Hue

Ok, I am soooo far behind now, I dont know how to catch up. Sorry if the entries are now much smaller. Or maybe you will prefer less to read!

Before I talk about Hue, I should explain what happened to my hostel:

The man from the tour company told us it had 'falled down'! Intrigued, but imagining that this was some sort of loss of translation, we set of to investigate. What we found was quite unbelievable. Even from a distance we could see a very large crane/digger in the road outside our hostel, almost blocking the street. There had been some building works excavating beneath the old decrepid house next door (to the left). To the left of that was a gap where another house had already been demolished and the 5 story house next to our hostel had collapsed and fallen to its left against the next house. It had ripped great holes in the walls of our hostel, so that some floors were just open to to the elements! The sign above the door was shaken to pieces.

We actually bumped into the owner of the hostel over the road, just hanging about waiting for the builders to come. A very friendly chap, he came over and told us all about it. He heard a rumble around midnight and then spotted a crack in the wall. He evacuated all his customers to another hotel and woke up the builders sleeping UNDER the old house! 2 hours later it fell. Crazy stuff eh?

Anyway, I already had my open bus ticket confirmed and Stuart and Chrissy joined me on the 'sleeper' bus. This huge vehicle consists of 3 rows of bunk-beds, which appear to be styled like dentist chairs and do not fully recline. This allows the feet of one bunk to fit underneath the head of the next and thus fit in more. The narrow and incredibly uncomfortoble nature of these, combined with the driver's honking, and random switching on and off of the lights, ensures that the passanger sleeps as little as possible. I achieved perhaps 4 hours in total and was proud.

The bus did, however, get me to Hue without me losing a day and for this I cannot complain. I had booked into a lively backpackers hostel with lots of youngsters and a busy bar. It was only a 5 min walk from the bus stop.The city is the old capital and I used my first day to cross the river and investigate the ancient walled town and its citadel. Immeadiately the town on this side felt vastly different to Hanoi, with wide tree lined streets and low rise buildings. I walked all four sides of the citadel before entering at the main gate. The picture above is the Western gate.

Unfortunately, I was not feeling well at all and had to cut short my visit to return to the hostel. I slept for 2 or 3 hours, but felt little better for it. I went to the bar for happy hour (free beer from 5-6) and drank water. My mood did not improve much as I tried to be sociable and at least managed a couple of games of pool. Stuart and Chrissy had decided to join a big group of people taking a motorbike down to Hoi An the next day, but I didnt think it a good idea. If nothing else, I wanted to see the rest of the city and I booked a tour the next day.

I felt a bit better but not great the next day, but put on a brave face. The tour would take us to visit 3 Tombs of past emporers and then via boat to a Pagoda in the afternoon. The tombs were wonderful. Built by the emporers for themselves, they were not stuffy gloomy ruins as I had imagined, but vast and stunningly beautiful, sculpted parks. At one end would be a memory house (where the son should write a nice essay about his dad's reign), a worshiping house (yes, for worshipping him), and then the Tomb itself. Oddly, the king himself was not buried there (nobody knows where he went), and one poor sole had to write his own obituary, because he failed to have a child with any one of his 104 wives. Fail!

The river trip was a waste of time, but the pagoda worth seeing. That evening I stupidly drank to drown my illness woes and paid for it in the morning. I planned to do precisely nothing, but ended up doing a long bike ride with a big group. I figured I should distract myself and also wanted to find some people to join my on the bikes to Hoi An. Both goals were achieved and the motorbikes were booked. Two girls would take guides and four of us lads would drive ourselves. Feeling a bit jittery, I paid nothing and arranged to take a test drive earlier than the others at 08.00.