Hue: (23rd -25th October):

So we arrived in Dang Ha (2 hours from Hue) at approximately 6.30am where we got off the bus and had a bite to eat, we were approached by a local chap who tried to convince us to do a tour around the demilitarised zone from the vietnam war. We were pretty skeptical but when some other guys decided to do it, we joined them too. So there were 5 of us, 2 germans called Eva and tina, and a canadian guy called tom. We grabbed all of our stuff off of the bus and took to this guys jeep.  He was a local guy called Hoa and was only 9 years old when the war broke out, he was fascinating and his English was pretty good too.  He took us Round the war cemeteries, the the UN border zone and to local underground tunnels.  The trip was brilliant, definitely worth getting off the bus for.  He then took us into Hue in a mini bus with a few of the other locals!

We arrived in hue and took a stroll to the backpacker area and found a nice little hotel called impressions that was mean to be 20$ a night, but we haggled for $30 for 2 nights. After unpacking our bags and having a quick shower we walked in hue and caught the tailend of the rugby world cup final, NZ beat France 8-7. Ann-Marie also bought a snidy rolex datejust for €10. We then went to the hue backpackers hostel for a few drinks and planned our tour for the next couple of days, we arranged to do a city tour the following day around all the tombs/pagodas.  That evening we went to recommended restaurant specialising in local cuisine called the stop and go cafe. We had arranged to meet a Canadian lad called Tom who had been on our DMZ tour earlier that day. We then ventured back to the main strip for a few drinks where we all met the 2 other german girls from the earlier tour. We got quite drunk but knew we had a. Early start the following morning for the Hue city tour.

The Hue city tour was a full day tour, taking into account the following local sights:

*Tomb of tu doc - a huge expansive site, with huge lakes and pine trees
*Tomb of Minh mang - very similar to that of the tomb of tu doc, set over expansive land, with lakes trees and numerous buildings.
* Tomb of Kai dinh - a very majestic tomb, great architecture, probably the grandest we'd seen in Vietnam so far. This tomb was a lot smaller, set in smaller grounds but was much more impressive, it had elements of European architecture.
*a local mixed martial arts school - Ammi and I witnessed some combat and other fighting skill demonstrations, with the finale being one of the students breaking stone slates with his hands and another student balancing a sword against his throat whilst applying loads of pressure- it was pretty impressive

We stopped for a buffet lunch in the centre of Hue before embarking on the afternoon of sight seeing:

*the citadel -  the imperial city, set On the northern bank of the song Huong, emperor gia long began construction of the moated citadel in 1804. It was heavily bombed during the war.
*Thien Mu pagoda - a working/ living pagoda with practicing buddhist monks

We finished off the day with a boat ride along the Song Huong. We got back to our hotel in the centre at about 5pm after a long day site seeing, we had crammed a lot in, but it was well worth it, covering a lot of ground. aAfter a quick shower we decided to meet fellow travellers Tina and Eva from Germany, and Tom from Canada for dinner and a couple of drinks.  It wasn't a late one as we had an early bus to Hoi An the following day.