the West.

I was once told for international travel that if you're staying long enough in a country it is interesting to try their local Chinese food because it's so variable and the diaspora adapts the food to the local palate. Within Asia this is supposedly how one should think about 7-11s. We bought a couple of Hong Kong-specific pastries and Tsingtao beer. It's an opportunity to verify if I set up WeChat Pay correctly. The beer is a pale lager that I have had before in the States; it's crisp and refreshing.

Shanghai

The next morning we fly to Shanghai and take the local subway to our hotel near the main shopping district. When buying tickets we put one of our 100-yuan bills, worth around $14, in to buy our 8-yuan worth of tickets. The machine instantly shut off and declared itself out of order after dispensing the tickets. No change provided. We learned not to trust machines going forward but as far as lessons go this one was relatively cheap. Supposedly the hotel we stayed at was one of the places Nixon stayed when he did whatever it was only Nixon could do. I was assured our room was not wiretapped. Every time we stopped at a new hotel we needed to present our passports and they recorded our movements into some system. We had a few hours to kill as we waited for the rest of her family to arrive so we strolled down the shopping street to a place called The Bund where one can see a skyline over the bay.

The shopping street is huge and packed. Scattered about are college-aged Chinese people in cosplay. My wife says she doesn't think there is any particular event. It's a Saturday and people just do that sometimes. Every once in a while we see a young, attractive woman in some elaborate dress or makeup with a personal photographer taking staged photos. Where cross traffic is allowed on the strip, the roads are dominated by scooters.

The shops themselves extend three stories up for most of the strip that goes on for at least a mile and in places five or six stories up. It's easily three times as dense as Chicago's Michigan Ave. White people are still regular enough that my presence only attracts minor glances and increased attention by the street vendors. The shops are about an even mix between Western and mainland brands. The food is mostly mainland with a smattering of brands like McDonald's, KFC, and, to my surprise, Pizza Hut. Apparently, the localized phonetic characters for Pizza Hut translate to something like "home of the winners". Eventually, at around 10pm, her parents arrived and we went in search of dinner. We had reservations at a hotpot place they described as "reputable". There were probably ten hot pot places in a block and somehow this was one of the only ones with zero signs.

Her parents execute a basic strategy when going anywhere in China: they ask random people on the street where to go for their destination and go that direction until they run into another random stranger to ask. They prioritize police officers and workers but if none are available they'll ask just about any person on the street. This sounds like a viable strategy but so far the results have been significantly worse than using a mapping app. We spent probably 30 minutes wandering around a block, walking through alleys, asking random people where this specific hotpot place was. Eventually, I'm confident through the process of elimination, we tried an unmarked door beside a KFC and found an elevator to our destination.

For those who don't know, hotpot is a kind of communal meal where everyone sits around a hot pot—almost all Chinese names are this literal—full of various flavored broths. You dump things in to cook over time but most centrally you take your chopsticks, pick up some thin-sliced frozen meat and dip them in until cooked, usually 20-ish seconds. Then you dip them in a sauce of your own design and eat.

Racism against white people is usually tame and harmless. As long as it doesn't hold an accusation of wrongdoing I take it in stride. One exception is the idea that we cannot handle spices. This is a harmful untruth that has been used to deny me and my people the flavor we deserve. We subjugated most of the globe in search of spices, and yet our spice lust is denied. The staff at this hotpot place wore devil horns and served us a sour plum juice along with broth that was maybe mild.

Bellies full and bodies jetlagged, we made it back to the hotel. The AC in our room was busted but we were too tired to care and fell asleep quickly. The next day we woke up for the breakfast buffet. Like much of the city, the spread was half Western and half Chinese. The buffet was well attended and for the first hour there were two white guys in the hall and we were both wearing orange polos. After breakfast we walked through the People's Park. They have an advanced form of analog Tinder. There are hundreds or thousands of essentially dating profiles on laminated sheets of printer paper laid out on the path. There are sections for foreign matches and all sorts of categories. Some have phone numbers; some are tended by the prospective matches or, more commonly, their parents, uncles, or aunts. According to the wife, the women greatly outnumber the men. It wasn't clear to me why, given the sex imbalance should lean the other way.

Next we visit the Yu Yuan Park. It's a neat estate with essentially ornate 1700s-era meeting rooms and rock parks. The park is attached to a huge marketplace selling every trinket or bauble you can imagine. One of my quests was to find a couple of copies of Mao's Little Red Book as a souvenir for me and a buddy who I knew would also appreciate one. Unfortunately, the one shop that had them only had German and French versions. I want either a Chinese or English version. The in-laws offered to order one for me but there is a kind of vulgar poetry to haggling for one with a street vendor that holds a special appeal to me.

We grab lunch in the form of XLBs. These are soup-filled dumplings, in this case a crab meat version the area is known for. For good measure we also pick up a couple of pan-fried baos and spring rolls from another shop. It's a warm day so I pop into a 7-11 and pick up a couple of slurpees. They come in 12-ounce cups. China has advanced much over the last few decades but they are not yet ready for the 44-ounce variant available to more advanced nations. Maybe next generation. Slurpees in hand, we took the train back to get our bags from the hotel and then headed to the train station to take high-speed rail to Nanjing. We arrive early and present our passports at the gate to be recorded. When the train arrives, despite the seats being assigned, everyone boards the train in a disorganized rush that I don’t quite understand. The ride to Nanjing is smooth and impressive. I watch out the window as countryside zooms past. The Chinese countryside is not like the American equivalent. There are random clusters of a dozen or so identical 10+ story tall apartment buildings and a smattering of industrial buildings. There are no suburbs; stand-alone single-family homes are rare. Huge factories, complete and operating or under construction, dot the landscape.

Nanjing, the southern capital

We arrive in Nanjing and an uncle picks us up. He's high up in a media organization that, for reasons unexplained to me, owns the hotel we're staying in. His wife is a Party member. These are easily our wealthiest relatives in China.

The Chinese have something of a gift-giving culture. Our bags came over laden with gifts to give out. As a young couple, our obligations aren't so great: some Nike jackets or sweaters for aunts and uncles, slippers and melatonin for grandparents, more specific things for a handful of exceptions. It's somewhat interesting what mainland Chinese people want. Coveted are medicines with what is seen as superior American quality control, brand-name clothing, the kinds of nuts and ingredients one could get at any American big box store.

At the hotel we meet up with the wife of our ride and exchange some gifts. We received a belated wedding gift of several red packets bulging with 100-yuan notes. I feel a little uneasy about taking several thousand yuan from a literal Communist Party member. But she's friendly enough and I'm not here to fight that battle.

Dinner is a bit of an ambush that in hindsight we should have seen coming. We thought we just had normal reservations at the hotel restaurant but it ended up being something like a pseudo-wedding reception. I would have preferred to have dressed better for the occasion but it quickly became apparent that, besides drinking obligations, we were probably among the least important people at the event.

FIL took the head of the table as the head host, surrounded by the other elders of the family and then expanding outwards in accordance with tradition and pragmatism. Naturally, me and my wife were seated not quite at the opposite end, which itself is reserved for an important person, but at the approximate importance of a cousin who had brought her Pomeranian. This is good news; honor is an obligation and we were ill-equipped to bear it, armed only with my wife's vague recollection of tradition.

One thing we did know is that I was expected to drink. The Chinese drink of high occasions is baijiu or white alcohol and the king of baijiu is Moutai. Moutai is approximately 100 proof and drunk in thimble-sized glasses. It tastes and smells relatively sweet and is not cheap, running you around 1500 yuan (around $200) for a 500ml bottle. To waste Moutai is a grave sin. As a relatively young man and the newlywed, it is my duty to drink with every guest, every offered toast, and to continue drinking until the toaster stops.

When not drinking I sat next to a young man around my age who got an undergrad in Syracuse and was pursuing a PhD in computer security. He had opted to not drink anything and was one of the few people able to speak English. I asked what he wanted to do after he finished his PhD and he said anything but computer security. We ended up talking about board/computer games and a little bit into AI alignment. He gave a p(doom) of 95% and Shadowheart was his favorite companion in Baldur's Gate 3.

Some number of hours later, dinner was finished and the last of the guests filtered out and we were compelled to finish the last of the last opened bottle of Moutai. We set an alarm and passed out in the room for another breakfast buffet the next day.

At breakfast it's no longer just a rarity to see another white person. I am the only one. People are definitely looking. Still, the breakfast spread is mixed Western and Chinese. There seems to be a Huawei convention of some sort at the hotel as we leave. Time to visit the wife's two remaining grandmothers and extended family in the countryside.

We leave behind most of the luggage and call two taxis to take us about an hour and a half into one of those clusters of identical ~10-story buildings. We're now well outside the kind of places a Westerner without family would ever find themselves. Locals stare, and kids keep staring even after you stare back. Some of them have never seen a white person in the flesh. I'm not offended by this at all, just an interesting experience. No one is aggressive or rude, just curious. Almost no one here speaks any English unless they've retired from elsewhere. I'm extremely dependent on my wife who does her best to keep me up to speed on conversations. We only stop briefly at her grandmother's house; we'll be back later. First we need to visit her grandfather's grave on her father's side. He passed away a few years ago and my wife has been there since but you're supposed to do it every April if you're local. And if you're not, you just do it whenever you visit.

The cemetery is row after row of essentially upright tablets with the ashes just beneath them. Husband and wife share a tablet; there is a picture of each and the patrilineal offspring's names are laser-etched on them. I don't think there is a way for my name to end up on one of these but I wonder if a Chinese man marries a Western woman how they deal with Latin alphabet names. We decorated the tablet with flowers and plants then took turns kowtowing three times while addressing the dead. It was fine to use English. I introduced myself and thanked him for his part in creating the woman I loved. Then we went to a stall nearby where we lit a fire and tossed fake money to be lit so that he will have money in the afterlife. There’s every variety of bills including good old greenbacks. I was worried that the Chinese afterlife might not accept counterfeit bills so I snuck a real 20-dollar bill into the pyre.

One thing that has fascinated me about Chinese culture is trying to square Chinese Communist ideology with a culture that at every possible angle seems to celebrate success and laud becoming wealthy. I like these people. They strike me as spiritually more American than most of the people I've met in Europe. American rightists would find themselves more at home here than American leftists.

After we finish up we go to meet my FIL's grandmother. She's in her late 80s and my wife, who is a psychiatrist by trade, responded to a question of whether she had early-stage dementia by saying it was definitely not an early stage. Before she forgets who I am she is either able to grasp that I work with computers or in a bank but can't seem to accept their union. When she believes I work at a bank she insists that must mean, as a perk of employment, I get free breakfast, a state of affairs she approves of.

She lives in a grouping of houses somehow tied to some shared ancestor. Everyone in the area seems to be a great aunt or uncle. From the outside the homes look kind of slummy but the interiors are clean and well maintained. Behind her living space is a corridor that is covered but exposed to the elements which leads to a shed and a room that is half dedicated to a chicken coop where she sources fresh eggs and roosters to eat. One unlucky rooster was selected earlier that day to form two of the several dishes we were served for lunch shortly after arriving. Beyond the coop there is an acre or so of well-maintained garden. Last time my wife visited she said they only had an outhouse for a toilet but since then they must have installed a septic system. Most of the people there have scooters or little electric cars to get around.

Lunch is served with a bottle of baijiu and we are joined by a few other family members. Among them is a great uncle who is also in his late 80s and has been deaf and mute since what was described as an antibiotic incident when he was a kid. Despite these setbacks he is in excellent health and appears to do most of the upkeep around the house. After successfully responding to a few of his toasts he takes a liking to me and I feel a kinship with another man who can understand very little of what is said around him. We drink through a bottle of baijiu and my great uncle attempts to retrieve a second bottle from the other room. He nearly achieves success, to the objections of the younger generation, but is eventually disarmed. Although relieved to not be drinking any more at lunch before being made to drink at dinner, I couldn't help but root for him. Eventually we wander out and then are waved into another relative’s house for tea. Supposedly an aunt and uncle but I have no idea how many degrees removed. The man is a retired doctor who used to head a hospital. MIL insists that a while back everyone was moving from the countryside to the city because the entitlements were much better in cities but there's been a reversal in favor of cleaner air and maybe something to do with removing taxes on grown produce and the addition of a farm subsidy 15 years ago. The doctor has what is described as a classic Chinese sword which he claims to use for tai chi and also for protecting himself from bad spirits. It forms a part of a traditional Chinese wall.

After we finish drinking tea there we walk out and FIL shows us around where he grew up while we wait for a ride back to MIL's apartment building. There is a pond he used to catch frogs and fish in as a young kid, under the not-so-responsible supervision of deaf and mute great uncle. There is a sign that says you're not allowed into it anymore for safety reasons, damn liberals. Feral cats are abundant and we run into 4 cats hanging around some trees while two of them work on making a few more. There are plenty of people out and about and I definitely draw some attention.

Back at the MIL's grandma's apartment we have another meal and another bottle of baijiu. An aunt and uncle with their 10-year-old kid join us. The kid practices a little English and welcomes us to Nanjing. He's full of energy and eats quickly. After an hour or so he is sent to the other room to do homework while we continue drinking. Some of the conversations as they're translated for me are almost comically familiar. One uncle notes that not everyone really needs to go to college. The trades are a good career path for many and aren't encouraged enough. Another uncle mentions that the rich have an unfair leg up in schooling.

We receive a few more gifts. I get a set of Buddhist prayer beads made of a black wood that smells nice. The set comes with a scroll that explains in Chinese the significance. My wife gets a fat Buddha bracelet. Supposedly this is a particularly fat version of Buddha that is able to absorb all the bad things in the world into his enormous stomach. We also receive some paintings that are claimed to be from a famous ancient artist and come in official-looking packets. He paid twenty yuan for each one and he is the only one that seems to be convinced they aren't forgeries. I later learn one of his favorite pastimes is buying dubious items on a Chinese bidding site. In any case, they were definitely made by a Chinese artist which makes them authentic enough for me.

MIL, FIL, and sister-in-law will all sleep at grandma's. Uncle drives me and the wife to the nearby hotel that he has a connection with where we stay the night.

The next day we wake up and after a quick breakfast at grandma's we go to MIL's grandfather's grave to repeat a similar ritual. On the way MIL points out the area she grew up and the land that her grand father used to own. The story goes that before the cultural revolution her grandfather got really sick and needed antibiotics. Hard to come by in semi rural China in I think the 50s? They ended up selling a bunch of land off to buy them only for him to die anyways. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the family might have fared worse during the revolution if they still owned all the land.

This time we have more company and a relative who is a Buddhist monk chants while we burn not just the paper money but a set of clothing and some paper representations of gold bars and a tea set. The monk had originally been part of an order but during the Cultural Revolution they shut down his group so he got married and had kids. At some point the restrictions slackened and he's back to performing rituals as a job.

During the part where we kowtow and speak to the dead I said it was an honor to be introduced and that if fortune is favorable we'd introduce him to another on our next visit. Every kid or parent that did the ritual devoted at least some of their dialogue to asking for good grades. After the ritual we all went to get lunch at a restaurant where, of course, more baijiu was shared.

I'm publishing this on the road to our next destination. I will probably edit this when I get home and add pictures either in a substack or X post. I'm trying to give more of an impression than a polished essay.

part 2

Transnational Thursday for June 26, 2025

0 comments - 186 thread views 15d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025

175 comments - 2619 thread views 12d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

problem travels to Vietnam

13 comments - 4093 thread views 2mo ago by problem_redditor (text post) Edited 2mo ago

DISCLAIMER: This is a very long post, it is the length of a novelette. I've edited the post to break it up into sections, hopefully that makes it easier to get through.

Hanoi:

It was 11pm, and my sister and I had just exited the airport into what felt like a more spacious, open-air version of Kowloon Walled City. The noise and chaos at the exit was palpable, and rows of people stood in front of the doors clutching handwritten placards bearing names of loved ones or clients they hoped to meet, all while touts amassed just outside, aggressively pitching taxi rides to any unfortunate travellers who wandered too close. Intense humidity pressed down on us, and a thick, choking smog permeated the air, almost as if cigarette smoke were blanketing the entire city. We had made it. At long last, after several flight delays and a long layover at Tan Son Nhat international airport, we were in Hanoi.

We booked a Grab to our hotel. The app gave us a vehicle number, but finding the actual car was another matter entirely, since the road outside the airport was a churning sea of cars and motorbikes. Our driver sent a photo of his location, and after several minutes of weaving between vehicles, clutching our backpacks and trying not to get flattened, we finally spotted his car. As we slowly pulled away from the airport, we noticed him quietly tapping out a message on his phone, and a moment later he ran it through a translator and handed it to us. It was a request in Vietnamese to cancel the ride in the app and pay him directly, presumably so he could avoid Grab's commission. We declined so as to not give up the reassurance of the app’s tracking, at least not five minutes into our first ride. He said nothing in response and drove us across the Red River, past rows of shacks and eateries, and into the winding alleys of the Old Quarter, where he finally dropped us off at our hotel. We collapsed onto the bed in our room upon arrival.

This was our very first proper experience in Vietnam, and it is probably the most intense culture shock I have ever felt. It goes without saying that travelling here without the help of a guide to arrange things on your behalf can be very stressful, and if you are sensitive to smells, sounds, crowds, heat, humidity, have terrible executive functioning or are generally easily made overwhelmed and uncomfortable, Vietnam is not for you. It's by far the craziest travel experience I have ever had - in both good and bad ways - and I certainly don't recommend it for anyone looking for a typical relaxing vacation. If anything, you'll need a vacation to relax after your vacation. But if you're willing to stick through the intense sensory overload, you'll see and do some of the coolest things you'll ever experience, stuff that you will be talking about for years after you've done them.

Hanoi has a storied history as the capital of Vietnam. In 1010, Emperor Ly Thai To relocated the capital from Hoa Lu to the location of the modern-day city, calling the new city Thang Long ("Rising Dragon"). It has remained the capital throughout Vietnamese history, excepting a brief period in the late 18th to early 20th century when the Tay Son Dynasty moved the capital south to Hue. During French rule, Hanoi was the capital of all of Indochina, and it has a large concentration of historic Vietnamese and French-style architecture as a result, as well as many spectacular and eclectic amalgamations of the two architectural styles. The city has developed over the years into an anarchic mish-mash of churches, temples, shacks and skyscrapers that barely seem to fit together, but somehow work to create a coherent and characterful urban fabric.

The Old Quarter is probably the most famous and recognisable part of the city, taking all of these aspects of the city and turbocharging them to an extreme. Established during the very inception of Thang Long, it is a historic district of 36 streets where craftsmen from villages around the city would assemble to sell goods, and even now each street is still named after a specific trade or guild, often starting with the word "Háng", the word for "wares" in Vietnamese. Many of these bustling streets continue to specialise in the same crafts they did centuries ago, but the area has modernised in a wonderfully haphazard way. Ancient temples packed with priceless relics sit shoulder to shoulder with crumbling French colonial facades, wedged between quirky little shops and cafes that look like they’ve been stacked on top of each other with zero planning. The Old Quarter practically invites you to check out every little nook and cranny, and large trees festooned with colourful lanterns cast some much-welcome shade over the pavements and roads while you wander around the maze of craft streets.

Of course, exploring is easier said than done. Sidewalks in Hanoi are virtually unusable - not only will restaurants and cafes arrange dinky little plastic tables and chairs on the pavement as an unofficial extension of their seating area, people will park their mopeds in rows on the sidewalk and even do their washing there while watching the world pass by. As a pedestrian, you're forced onto the very sides of the roads, alongside a veritable cornucopia of motorcycles and cars and bikes and rickshaws that endlessly jostle for space while honking loudly at each other. There is a lot of honking, too, since the road is so crowded that people honk not necessarily out of irritation and impatience, but simply use them in the same way one would a bicycle bell to let others know where they are. Crossing the road is much like playing a real-life version of Frogger - no one will stop for you, not even at pedestrian crossings; you just have to pick your moment, step out with confidence, and trust that the swarm of motorbikes will weave around you as you go (note: wait for cars, they will not stop). This can raise your blood pressure to dangerous levels at first, but you get used to it; by the second day I found myself crossing the street without stressing too much. There is always a base-line sense of anxiety, though - it's possible to encounter a motorcyclist that will not bother to move aside or account for where you're going, and things can occasionally get terrifying. If in doubt, just shadow a local. They move through the street with the nonchalance of someone who's done this a thousand times - because they have.

On our first day, we mainly just passed through the Old Quarter's buzzy streets while on our way to the complex of sites in and around Ba Dinh Square, the place where Ho Chi Minh first read the Declaration of Independence. Probably the most recognisable of these sites is the HCM mausoleum, a grey granite structure that serves as the resting place of the famous revolutionary, with his embalmed body entombed within a coffin inside a marble chamber. It's a hilariously extra thing to do, especially considering that his wish was to be cremated and to have his ashes placed within three urns in the north, centre and south of the country, but they preferred to follow in the footsteps of the USSR than honour the wishes of their beloved leader I suppose. The entire complex and much of the city surrounding the mausoleum can only be described as a weird communist fever dream, with screens playing videos of revolutionary material, big posters of "Uncle Ho" plastered everywhere, propaganda shops selling pamphlets of his face and viciously anti-American slogans meant to promote his surreal cult of personality, and so on. They’ve even enshrined the cars he used. I'll grant that the mausoleum itself is quite impressive, though we didn't do much in it - we basically stood in a line and moved slowly towards the mausoleum under the watchful eyes of soldiers, saw the embalmed body of the man himself, and left. Nearby we also visited the bright yellow Presidential Palace and the stilt house in which he lived from 1958 to 1969, yet another closely guarded relic which we were allowed just enough freedom to examine for less than a minute.

Frankly, it is such a weird place to be. We left with the strange sense that Ho Chi Minh was more than just a leader; rather, the man was the equivalent of Vietnamese Jesus. What made it even more uncanny is that there are apparently rumours that the body inside the coffin might not even be real, and some who were inside the Vietnamese military report that the actual body looks a lot less spry than the possible wax figure contained inside the mausoleum. I don't have an opinion on this, but I recommend it just for what a fascinating look it is into an extant modern-day cult of personality; one that's still in the process of being shaped.

We popped into a cafe outside the mausoleum and grabbed a coconut coffee (which was excellent, by the way), then moved on. The next place we decided to hit up was the ancient Temple of Literature, a Confucian temple founded by Ly Thanh Tong in 1070. It's a historic site of serious importance in that it hosted the country's first national university, one that continuously ran for 700 years straight and educated many bureaucrats, nobility and other elite members of Vietnamese society. We entered the temple through a beautiful white stone gate, and passed through five exquisitely landscaped courtyards filled to the brim with Confucian statuary and historic turtle steles honouring those who passed the royal exams. The temple was bustling with both tourists and graduating children when we visited; I suppose there's an informal tradition of bringing those who have passed their exams here to honour them.

We then headed northeast so we could visit the remains of the Thang Long imperial citadel, established during the very founding of the city in the 11th century. It was built on the former remains of a Chinese fortress dating back to the 7th century and was the seat of the Vietnamese court for centuries before it was moved to Hue. Initially, it was built in three concentric circles consisting of a defensive fortification, an imperial city, and an inner forbidden city. The Ly and Tran court expanded and renovated the complex year upon year, and after the Le Dynasty expelled Ming China from Vietnam they renamed it Dong Kinh and ordered repairs to the citadel. Even after the tumult of the Mac Dynasty and the lengthy civil war between it and the Revival Le Dynasty, the structure of the citadel was largely preserved. After the destructive war between the Nguyen and Tay Son, Gia Long (the founder of the Nguyen Dynasty; more on him later) ordered a large-scale reconstruction of the Thang Long citadel, rebuilding much of it in their own syncretic Vauban-inspired style. Much of the extant structures in Thang Long date to this period, though we found not too much left when we visited since most of it was razed during French colonisation to make space for barracks. The remaining major structures were the impressive Doan Mon Gate, the Flag Tower, Hau Lau palace and the North Gate, with much of the site being an archeological complex containing many remnants from the previous dynasties. Large amounts of ceramics and other artefacts have been found during archeological digs, spanning many centuries of Vietnamese history. We visited all of the main areas, as well as a small museum within the complex meant to showcase some of the finds and describe the storied history of the former imperial centre.

After seeing the citadel, we walked northwards towards the West Lake and passed a scenic concentration of French-style architecture on our way there, including one of the most important and beautiful Catholic churches in Hanoi: Cua Bac Parish Church. It's a large custard-yellow church built in front of the North Gate, designed by French architect Ernest Hebrard in eclectic style with strong hints of art deco decoration. He also incorporated traditional Vietnamese stylistic elements into the design of the church, making it a fascinating example of French-Vietnamese syncretic architecture. It's situated in a nice tree-filled lane that's absolutely covered from top to toe with gorgeous villas; so much so that it almost feels like walking in a Wes Anderson movie.

There are a good number of important historic temples dotted around the shores of the West Lake. The first one we visited was Quan Thanh Temple, a relatively quiet 11th century Taoist religious site featuring a mammoth 9-tonne bronze statue of Tran Vu cast in 1677. It's a monumental piece of Vietnamese artistry; in my opinion the altar is the most spectacular one in Hanoi and it's my single favourite religious site in the entire city for that reason alone. The next temple we visited, Tran Quoc Pagoda, was a famous Buddhist temple situated on an island in the middle of the West Lake with a history dating back to the 6th century, making it the oldest temple in Hanoi (though, most of the extant structures date to the 17th century). It boasts a spectacular 11-story stupa that's 15 metres in height, with each story containing a gemstone statue of the Amitabha Buddha.

On our second night in Hanoi, we visited Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. It's a theatre that specialises in water puppetry shows, a traditional Vietic performance art that boasts a history stretching all the way back to the 11th century. Such shows were originally conducted in wet rice farms, involving small groups of performers who moved beautiful lacquered puppets through the waist-deep paddies while musicians played Vietnamese orchestral music and sung chéo operatic folkstories, and these performances can still be found throughout the country in pagodas and theatres. For our part, we were highly impressed by how these performers used the watery setting to its fullest extent, complete with very creatively designed puppets capable of floating and bobbing through the pool and even spitting water out at each other. There was a small English audio guide to the show which we paid for, though in retrospect I don't think it was very necessary - the folk stories are mostly told through the puppetry itself, and the plots are simple enough that one can usually grasp it on their own. Most of these stories paint humorous and whimsical pictures of rural Vietnamese life, and unless you're a total cynic I think it's impossible not to be at least a little bit charmed by it.

We woke up the second day and ate complementary breakfast in the top floor of our hotel, then left to explore the Old Quarter properly. It quickly became one of my favourite places in Hanoi - there’s always something interesting to find within these streets, and it’s very worth ducking into little holes in the wall to see what’s inside. When we were there we visited many quiet temples nestled within the urban sprawl, the oldest of which was the 11th-century Bach Ma Temple, its gilded, dimly-lit halls still perfumed with the sweet aroma of incense. Other times we found charming little outlets like a cafe hailing from 1946 which was the first cafe to serve Vietnamese egg coffee, a strong Robusta coffee made sweet and rich with a whipped cream topping made from raw eggs and condensed milk (as an aside, Vietnamese coffee is generally amazing, unsurprisingly so for a country that produces so much of it). There were also many historic residences hidden within the scrawl of shacks such as 87 Ma May ancient house, a well-preserved Hanoian house from the late 19th century complete with a traditional store and household altar. I was pleasantly surprised by the Old Quarter, really; I've heard Vietnamese call it a "tourist ghetto" but it's popular for a good reason - there's a bottomless depth to these old craft streets that's truly unparalleled. It feels like you could live here for years and still keep discovering new things within it.

At the south end of the Old Quarter is Hoan Kiem Lake, a natural freshwater body surrounded by leafy, tree-filled lanes. According to a Vietnamese legend, Emperor Le Loi (the rebel leader who defeated Ming China and established the Later Le Dynasty, the longest running Vietnamese dynasty in history) was granted a magic sword by the Dragon King, which he used to wage his wars and reclaim Vietnamese sovereignty. Later on, a turtle god from the lake acting on behalf of its master asked for the sword back, which he graciously returned, and from then on he renamed the lake to its current title, which means "Lake of the Returned Sword". There are many towers and temples in and around the area, the most recognisable being Thap Rua (Turtle Tower), an iconic structure in the lake that's been rebuilt many times ever since its construction in the 1400s, with the current structure built in 1886 in honour of Le Loi.

There's also Ngoc Son Temple, a delightful little religious site on an island with a bright red bridge leading to it. It was built in the early 19th century and originally devoted to the Three Sages, but soon the Vietnamese national hero who repelled the Mongol invasions, Tran Hung Dao, was incorporated into the temple as well. We entered through a colourful gate that guarded the entrance to the complex, which led to a small but atmospheric collection of golden-red buildings with scenic views of the lake. There are many parts of Hanoi that are very beautiful, and they're like calm oases within the sheer chaos that typifies most of the city, though they can get weird at times. In one particularly strange temple hall, we managed to find the preserved remnants of giant turtles from Hoan Kiem Lake, meant to pay homage to Le Loi's heavenly encounter.

In Vietnam, it's never possible to get too comfortable: when walking around the lake there we came across a number of pushy touts that tried to sell us cyclo rides. This got irritating quick, but it was also interesting since I did notice they were not uncommon on the streets - they've long been phased out in many rapidly-modernising Southeast Asian countries where they're mostly considered a relic of the past, but apparently not in Vietnam - I suppose traffic in many Hanoian streets remains so congested and slow that using a rickshaw is still a viable method of transport, though it seems to be something tourists primarily use at this point. In general, we dealt with them by ignoring them and walking away; they'll take the hint and won't bother you after a short while.

However, an unpleasant aspect of Hanoi that's much harder to ignore (at least for those who are sensitive to noxious smells) is the at-times intense air pollution. Your experience probably depends on the time of year you visit, but it can get bad, and towards the end of our second day we were feeling very faint and needed to pop into Lotte Tower just for the filtered air. Seriously, if you can't take that, I suggest skipping Hanoi, or at most spending one day in the city just to see what it's like. There's a lot of beautiful historical buildings and artefacts in it as well as many charming streets, but the dense smog that often blankets the city can make one feel like all these priceless relics and bits of culture have somehow been cast into hell. So consider where your comfort level lies and decide accordingly.

Ultimately, my experience with Hanoi was one of blistering contradictions; it's a city that's packed to the brim with intoxicatingly rich heritage and culture, run by a highly propagandising communist government (on paper at least) that seems intent on promoting an intense cult of personality, but in spite of that the city itself can feel hilariously overwhelming, polluted and anarchic, without regard for any concept of "collective good". It’s almost like a Vietnamese version of Victorian London, except even stranger because it feels like a bunch of wet-rice farmers have been unceremoniously thrust into industrial modernity; many habits like washing dishes on the cramped sidewalks and using motorcycles as an automated extension of bikes seem to be directly cribbed from village culture, except they’re doing so in an overcrowded metropolis absolutely not suited for these practices. I have no idea how anything gets done in this ant farm of a city, but Vietnam is the fastest growing economy in Southeast Asia and has managed to monopolise a large amount of world manufacturing so clearly they're doing something right. I really wonder how they’ll continue to modernise as time goes on.

We returned to our hotel once we were done sightseeing (the sheer overload was seriously tiring us out by this point) and climbed into a bus booked for us by our accommodation; the driver promptly took us out of the crowded streets of Hanoi and turned into a country road that led deep into the rice farms of rural Vietnam. The ride took about two hours, and it was maybe the most bumpy and loud ride I've ever had on any vacation. Our driver drove into the night, all the while honking at motorcyclists and cars as he went, speaking loudly on his phone, and rolling down his window to talk to random people - at one point he stopped and repeatedly yelled something at us in Vietnamese; we had no clue what he was saying. He continued on to our destination anyway and we heaved a deep collective sigh of relief. When you're in the Southeast Asian countryside, you certainly don't want to be left stranded on the side of the road.

He stopped the car in an isolated, unpaved road in the middle of nowhere, and we stepped out into the darkness. A slight drizzle had begun, so we ducked into a small complex of lakeside bungalows and asked for our room. The man at the counter was very welcoming to us - maybe the first person in all of Vietnam so far that hadn't been completely and utterly incomprehensible - and made some friendly conversation before handing us the keys to our room and showing us how everything worked. We ate some food at the small dining area they provided, then hunkered down in the cosy wooden room and got ready to sleep. Before we turned off the lights in the bungalow, we heard an animal crawling on our roof.

Trang An:

The next morning, we woke up with sun shining on our faces; pulling down the blinds revealed large limestone peaks reflected in a shallow lake. We were now deep within the Trang An landscape complex, a stunning karst-filled region of the Red River Delta that looms large in the country's history, having been continuously inhabited for 30,000 years straight. Bowls of chicken pho came to us as soon as we sat down at the dining area, though it featured very light broth that was barely spiced.

Once we were done with breakfast we called a Grab car, which slowly made its way through a maze of bumpy, poorly maintained roads to drop us off at the entrance to Mua Caves, a site that's much more famous for its breathtaking lookout over the limestone mountains and rice paddies than it is for any of its caves. This is a popular site to visit, and the area around the mountain contains some overpriced amenities meant to gouge exhausted tourists. The route to the top involved a steep climb up 500 steps, and we did the trek in suffocating heat and humidity that made us feel like we were going to drop dead at any second - the final section of the climb leading to a dragon sculpture at the top of the mountain involved an unfenced scramble up steep rocks in blazing sun, it was so precarious that I'm surprised it hasn't killed someone yet. Though the views were well worth it; as we climbed the panoramic view over the landscape complex became ever more beautiful, and we witnessed a number of wild goats climbing the steep cliffs along the trail we were following. Upon reaching the bottom of the mountain we grudgingly dragged ourselves into one of these overpriced stalls and grabbed a drink. We were so parched that even after leaving the site a man in a shack hollered at us selling sugarcane juice and coconuts and we happily accepted. He hacked apart coconuts on the side of the road for us, which we polished off with gusto.

Note that very few Vietnamese restaurants or cafes have air-conditioning at all - they mostly just give you a cold drink and turn a fan on you, which is not sufficient to deal with the blazing heat and humidity that the entire country experiences in early summer. I can't imagine how it would feel during the hottest part of the year; according to one of our Grab drivers North Vietnam reaches 40+ degree temperatures at the height of summer, which would be absolutely debilitating especially considering how muggy the country is. We found ourselves soaked with sweat every single day of the trip, and it was necessary for us to grab a drink or two after every stop if we didn't want to collapse from exhaustion.

After recovering we grabbed another car to Thai Vi Temple at the south end of the landscape complex. It's a 13th century temple that was built on the site of the former Vu Lam Palace Complex, a military base constructed during the Tran Dynasty to prepare for attacks from the Mongols. The temple pays homage to the old Tran kings, and it's a serene, minimal complex with a front gate flanked by two stone horse statues. The courtyard is surrounded by symmetrically placed tropical ponds and bell towers, and it looks out to a main hall supported by many carved stone pillars. Its interior features many gilded idols of Vietnamese royalty, and when we visited there was an old man inside playing a traditional instrument that granted the temple a tranquil atmosphere. Thai Vi is not the most important temple in Vietnam nor is it the one with the most impressive artistry, it's in fact one of the smaller temples, but in a country where there are shrines around every corner this was one of the most atmospheric ones.

We walked out of Thai Vi on foot, past small little shrines and graves nestled deep within the limestone hills, and grabbed a coconut coffee as well as some spring rolls from a roadside cafe with a bucolic view of the paddy fields. This didn't satiate our hunger, so we also got ourselves a northern style banh mi from the nearby town of Tam Coc (it was tasty and enjoyable enough after a day of exploring, but was rather plain; as is most Northern Vietnamese food). After that we made our way to Bich Dong Pagoda, a set of cosy Buddhist temples nestled into a mountainside with a history dating back to 1428. We walked through a path that passed through a large gate surrounded by rainforest, leading into a series of lovely cave temple halls with a large array of Buddhist statuary tucked behind the stalactites and formations. I enjoyed this temple a lot as well; it was very ethereal and offered views of the forested limestone hills as we climbed up to the caves. The Trang An landscape complex in general has some of the most alluring temples in all of Vietnam, and Thai Vi and Bich Dong alike are no exception.

The next day we decided to take a boat tour around the rivers and waterways of Trang An. We got into a line to board the boats, and were surprised at the sheer insanity of Vietnamese queues - there was no sense of personal space whatsoever, and said queue felt less like a line and more like a competition to see who could cut in front of others the most successfully. To get anywhere in the queue, we had to be very aggressive, and even then it wasn't a smooth or quick experience. There was a woman behind me holding a child, and she stood so close that her kid was kicking me in the back. Every time we moved she would walk ahead so that the tip of her shoe was touching the back of mine; I attempted to compensate by placing my right foot far behind me but eventually just let her through the queue because I was so fed up with having to watch where I stood. This kind of Molochian tragedy of the commons is something that seems to be common in many parts of Vietnam, and while it's fascinating to witness it's also endlessly frustrating and isn't the easiest thing to get used to. Vietnamese aren't stupid about it either; they keenly understand that it isn't ideal, and many of the people we talked to mentioned these as problems.

Things were much more manageable once we actually went on the boat tour; the crowds dispersed and we had space to ourselves. Everyone went in groups of four, and since we were a bit apprehensive about what being in a small boat with Vietnamese would be like we picked up some foreigners for our group then climbed into a rickety boat with a local man who would be rowing us. He immediately tapped me on the shoulder, then passed me - the only guy on the boat - an oar. Apparently, I paid for the coveted experience of doing half (realistically less than a third) of the work of rowing myself, the guide, and three other women to our destination.

So we put on our lifejackets and I got to work. Some other members of the tour intermittently participated in rowing, but I was doing so for almost the entire three hours of the tour, to the point that my arms felt like they were going to fall off. The landscapes we saw were worth the effort, though; we rowed through lush little waterways flanked on each side by towering peaks, ventured into sinuous half-flooded caves decorated with small formations, and visited stunning isolated temples that could only be reached by boat. The Temple of Cao Son was the first one we came across, and what greeted us when we clambered onto shore was an impressive wooden three-story temple hall, complete with gold finishings and a towering statue of Cao Son, the god of the mountain. There were also many ancillary halls nearby, the most spectacular of which was festooned with intricate golden canopies and had a gleaming pagoda-like structure at its very core. Every single one of these temples were framed by breathtaking views of mountains and rainforests, and we spent so much time there that it irritated our guide, who firmly told us "Temple, 10 minute" once we got back into the boat.

We eventually stopped again at a picturesque pagoda jutting out from deep inside the waters of the channel, where he pointed at our cameras and said "Photo". The two French women who were accompanying us on the boat ride snapped a shot, and when it came to our turn we tried to say it wasn't necessary. In response he just turned the boat in a more favourable direction and pointed again. Throughout the tour he treated the entire affair in a doggedly prescriptive way, like he was ordered to check off items on a list; you will stop at this site and you will take the approved amount of time and you will take a photo. It's frankly a bizarre way to treat tourism, and one gets the sense that any kind of remotely responsive customer service culture does not exist in Vietnam at all. Again, it feels like a bunch of rural rice farmers discovering that tourists exist and you can make money off them, but without any real idea of how to cater to them. I'm actually inclined to say it adds to the authenticity of the experience.

The next place we docked at was Suoi Tien Temple, a tranquil complex with an elegant two-story main hall dedicated to Quy Minh, a god of land and water that features in Vietnamese legend. Conscious of how long we were taking this time, we timed ourselves while exploring the temple complex and even managed to grab a few pictures despite the time limit, though the deeper chambers of the temple containing heaps of sumptuous folk-religious Vietnamese artistry did not allow photos. We got back to our boat, without objection from our guide, and ventured into yet another narrow waterway shadowed by mountains.

Our last stop was the Vu Lam Royal Step-Over Palace, founded on yet another section of the Tran kings' military base when they were preparing for the Mongol invasion. This is one of the most picturesque sites in Trang An and is probably the largest temple complex we saw while on the boat tour. The many halls of this site enshrined many statues of what I believe to be Tran Dynasty monarchs, as well as large protector deities that stood guard at the temples' entrances. Probably my favourite temple interior of the whole trip was situated at the very back of the complex, featuring a colourful room with multiple ornate maroon and blue canopies draped around an idol. I can't find too much information about the history of the current modern-day complex, but I'm guessing it's not too old; there's Quoc Ngu writing on a number of the temples so it's likely these temple halls were built in commemoration of the old military base. I wouldn't imagine that wooden structures would persist very well in the muggy Vietnamese climate anyway; even stone and concrete tends to suffer damage quickly when exposed to these tropical conditions.

Once we left the boat, we bought some tea, desserts and pomelo from a shop nearby the ticket office. They offered us a small bag of spice and salt to dip the pomelo segments into, and eating it like that made it far more of a savoury affair. It's interesting! I'm actually not sure why this method of eating fruit hasn't caught on more outside of Southeast Asia, it scratches a strange itch I didn't even know existed. We polished off our meal then jumped into yet another Grab car which took us to the Hoa Lu Ancient Capital, the site of an early Vietnamese cultural, political and religious centre during the late 10th century which played host to some of Vietnam's first independent imperial dynasties; the Dinh, founded by Dinh Tien Hoang, and the Early Le, founded by Le Dai Hanh.

So, some historical context: Dinh Tien Hoang was born as Dinh Bo Linh in Hoa Lu, where he became a military leader at a young age. He saw the establishment of the first semi-independent Vietnamese dynasty (the short-lived Ngo Dynasty), but it was an unstable state, simultaneously unable to gain recognition from the Chinese state and unable to subdue its own regional chiefs. This led to a situation known as the "Anarchy of the Twelve Warlords", where all the regional Vietnamese warlords in practice ruled their own autonomous parts of the Red River Delta with the Ngo kings themselves holding little real power. Dinh Bo Linh effectively conquered his way through each regional warlord's territory one after another and paved the way for the first truly independent unified Vietnamese state, establishing the nation of Dai Co Viet and setting the capital at Hoa Lu. The mountainous limestone topography of the area was strategically chosen so as to make the capital impregnable to attack, with any gaps between the mountains covered by earthen walls ten metres high and fifteen metres thick. Some sections of the wall still exist, and have been excavated by archaeologists.

In 979, Dinh Tien Hoang and his son Dinh Lien were murdered in their sleep by Do Thich, a eunuch attempting to usurp the throne (subsequently, his body was cut into small pieces). After this, it seemed the natural successor would be his surviving six-year-old son Dinh Toan. However, Dinh Tien Hoang's wife and now empress dowager to Dinh Toan, Queen Duong Van Nga, wanted the regent Le Hoan (posthumously titled Le Dai Hanh) to become emperor instead so that Dai Co Viet could have an emperor capable of withstanding the Song invasion, who were trying to take advantage of the political tumult in Dai Viet to reassert control over the area (note Duong Van Nga later became his empress). So in 980 Dinh Toan was deposed and power was transferred from the Dinh clan to the Le clan, marking the beginning of the Early Le Dynasty. In early 981 Emperor Taizong ordered general Hou Renbao to advance into Dai Co Viet, who scored some early military victories over the Viet armies due to their overwhelming manpower, but the Song were decimated by malaria and started infighting. Le Dai Hanh staged an ambush at Chi Lang and managed to capture Hou Renbao and eradicate half of the remaining Song armies, forcing a retreat. Upon return, they were executed in Kaifeng for their military failures.

While all this was happening, Paramesvaravarman I of the southern Hindu-Buddhist state of Champa was also trying to capitalise on all the tumult. On the advice of Ngo Nhat Khanh, an exiled former Vietnamese warlord that ruled during the Ngo dynasty, he sent an expedition into Vietnam in late 979, but it was scuttled by a typhoon; Ngo Nhat Khanh drowned along with the fleet. After repelling the Song invasion, Le Dai Hanh attempted to send envoys to Champa, but Paramesvaravarman I detained them, which incited retaliation from Dai Co Viet. The Viets invaded Champa in 982, killed Parmesvaravarman, and sacked the capital of Indrapura, seizing much territory for themselves. Frankly, it's comical just how tumultuous and eventful Vietnamese history is. It reminds me of that gameplay/lore meme: Vietnam gameplay; rice farming. Vietnam lore; basically Game of Thrones.

We pulled up to the site of the ancient capital and noted there wasn't much left of the old political and ceremonial centre; most of what there was to see on the site were extant 17th century temples dedicated to Dinh Tien Hoang and Le Dai Hanh, along with their tombs (constructed later as well), which I would say is still of some historical interest. The temples had a particularly solemn vibe to them; Dinh Tien Hoang's temple was framed by a unique obelisk-like gate and featured a monumental stone pedestal of a royal throne at the front of the main hall. His tomb was situated on a hill which we had to climb, something that was excruciatingly unpleasant in the hot muggy weather. Le Dai Hanh's temple was just a short walk away and it was decorated with small courtyards and rock gardens, with stately banyans framing many of the temple halls. Behind Le Dai Hanh's temple stood a small and most importantly mildly chilly museum displaying some remnants from the old dynastic capital. There was a fenced-off hole in the floor showcasing an archeological site with some brickwork from what used to be a massive palace, which is pretty much all that's left of the original structure. Outside of the temples there were women aggressively marketing hand fans and hats to people, they came up to us and tried to offer products to alleviate the heat. It was boiling, so my sister actually did buy a hand fan which she used throughout the rest of the holiday.

That night, we visited the largest town in the area, also named Hoa Lu. We entered a janky local restaurant and ordered some bun cha and banh cuon, which came out in no time at all. The local style of bun cha featured cut up blocks of rice vermicelli, which we paired with some herbs and grilled pork and dipped into a zesty sauce. It was good, but we preferred the banh cuon, which used soft flat rice noodles instead and just had a better texture. After that we went for some che, a broad category of Vietnamese coconut milk-based dessert soups - the style we got included large heapings of durian and jellies and it was divine. We also had some durian crepes, which were unbelievably light and fluffy.

The next stop in Hoa Lu was the Ky Lan lake park, a series of walking streets centred around a lake festooned with glowing lanterns. There were many stores in the area selling snacks and paraphernalia, and while it was definitely tourist-oriented we didn't really mind. In the middle of the lake there were a number of modern pagoda-style temples full of intricate relief carvings which were crawling with people, and interestingly enough despite their recentness and lack of traditionality there were many people using them as active religious sites; I saw many locals standing in front of the idols and briefly praying to them. I think this is a fairly fun short excursion in Hoa Lu at night; it's not a main attraction but it's a buzzy and festive part of the town with some pleasant things to see.

We spent our last day at Trang An visiting Bai Dinh Pagoda, one of the most substantial Buddhist temple complexes in Southeast Asia. The old part of the temple is located 800 metres or so from the larger new temple, and features a collection of shrines dating back to the 11th century. The new part of the temple was built in 2003, and boasts multiple records such as the largest gilded bronze Buddha in Asia, the tallest stupa in Asia, the largest arhat corridor in Asia, and so on. It was built in traditional style by artisans from nearby craft villages, and it is gigantic. We travelled around the complex with the help of some electric buses, and it still took us the entire day to explore the whole thing. At some point, we were offered a herbal foot bath, which... involved us soaking our feet in warm herb water for twenty minutes; it did make our feet feel softer though I'm pretty certain the herbs had basically no effect. Probably my favourite part of Bai Dinh was the ancient pagoda towards the back of the complex - we entered the old temple through a gate surrounded by forest and walked up a large flight of stone steps towards two cave temples decorated with a large array of Buddhist statues. One of them contained a subterranean lake surrounded by carvings of dragons and draped cave formations, filled with smoke and incense and wreathed in a warm glow. It was very dreamy, I quite enjoyed my time there.

At this point we were rather templed out, so we returned to our accommodation. Our Grab driver took us past the limestone hills of Trang An one last time, stopping every now and then as cattle crossed the road, and when we got back we boarded a transfer which took us all the way past the centre of Hanoi to Noi Bai airport. We stayed for the night in the airport in a VATC sleep pod which was barely large enough for the two of us, mostly consisting of a bunkbed, a bedside table and an air conditioning unit. Every single time either of us needed to relieve ourselves, we had to take the keycard out of the slot and head to the airport toilets, which cut all power to the sleep pod and meant air conditioning, lights, etc would be shut off for the sibling who remained in the pod while the other was taking a piss. This was not a problem when both of us were awake, since we could leave the keycard in the pod and just knock on the door to get back in, but in the dead of night when everyone was asleep this wasn't a particularly good solution. So the pod would just be left without power, getting hotter and hotter by the second until the other member returned. This was probably the most claustrophobic accommodation we had the entire trip and I'm not sure I fully slept that night.

Phong Nha:

The next morning we boarded a flight to Dong Hoi in central Vietnam, and as soon as we landed we were picked up by a vehicle we'd arranged for beforehand. As we drove out of the city, the narrow strip of coastal plain that characterised most of Central Vietnam gradually gave way to dense, mountainous terrain near the border with Laos; along the way we passed seemingly endless streets lined with worn, crumbling stalls. Eventually our driver pulled into a small cluster of shacks along a tranquil river, framed by towering rainforest-covered peaks. Without a word, he left us there. We were now in Phong Nha, and this was the point when the trip transformed from "extremely fascinating if a bit jarring" into "once-in-a-lifetime experience". This place is one of the highlights not only of Vietnam, but of all of Southeast Asia.

In spite of its isolation, Phong Nha has a very tumultuous history. During the Vietnam War it was a staging point for the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the supply line that kept soldiers supplied with personnel, weapons and food in the US-occupied South Vietnam. Supplies would be stored in the caves of the area and reloaded onto vehicles or bicycles for the trip south below the DMZ; some of them were even used as hospitals, such as Phong Nha Cave which doubled as a hospital and munitions store. PAVN soldiers would spend a few weeks of final training at Phong Nha before heading to the front. Due to its critical nature for the North Vietnamese forces, the US conducted aggressive aerial bombings of the area and defoliated it with tons of Agent Orange so as to strip the trail of natural cover. Hell, it might have even been the most heavily bombed area in the entire country during the war, which is saying something considering just how much damage Vietnam generally suffered. Russia and China only amplified this chaos by supplying anti-aircraft artillery to counteract the American aggression. Unsurprisingly, this area contains some of the highest concentrations of unexploded ordnance in Vietnam.

Just from looking at the town now, one would never guess that anything at all had happened here (unless you wander into places like Bomb Crater Bar, which is exactly what it sounds like). For the most part we found a sleepy, picturesque hamlet with a main street that looked more like a cluster of shacks than any kind of town centre; most of the shops were basically deserted. We spent the first day in Phong Nha doing nothing but hopping between cafes in the area. Our first meal featured coconut coffee, mango smoothies, and tomato tofu, which we devoured at a table overlooking the Son River. As we ate, boats drifted by lazily, dwarfed by the towering mountains on either side. Later, we stopped at a small, tranquil restaurant for cocktails and smoothie bowls. To our surprise, it was run by a Latvian man who handled the bar while his Vietnamese girlfriend handled the kitchen. He was friendly and talkative, sharing stories of his travels through countless countries and his time with a circus, and at some point he opened a bar in this quiet corner of Vietnam. He admitted he wasn’t sure if the business would succeed, since it was still early days.

As we walked through the town, we encountered cattle randomly lazing in the sun and chickens pecking their way through the weeds near the streets. Children returning from school rode home on bikes and waved at us as they passed. Not a single trace of the sheer carnage that transpired here seemed to remain. We slept soundly that night in a small cabin surrounded with the sounds of crickets, rather winded from all the travel we'd done.

The next day, we were picked up from our accommodation by Oxalis Adventures, our adventure tour operator that would bring us deep into the jungles and caves of Phong Nha. In order to even be accepted for the tour, we had to describe our trekking history, send photos of ourselves on a trail as proof of prior trekking experience, provide documentation that showed we were able to run three kilometres in thirty minutes by means of a fitness app, and more. Before going to Vietnam, we were scrambling to buy the required apparel, which included items like quick-dry long-sleeved T-shirts and pants and socks, as well as shoes that would be able to dry out easily once submerged in water (so, no Gore-Tex).

We climbed into their bus, and inside was our Vietnamese tour guide, some safety professionals and six other people who were also going on the tour. They dropped us off at their office, where they ran us over the basics and provided us with backpacks, helmets and water bottles as well as waterproof containers which our phones, power banks, etc were supposed to go into every time there was a wet section. In addition they also provided us with a blue bag where we could place anything we needed for the campsite, so items like extra clothing, toothbrushes and so on would be put inside the bag and left in their office, and porters would separately carry them to the camp for us (we later learned that, before they came to Oxalis, these porters were actually ex-smugglers who transported illicit goods across the Vietnam-Laos border). After the briefing was over, we assembled at the entrance of their office and introduced ourselves to the rest of the group. Everyone there was a couple except for us, and almost everyone (save for one person) was German. I won't share everyone's names, instead I'll refer to them by their jobs - the relevant people involved were Male Statistician and Female Therapist, Male IT Project Manager and Female Art Curator, and finally Male and Female Chemical Biologists. This would be our group for the next two days.

Having completed all the preliminaries, we were then taken deep into the jungles of the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. Our tour guide pointed out various points of interest along the way and told us a bit about the history of the region - according to him, there was a point in time where Phong Nha was bombed for twenty days straight by the US. Later on in the drive he pointed out a barren patch on one of the mountains where an American plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile; it turned out that the plane was full of concentrated Agent Orange and from then on nothing had grown there. He also offered some facts about the ecology and climate of the area, and took some pains to illustrate to us how severe floods were during the wet season - we passed over a huge bridge suspended dozens of metres above the forest floor which he said could get fully submerged at certain points of the year. In addition, he also noted we would not be able to come here on our own without a permit, since the VCP engaged in covert activities within the jungle, the nature of which nobody really seemed to know. Our driver pulled up at an unassuming point on the side of the road, and we grabbed our backpacks and headed into an untamed jungle alongside a tour guide, some safety professionals, and a cadre of ex-smugglers. A jungle that played host to classified Vietnamese government operations and was likely filled to the brim with unexploded ordnance.

The first sections of the trail leading to the mouth of Nuoc Nut Cave were rather leisurely. It was flat and shaded with rainforest, and there were little white butterflies fluttering everywhere along the length of the trail. It looked a bit like a scene from a Disney movie. Our guide stopped at the base of a large trunk he called "sau"; it's a tree in the Dracontomelon genus that produces sour fruit, which the Vietnamese pair with sugar and use in drinks and desserts during summer. I spoke a bit to Male Statistician during this leg of the hike, from whom I solicited opinions on academia, the peer review process and the replication crisis.

After approximately 40 minutes of walking, we made our way across a dry riverbed and climbed around some rocks to reach a gaping cave mouth, with a spread of food laid out on a blanket inside the cavern. We clustered around the blanket to see what they were offering; it was make-your-own spring rolls and banh mi. I took a thin piece of rice paper and stuffed it with herbs and meat and tomatoes, taking care not to overfill, and ate it with some sauce. The group discussed over lunch where they'd come from, where they were going to in Vietnam next, their prior travel experiences before this, and what they did as a job. I liked these people a lot. They were quite an interesting bunch; talking to them didn't make my brain want to shut down like it usually does in group settings where the level of conversation gets dragged down to the lowest common denominator. I felt like pretty much all of them actually touched on topics I wanted to hear about, the conversation at one point even delved into CRISPR-Cas9 and pharmaceutical research because of Male Chemical Biologist.

Once we'd finished eating, we ventured deeper into the cavern. Getting any further than the massive cave mouth required us to crouch down and crawl our way through a relatively tight passage; according to our tour guide you could at one point walk into the cave but floods had clogged the deeper passages with debris over time. The ceiling was covered in small mucus tendrils from predatory larvae, which we were told was a relative of the Australian Arachnocampa glow-worms, except these ones did not emit light. Eventually the passage opened up into a sizeable cavern dominated by rimstone and flowstone formations, and on the ceiling of the cave there was a small opening which only let in a trace amount of light; it had mostly been filled in by rocks ever since its formation. Our guide stated that this might be the original entrance to the cave, since it was the highest known entrance and the cave would have formed from the top down.

We clambered further into the cavern over fairly easy terrain. At one point, we turned off all our headlamps just so we could see how utterly pitch-black the entire cave actually was; it looked the same regardless of whether our eyes were open or closed. Then we progressed to the wet section of the cave, where we moved our phones, chargers, and power banks into the waterproof case, and eased ourselves into the cold water (which was a welcome break from the heat). I braced myself for the shock of submerging my entire body in the water, then proceeded to swim through the dark flooded passage with only my headlamp illuminating the water ahead. There were a couple of these wet sections, they were extremely fun to navigate. I'd never swam in a cave before this, and I can easily say that I would do it again.

Troglofauna seemed to be everywhere in Nuoc Nut Cave. It wasn't just the "glow worms"; cave crickets scuttled under our feet and bats could be found in many chambers. We had been told about a specific cave-dweller that locals called the "Hairy Scary Mary", a species of cave fauna that predated on spiders within the cave and possessed the body of a centipede atop the legs of a spider, and at some point apparently some members of our group did see it. Our guide also pointed out a fern that had been swept into the cave months ago, and in spite of the lack of light or nutrition in the cave it was still green; slowly dying, but somehow still green.

Eventually we reached a remote chamber deep within the cave, where a waterfall cascaded into a secluded pool, and the guide invited us to clamber down the rocks into the water. I removed my slingbag and carefully made my way down, trying not to slip. And... I swam under a cave waterfall. I've travelled through four continents, and out of everything I’ve done in all my years of travel, this moment stands out as the biggest rush I’ve ever experienced.

Somewhat giddily, we climbed out of the pool and ducked into a crawlspace, where we had to crouch down and sometimes pull ourselves through crevices in the rock. This led to the most extensive wet section of the cave yet, which required us to swim against the current of the subterranean river through a series of sinuous passages; we eventually found ourselves in a chamber with a massive vertical opening we would have to climb out of. So we strapped on harnesses, connected it to a rope via carabiners, and began climbing out of the cave on slippery, water-eroded rocks. There were a number of times I almost lost my footing doing this, and I think if we had tried to do it unassisted it would have been a disaster. Even with the security of a harness there was always a way to slip and hit an unprotected part of our heads on a large slab of rock. Worse, there was the lingering fear that we would accidentally disconnect ourselves; we were provided with two carabiners (one red, one black) and we were only supposed to disconnect one at a time when trying to progress to a new section of the rope, but there was a yellow clasp further down the line that could disconnect both carabiners from the harness at once.

Our group pulled ourselves out of the cave and were met with the sight of a campsite. The porters were waiting for us alongside the blue bags we'd left with them, and we quickly stripped off our wet clothes. We enjoyed some tea around a warm fire and made casual conversation as the chefs cooked up some dinner at a portable kitchen, and after our journey the aroma of the food was almost overwhelming. As soon as the dishes were laid out, we crowded around the table and dug in.

After dinner, we returned to the site of the campfire and made conversation until nightfall. These little white butterflies from earlier were absolutely everywhere in the day, but things got even more picturesque once it got dark. Since it was approaching their mating season, fireflies started making their way into our camp, their small flashing lights occasionally zipping through the air around us as we talked and enjoyed platters of peanuts and roasted sweet potatoes around the fire. It was a very cosy experience, surprisingly so considering where we were.

Probably the most interesting campfire stories came from our guide himself, who talked about how Oxalis' tours developed - it seems most of their existing process accreted through trial and error. They originally didn't use to have toilets, rather, they invited visitors to dig a hole in the ground and cover it up once they were done. But Westerners weren't able to Asian-squat, and so they often fell into the hole and ended up sitting in their own poop. In order to rectify this, Oxalis provided sticks that visitors could hammer into the ground so they could hang onto it while squatting, but too often people didn't hammer them in deep enough and the sticks would get yanked out of the ground, which sent them tumbling into the hole anyway. It was a Belgian guy who first proposed that they introduce toilets at their campsites, and he did so because he was sitting in his own shit. He sent them mockups of toilet designs once he was back in Belgium, it appears it haunted him so much he had to rectify the problem no matter what.

The changing rooms were yet another part of the tour they had to iron out early on. Their tours involved a lot of campsites inside dark cave chambers, and so they offered a light for use within their changing rooms. However, it turned out that when they switched on the light their naked silhouette would be visible to everyone. On one particularly memorable trip to Son Doong Cave, there was a woman who turned on a light inside a changing room - one that happened to be situated right in front of a cavern wall, causing a massive silhouette of her body to be projected onto the side of the cave. The second this happened, everybody fell quiet in an instant. Suffice to say that when we were there, they were no longer providing lights.

Our guide also shared stories from his time in Northern Vietnam, particularly around Ha Giang, where he discovered that they eat extremely weird shit. Almost literally shit, in some cases. There's a culture in northern Vietnam, the Nung, that eats half-digested poop cut out of an animal's small intestine. He once ate it unknowingly and noted that it had a bitter taste; after learning what it was, he lost his appetite for days. With a laugh, Female Chemical Biologist joked about how so many of these bizarre tales always seemed to involve things like poop, bodily functions or nudity.

The next day, we changed back into our still-damp clothes and descended through the same narrow opening we had climbed out of the day before, using our harnesses. If anything, going down that infernal fissure was even more difficult than the ascent. It felt far less controlled, since moving with gravity made it easier to lose footing and slip. At long last we all made it back down to the cave floor, and headed into another part of the cave known as Va Cave through a cramped, waterlogged passage. We all stopped to rest in a large room with many flowstone formations draped from the ceiling, with water surging around the small outcrop we were standing on.

Once we had regained our energy we pressed on further into the cave, through waist-deep water and some precarious scrambles. Eventually, we reached an enormous, multi-tiered flowstone formation that seemed to stretch endlessly upward. We were informed that we needed to climb it. So we connected ourselves to the rope provided, and began to precariously scale the formation, which was extremely vertical and offered little in the way of hand- or foot-holds. The most effective method of traversing this formation turned out to be leaning back, letting the rope hold our weight, and carefully shimmying along the slick wall using only our feet. If any of us had accidentally disconnected the carabiners at this point, we would have fallen quite a long distance to the cave floor. After that technical climb we had to undertake an arduous walk on the top of rimstone terraces, which was caked with mud that made it easy to slip.

We made our way to the lip of one of the terraces, and beyond that we could see a surreal forest of ghostly tower cones, each one the size of a human. These formations, by the way, are extremely rare and exist only in two caves in the world (the other one being in Thailand). They're not stalactites and aren't formed by dripping water, and it's not exactly clear how they form - the current working theory is that the standing water within each terrace pool creates small calcite rafts which sink as soon as they become too heavy, and the accretion process over time forms cones about as high as the lip of the pool. Climbing over the lip of the terrace, we found ourselves in the midst of these cones, standing solemnly in the darkness of the cave like a natural terracotta army. Special ladders and metal steps had been placed across the interior of the terrace so as to not disturb the fragile cones, and we followed them to two platforms where we could get a good look at these formations. It is by far one of the most otherworldly things I have ever seen in my life.

At this point we were all exhausted, so we retraced our path to the campsite again, performing three climbs along the way. We ate lunch, then walked back to the bus through a much tougher path through the forest, which involved us scrambling over a hill that seemed more like a tangle of roots and soil - at one point Female Chemical Biologist got a photosensitivity-induced migraine during an aggressively difficult part of the scramble and needed to stop. But eventually we reached the bus which took us back to the Oxalis Adventures office. Every member of the group was granted a medal for finishing the adventure tour (which grants a discount for any other Oxalis tour), and we took a shower at their office so we could scrub off all the muck and grime from our caving expedition. It was from there that we took our transfer to our final location.

Hue:

Our driver continued deep into the night. He dropped us off at an alley where we walked to our homestay, and it was here that we were greeted by a friendly-but-overly-effusive woman behind the counter who gave us some passionfruit juice. She presented us with many maps of Hue and provided a huge number of recommendations on where to go. Initially we thought she might have received commissions from the places she was recommending, but later it became clear she really just wanted us to see her city. We politely nodded at everything, then went to our room (which we had to walk up four flights of stairs to reach) and collapsed.

Hue is a city that has perhaps seen even more carnage than Phong Nha, having been the site of a massacre perpetrated by the Viet Cong and PAVN during the Tet Offensive; 5-10% of the entire population of Hue was killed via methods like torture and entombment, and mass graves continued to be found around the city for years after. It's considered the worst massacre of the Vietnam War, and it happened during a mere four-week period where they occupied the city - it's honestly incredible to me that Hue isn't more of a hellish shithole after an event like that. Central Vietnam has repeatedly been a border zone throughout the country's history and as a result many of the cities and towns there have rather tumultuous stories. It's also a city that experienced an unexpected ascendancy during the late 18th century, becoming the very last imperial capital of Vietnam before the Viet Minh intervened and forced the last emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty to abdicate.

So, some later Vietnamese history: During the 18th century, the Later Le Dynasty was in a tailspin, with the Le kings only holding a ceremonial role. The Trinh lords of the north, who ruled from their capital of Thang Long, and the Nguyen lords of the south, who ruled from Hue, fought for control of the country. These lords were referred to in Vietnam as "Chua"; a title comparable to that of Shogun in Japan, and they played similar roles as de facto ruler of their respective territories. Eventually a peace was brokered between the two families, and a treaty was drawn up formally establishing the Trinh and Nguyen territories... which was broken by the Tay Son peasant revolution. The years leading up to it had been characterised by natural disasters, famines and the collapse of foreign trade, which led to a major social crisis and lots of instability across Dai Viet. The Nguyen lords were forced to abandon some of their southwards expansionary conquests by the Siamese king who launched a war to regain control of Cambodia, and there were several political crises within the Nguyen court during the time as well. Heavy taxes and local corruption during this period spurred three peasant brothers in Central Vietnam to self-style as champions of the people and incite a rebellion against the Nguyen lords. The Trinh saw that the Nguyen were weak, and entered into the affray; it ended with a massacre of the Nguyen lords. One nephew, Nguyen Anh, managed to escape into Siam. The Tay Son then conquered the Trinh, and consolidated their power over all of Vietnam, the capital of the newly unified country now being Hue.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Anh had seen his entire family be killed by the Tay Son and was amassing power in an attempt to reclaim his lands. He rebuilt his support base in the south and befriended a French bishop, Pigneau de Behaine, who believed that supporting Nguyen Anh in his retaliation might help him gain concessions for Catholics in Vietnam and help its expansion in Southeast Asia. Pigneau helped him assemble additional French forces, and Nguyen Anh eventually managed to gain control over Saigon. When the most notable of the Tay Son brothers died, he took advantage of the situation to attack northwards, and gained support from the Qing state (who were reacting to a Tay Son massacre of ethnic Chinese). He quickly conquered all of Vietnam in the early 19th century, overran the Tay Son, and in an act of sweet revenge murdered the surviving Tay Son leadership and their families. Nguyen Anh crowned himself emperor of the newly established Nguyen Dynasty, under the reign name Gia Long, and built a large citadel in Hue on top of the old city used by the Tay Son. As I said, Vietnam gameplay; rice farming. Vietnam lore; basically Game of Thrones.

On our first day in Hue, we made it a priority to visit the city's historic citadel. As our Grab car made its way through the streets, we saw that much of Hue was still enclosed by the original Vauban-style walls and moat (note: apparently this citadel has an absolutely mammoth perimeter of 10 kilometres), with motorcycles and cars having to pass through the original fortress gates in order to gain access to the inside of the citadel. Inside lay the old Imperial City, which we were planning to visit. We stepped out of the car and walked into the grounds of the citadel, where we were greeted by a spectacular gate that marked the entrance to the imperial city. It was called the Ngo Mon, or Meridian Gate, and it was very visually striking; an elaborate red-and-yellow pavilion stood above a series of gigantic stone arches that seemed to tower over virtually everything else in the area. We bought our ticket at a small office just outside of the imperial city, and walked through the imposing gate.

Within the walls of the imperial city lay a stunning palace complex filled with landscaped ponds and frangipanis. We were staring at a courtyard that led straight to the historic Thai Hoa Palace (Throne Palace), considered the pinnacle of Vietnamese imperial architecture. It was a single story building designed in traditional Asian style, boasting a roof adorned with intricate filigreed artwork and finely wrought sculptures of dragons. Inside lay a red-and-gold throne hall, wreathed in endless golden canopies; the walls and pillars were covered with carvings of Vietnamese poetry alongside depictions of dragons and clouds. Hue possesses by far the best historic architecture in the entire country, and the citadel is probably the most recognisable and famous of these sites.

The Imperial City was massive, and we traversed it until we were worn out and couldn't explore anymore. We visited big red temples dedicated to the thirteen emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty, saw elegant rock gardens framed by bonsai and graceful wooden pavilions, and more. There was even an original Vietnamese royal theatre within the complex (Nguyen Dynasty court music is still played there to this day, but unfortunately they weren't performing when we visited the citadel). To the back of the complex stood the reconstructed Kien Trung Palace, a stately palace built in a mix of Vietnamese, French and Italian Renaissance styles. Its overall architectural structure almost looked like something one might find in Europe, except it was covered from top to toe in intricate mosaics in the shape of dragons and other Asian iconography. Much of the architecture in the city does this - it syncretises traditional Vietnamese aesthetics with French elements, and forms quite a unique style I can easily say I've never seen anywhere else.

Outside the city, we grabbed a ridiculously sweet and fresh pineapple on a stick (yet again we were given a spice mixture to dip the pineapple into, this time we opted not to use it) and made our way to the Hue Museum of Royal Antiquities. It featured many artefacts from the Nguyen Dynasty, from ceramics to thrones to artwork. The museum was fairly small and we were absolutely exhausted by this point, so we took a Grab to a restaurant in downtown Hue where we were served some great food. We ordered some bun thit nuong (vermicelli and grilled pork with fish sauce), banh khoai (seafood pancake wraps) as well as banh bot loc (tapioca dumplings) and found them to be very tasty - in general we tended to like Central Vietnamese cuisine far more than we did the food in the North. The North seems to have a tendency to underflavour things, perhaps this fits Western palates more but as Southeast Asians ourselves who are more used to heavily spiced flavour profiles we found it to be a bit plain.

We found walking around Hue a bit more relaxing than Hanoi. There were an unbelievable number of temples in the city, with every street seeming to have at least one, and virtually every dilapidated shack we came across possessed small altars for people to pray to. It's not like there were no jarring parts to it - it was still Vietnam, motorcycles were still common, but the air was much better in this city, and crossing the street was far less hassling (apart from one time we accidentally stumbled into a firework display celebrating the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon; motorcycles were clustered in the street there and it was insane). People also seemed nicer and less cold to us in Central Vietnam in spite of all the shit that had happened to them in recent history, sometimes to the point of being a little overbearing. One thing that didn't change - there were still touts around downtown Hue who would pester us to take their rickshaw rides; it seems this occurs in all of Vietnam. Ignoring them continued to be the best policy.

On our second day in Hue we hit up the mausoleums of the Nguyen Dynasty emperors, situated south of the city centre. The first mausoleum we visited was the Mausoleum of Emperor Tu Duc, the last and longest-reigning pre-colonial emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty. It was built in 1867 and is considered one of the best examples of a royal tomb in Vietnam; it used to be a palatial retreat for the royal family, and its construction required so much corvee labour and extra taxation of the populace that it formented a coup. Upon entering, we were welcomed by a leafy, landscaped pond teeming with koi fish and adorned with many elegant pavilions; I thought this was a very finely wrought garden that rivalled virtually any other in East Asia. Situated up a flight of stairs was a simple temple complex, and to the north of the gardens and temples was the site of the actual mausoleum. This section was the most striking, with a grand stele housed in an ornate pavilion, flanked by statues of mandarins and elephants. Behind the stele stood a gate that marked the entrance to Tu Duc’s tomb where his sarcophagus lay.

Just 11 minutes' walk from the Mausoleum of Emperor Tu Duc was the Mausoleum of Emperor Dong Khanh, which I actually liked even better than Tu Duc's. It was a smaller complex, but it was far less touristed and actually possessed even more spectacular architecture, at least in my estimation. The interior of the Ngung Hy Dien, the main temple hall, was decorated in red and gold architecture similar to that of the Imperial City's throne room - but it also had colourful stained glass windows which filtered all light that entered the temple. The tomb site was incredible as well, featuring many gates and stele pavilions decorated with intricate mosaics. I do think anyone who visits Tu Duc's tomb should also visit Dong Khanh's tomb, I wouldn't recommend doing only one. They're very close together and they complement each other very well.

After visiting both these mausoleums, we were rather fatigued from the perennial heat and humidity in Hue - the city seems to have awfully bad weather even for Vietnamese standards, being deathly hot in the dry season and flooding often in the wet season. So we took a break and ducked into a number of cafes where we grabbed some salt coffee, and visited a restaurant that served us a spread of traditional Hue cuisine; the banh beo (steamed rice cakes with shrimp and crispy pork rind) in particular were amazing. We spooned some fish sauce over it and ate it as is.

The next stop was the Mausoleum of Emperor Khai Dinh, which was the smallest mausoleum we visited that day, but also the most unique and spectacular. It's also by far the most recent of these mausoleums, having been built over a period of 11 years from 1920-1931 by two monarchs that reigned during a period of French indirect rule, and it used modern construction methods to achieve a traditional feel. The architecture is a strange syncretic blend of Vietnamese and French influence that seamlessly incorporates the two styles into something completely unrecognisable, and it is incredible to witness. We pulled up and gawked at the exterior of the tomb, which was a multi-level structure made from darkened, weathered concrete in a surprisingly Gothic manner, but it would only get stranger from here. Once we entered the interior of the tomb we found an explosion of colourful ceramic mosaics and canopies, alongside an impressive painted ceiling featuring iconography of dragons and clouds. In the very centre of the tomb stood a gilt-bronze statue of Khai Dinh, with his actual remains interred eighteen metres below the statue. It's really something. Many of the historic sites in Hue represent the best 19th and early 20th century architecture I've seen anywhere in the world (feudalism lasted for a long time in Vietnam), and if you are ever in the country and are interested in history or architecture at all you can't skip Hue.

Finally, we ended our day at the Mausoleum of Emperor Minh Mang, probably the most accomplished of the Nguyen emperors aside from Gia Long. He expanded Vietnam's borders to its greatest extent in history, annexing large parts of Cambodia and Laos as well as completely extinguishing the southern Champa kingdom (really Vietnam owes much of its current borders to the Nguyen). His mausoleum is probably the most simple and elegant of all of them, with all the monuments aligned on a east-west axis surrounded by large landscaped ponds. There's a lot of finely wrought pavilion architecture in this one that's framed by large frangipani gardens and yawning courtyards, I enjoyed it a lot but unfortunately his actual tomb to the back is blocked off from the public. Still, there's a lot there to chew on.

We were a bit mausoleumed out by then, so on our final proper day in Vietnam we decided to visit some of the traditional garden houses and temples north of the Perfume (Huong) River running through Hue. We took a Grab ride to An Hien Garden House, built in the late 19th century for a daughter of Emperor Duc Duc. The entrance to the garden house featured a small gate that framed an intimate forested path; it led to a tranquil house fronted by a tropical pond covered in water lilies. There was a small Asian orchestra on the site playing traditional Vietnamese music in a pavilion, and we sat and listened to them for as long as they would play - it was a very peaceful vibe. Once they finished their performance, we tipped them and left the garden house for our next destination.

The streets north of the Perfume River are probably the most pleasant part of Hue. As we strolled along the banks of the river, we came across endless temples and garden houses - there is really no shortage of temples in Hue, but even in a place filled to the brim with them this part of the city had a uniquely high concentration of historical and cultural sites. At one point, we saw a small ceramic museum along the road, called the "Huong River Antique Pottery Museum", and decided to pop in. Inside, we saw yet another old garden house adorned by tropical plants, complete with many household Buddhist and ancestral altars. We visited the museum towards the back, and saw lots of small rooms and hallways filled with antique ceramics.

In a gesture of hospitality, we were offered tea and a selection of cookies (apparently all homemade using traditional recipes). The man who operated the pottery museum joined us for a friendly conversation. As it turned out, his grandfather was a mandarin from the Nguyen Dynasty, which explained how he had come to inherit the garden house. The pottery found in the museum had all been dredged up from the depths of the Perfume River, and at some point an archaeologist had visited to date and catalogue all the items they had discovered. We then asked him what he thought the best places to visit in Hue were and what his favourite royal tombs were, and he quickly responded "Gia Long Mausoleum". Now we absolutely had to go there. After enjoying most of the tea and cookies, we got up to head to our next destination. Before we left, he invited us to take the remaining cookies with us for the road.

We walked further west to the next stop: Thien Mu Pagoda. This pagoda, built on a small hill overlooking the Perfume River, actually predates the citadel itself. It was established in 1601, built on the spot where a legend states that a "celestial lady" appeared and asked the local lord to build a pagoda to control underground forces and dominate the region. The most recognisable thing about this temple is the Phuoc Duyen, an imposing 21-metre seven story tower built in the 1800s which we saw as soon as we approached the temple complex. The pagoda also had a pretty stripped-back main hall where a monk was striking a big bronze bowl, juxtaposed against very ornate and lush rock gardens populated with koi. Probably the most unexpected thing we found in the temple was the enshrined car of Thich Quang Duc, the monk who self-immolated in protest of Ngo Dinh Diem's anti-Buddhist policies; it was just sitting there innocuously in a small alcove within the temple.

Our final stop of the whole trip was Gia Long Mausoleum, located in the countryside to the far south of Hue. It was initially built for his first wife Thua Thien, but eventually was expanded after his death to include Gia Long and other family members of his. The complex was huge and rather empty when we visited, and most of it looked like a scene from an impressionist painting - big green rolling hills draped around a landscaped lake, dotted with obelisk-like pillars, monolithic stone monuments and incense-filled shrines. It was a highly surreal place to be; it just did not look real. The tomb that contained Gia Long and his wife featured an absolutely mammoth stone pedestal surrounded by statues and adorned with a whole flight of dragon-lined stairs; walking inside revealed an austere and minimal complex centred around two sarcophagi. This is a very dreamlike place, and would have been even more so if it weren't so hot. I think this is probably my favourite mausoleum alongside Khai Dinh's.

We woke up the next day and went to a small island in the middle of the Perfume River known for com hen (baby clam rice). It was served to us in a dirty shack with plastic chairs and tables that were far too low for comfort, alongside a bowl of clam soup made from the water it was boiled in. The com hen itself was tangy and light, whereas the soup was surprisingly strong and packed a lot of seafood flavour. Good stuff, in my opinion. Once we finished, we made our way to the airport nearby and prepared to fly off from Vietnam. Our flights had been moved around and now we had a very long layover at Tan Son Nhat airport in Saigon, so we took the opportunity to try some Southern Vietnamese cuisine. Taking a Grab to the city centre, we tried some Southern Vietnamese banh mi and... yeah, this was it. Much better than the one we had in Northern Vietnam. It was juicier, tastier and displayed a far greater variety of fillings. It was also noticeable how much more modern Saigon seemed compared to the rest of Vietnam, and there was a lot less chaos on the streets, unfortunately we couldn't spend too much time there since we were on a time limit. We returned to our airport, went through customs, and boarded our flight back to Sydney.

Conclusion:

That was a long post, it was probably quite rambly at points, so thanks for sticking through to the end. I'll provide some concluding thoughts here for people who didn't bother to read it all - do I recommend Vietnam? It depends on your level of comfort. If you can tank some overwhelm and discomfort, you'll find a lot to like as long as you are willing to take the good with the bad. Would I travel to Vietnam again? The answer's "absolutely yes, but not soon". Vietnam is a place that boasts a large amount of rich history and culture, as well as some very impressive natural sites that offer many opportunities for once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Hell, even the roughness and the abundant culture shock is an element that gives it its character - it's very fascinating to see a country in the process of transition from a largely agrarian society to industrial modernity, and to see these two worlds rub up against each other in strange ways. But it can also be jarring and overwhelming, and it takes a lot out of you when you travel there. It's a country that doesn't offer a smooth experience and doesn't try to, and in that sense, it's not a manicured tourist trap; it feels like a real, raw place where people live and sleep and shit.

To close off, I'm reminded somewhat of the Fun Scale, a metric developed by the mountain climbing community to describe their trips: Type 1 fun is stuff that's fun in the moment and fun in retrospect, Type 2 fun characterises experiences that are not enjoyable in the moment but are fun to recall afterward, and Type 3 fun is stuff that's not enjoyable at all, not when it's happening and not in retrospect. I feel like in Vietnam, I experienced all of the above at different points on the trip.

You will, however, come away with a fuckton of stories, that's a promise.

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