Good Morning Vietnam,

I'm not going to get to put that as the start to many more blogs as we approach the end of our time here, but hopefully will still have quite a bit to talk about in the next few days so might squeeze it in once or twice. The last couple of days has been quite relaxed for us in the city of Hue just a few hours further up from Hoi An on the coast but still got a bit to fill you in on (this may actually be a short blog for me).

We arrived here around midday after a surprisingly uneventful bus journey for us, but one that took us past some of the best countryside we have seen in the country so far. Unfortunately because we cheapskates we booked on the cheap bus that goes through the tunnel between the cities rather than the coast road that as Jeremy Clarkson described as "one of the best roads he had ever been on" but we did still get to see a bit.

Once in Hue we had a very lazy afternoon. The bus had set off early from Hoi An, which had meant a quarter to 7 start for us. The hotel we have checked into here is very nice which seems to be the common case in Vietnam and we have a room that sleeps four between the 3 of us. Unfortunately for us we are on the 5th floor with no lift which is hard going in the heat. After lunch we made full use of it by treating ourselves to an afternoon nap in the air con before heading out a bit later on.

The city itself it not very big and a good 3rd of it is located inside the 'Citadel', which I'll talk more about shortly. Therefore it didn't take us long to walk along the riverfront and around the restaurants to find somewhere for dinner. The city seems quite quiet which unfortunately for us means we get even more attention from the touts and street sellers with lots of cries of 'Hello Mr' from all sides of the road. The river front was all lit up and looked lovely at night with an array of colour changes on the main bridge joining the 2 sides of town. Dinner was curry and was fantastic. We have had a couple of curries recently but this was much more like the curry we have at home and had top notch Naan bread. This also allowed us to try the new range of beers that are available in this part from Vietnam (we have moved much more in the North Vietnamese regions now and it can be seen as rude to ask for beer from other areas) so we tried the new range with the new favourites being Huda and Festival.

The following day was spent exploring the old part of the city. As I said before Hue is not very big nor is it really that old with most buildings younger than 200 years, including the huge Citadel (Kinh Thanh) on the north side of the river that houses a large section of the city. This was built in the 1800s by the then ruler of Vietnam, Emperor Gia Long as his personal palace and has been the focal point of many political battles to secure the country since. This has resulted in large parts of the complex falling into disrepair or becoming battle damaged. Supposedly there is a large restoration project going on but as the Citadel is a symbol of pre-communist Vietnam this may take a long time to complete.

For us tourists though it was fascinating to walk around within its walls that are 10km long and 2m thick, surrounded by a large moat. We wandered around the city itself and then into the Imperial compound to see how the wealth of Asia lived. The emperor effectively lived inside a Citadel inside a Citadel as he had his own private complex within the city wall complete with 3 lakes, elephants and even tennis courts. It was very grand and our first visit to an Asian palace with fantastic decor on all the buildings. We wandered around the Citadel until early afternoon when the heat was getting quite intense, then headed back over the moat to find lunch.

In our search for lunch we found a small shopping centre that had a supermarket inside so we decided to pick up lunch there. Supermarkets are clearly not such a common occurrence here as while waiting at the checkouts we watched as some Vietnamese people carry their trolley onto a normal escalator holding one end above their heads, while another group struggled just to get on it in the first place. Come to think of it this was possibly the first escalator we had seen outside Saigon so that might be why!

The afternoon has mainly been spent eating and looking round the shops so not much new there. We have however just found out that our flight tomorrow from here to Hanoi is the first flight from the airport in months because it has been shut for refurbishments, which means our journey tomorrow could be interesting.

The evening plan is mainly just to go out for food and then get an early night because we have to be at the airport at 8 for our flight. This is the first time we have opted to fly then get on another awful bus so let's hope it doesn't backfire on us. Will let you all know how we get on.

Lots of love

Martin, Katie and Gemma