Hello from Hue! We got here by another sleeper bus. I'm actually finding it easier to sleep on moving transport than in a bed now which is kind of weird. This time we had very cheesy and very poorly filmed (and acted) Vietnamese television and music videos. There is a reason why the Vietnamese don't make action films. We also had a toilet stop somewhere, and the memory will haunt me always. I love love love British service stations. We don't appreciate them enough. When I come back to England I will get excited about random things, I prepare you now.

Arriving in Hue in the morning (two hours late), we were dropped off at some random hotel instead of the bus station and staff from the hotel got on the bus and started harrassing us (well, telling us to stay in their hotel). I'm with Genevieve and Stefanie, my friends from Hanoi, by the way. We already had a hotel booked and anyway we didn't want to be duped into staying somewhere so we said "no thank you" and went to collect our bags from underneath. None of our bags were there! We naturally panicked and ran round asking where our bags were - "in your hotel" we were told. After wondering how our hotel had got hold of our bags before we'd got there or even got off the bus we realised this meant the imposter hotel had our bags. When we'd collected our stuff and found our real hotel it turned out fine and our hotel - D&T Hotel - is really good.

After all this excitment I looked at the date when we were in our room and remembered it was my birthday (it was lunchtime by this point) which prompted a chorus of "Happy Birthday" from Gen and Stef, and on the way out the reception people said "Happy Birthday" to me so we figured they must have heard the singing. We went to the Imperial City and Forbidden City - which is pretty similar to the one in Beijing but slightly more forbidden - and pretty interesting but mainly touristy. When we got back the hotel staff had got a cake with my name written on in icing and candles saying "24", and played birthday songs on the computer too - how sweet! They must have realised when they checked my passport. It was such a nice surprise as I wasn't expecting anything especially as I'd forgotten myself, we were all so impressed.

We recruited another English boy and a Kiwi in the evening and watched Obama's inauguration in DMZ bar (DMZ stands for de-militarised zone). They'd reserved a special room for it and there was quite crowd, with this excitable Vietnamese guy who gave us all American flags and sweets. It was kind of weird to be in a bar named after the Vietnam war celebrating this cornerstone in history, but really good as it shows how things can come full circle. The TV kept switching off and there were some noisy Germans who talked the whole time so we missed most of his speech, but it kind of added to the atmosphere. All in all it was a great day.

I have a really annoying Vietnamese keyboard that changes my words when I type certain letters in sequence so I have to keep putting spaces after letters and going back. Thí means my brain í ưorking faster than I'm typing - it'a not òten my brain ưorks faster than something - and í sẻiusly annoying. So any typos ảe not my fault!

Stef and Gen went to see some tombs today which sounded interesting but I'd had my fill of important dead people in Hanoi so I passed that up in favour of "discovering Hue" on my own. This turned out quite well as I went to Dong Ba market in the morning which was really big and quite interesting, though I was disappointed as there was a distinct abscence of live/dead animals and when I first arrived all that seemed to be on sale was garlic. It smelt really really garlicky! At least there were no bugs.

Then I kind of had to sit in the shade for a while. Oh yeah, it it really hot here. This is good, as I've well and truly had my fill of cold weather, but it's going to take a bit of getting used to. It's going to get hotter too as I still have quite a way south to go. I'll try not to go from complaining about the cold to complaining about the heat!

Then I wandered off down some random road (in discovery mode!) and I found a river with rows of boats moored there and people living in them. When I was in Canary Wharf our flat was next to the docks where people lived in barges. These were really cute and made me want to live on a boat in a romantic twee way. The boats in Perfume River (I don't know at what stage of it's history it attained this name but it sure wasn't recently) are not like that. Firstly, they're pretty small, not like rowing boat size or anything, but not big enough to comfortably fit a family of ten on. The smallest family I saw had eight kids, and those were obviously the ones not old enough to work. All the boats were really old and patched up several times and seemed to just have the one "room" with a tarapaulin cover. The people living on them had built little gardens on the bank and they even had chickens. They had to bathe and wash their clothes in the river and there didn't seem to be any toliets. (I asked where there was a toilet in the centre and just got told "no" - they obviously don't do toilets here, and I've actually seen a few people "releaving themselves" in the street.)

Whilst I was looking at the boats, two little boys came up to me and started saying "hello". I'm a celebrity again here by the way, when I was "exploring" everybody said hello to me in the street and grinned at me. They really love my tattoo here as well, I got dragged around by the arm by a cyclo driver this morning so he could show his friends my tattoo. I think it made up for me not getting in his cyclo. I'm getting used to the attention now and I kind of felt a bit like the Queen, as I was walking down the street saying hello to everybody and waving with kids running alongside me. A woman called out to me and pointed and waved with her baby. I must have really got off the beaten track then as they obviously aren't used to seeing white people. Anyway, my boys. At first they were really sweet but then they threw a cigarette packet at me (it was their dad's!) so I told them it wasn't very nice to throw things at people, and they came back with this rock thing and tried to throw that at me! I think they were just playing and didn't realise it could hurt somebody as they seemed to like me but I think I managed to convey it was not a nice thing to do. They got a clip round the ear from dad for that as well.

Then before I knew it I had about fifteen kids round me chattering away and I ended up giving an impromptu English lesson. They were really sweet and very excitable. I'm not sure if they went to school or not as they could be on holiday for Tet, but it was the middle of the day during the week and they were all just hanging around by the boats. I showed them my Lonely Planet book and then they started asking for a pen. I didn't have one but they kept on saying "pen pen pen" and miming writing. I was so amazed that these kids who were so poor were asking me for pens and not food or money, I determined to find them pens and go back. I waved goodbye and set off up the street, but I didn't have to go far as I found pens for sale in the first shop I came to for 2000 dong, which is about 3.5p. I bought a few and gave them to the kids and tore some pages out of my Lonely Planet book for them to write on, and this little girl pushed the book away and looked at me as if to say "no that's your's, you need it so keep it". I almost cried.

It really made me acutely aware (of course I'd already realised this) of the huge gap between westerners and people here. I think I'm slumming it because I'm backpacking and staying in dorm rooms and eating in cheap places, but they can barely afford to eat and clothe themselves, and spending 3.5p on a pen between ten kids so they can practise writing is an unthinkable expense. Even the people here with good jobs can only afford to live. I haven't met a Vietnamese person who's been out of Vietnam, and they border three other countries.

Anyway, I'm probably sounding preachy or something but that really struck me.

So, onward, tomorrow we're off to Hoi An, a very short bus ride (hurrah), then after that I'm going to Saigon for Tet. Oh, two updates from Hanoi. Firstly, I met someone else who'd seen the tortoise in the lake, and after a lengthy argument over breakfast it has transpired the tortoise is indeed a turtle, but someone translated it into English wrong, so I accept it is possible there is a giant one living in the lake. Secondly, the Water Puppets were amazing! Well, for about 2 pounds for an hour of riveting entertainment they were. They use a pool of water as a stage and the puppets come up from under the water. And I learnt a lot as well! :S Really, because the stories the puppets act out follow Vietnamese legends and the things they find important, so there are lots of farming things and there was even one about the tortoise/turtle. I am very simple minded but I definately preferred the puppet show to the opera I saw in Russia. I'm a big kid at heart.

I am also now saying "hello motorbike" to myself at random times. I am fearing for my sanity (what's left of it!).