Da Nang is pretty boring if the truth is to be told. The streets aren't clean and construction hangs around the streets in half finished piles. The third largest city in Vietnam, Da Nang has surprisingly little to offer in terms of sight seeing and with the Marble Mountains already viewed we decided to move on swiftly to Hue.

The train journey to Hue was a four hour one that offered fantastic views as it hugged the coastline for many of its miles. Dense palm tree forest underlined the white beaches and foaming sea, causing half our carriage's entourage to spring up and unsheath their cameras, Chelsea obviously included as she elbowed small women and children out of the way.

Hue was a whistle stop tour, we genuinely just hopped off the train for an hour for a quick view of the Imperial Palace. This old pre-communist structure was heavily bombed during the French and American Wars and sadly only twenty of its original two hundred and forty eight remain. It's huge six foot high walls run for 2.5km in length and sit menacingly behind a broad moat. The Forbidden Purple City lies at its centre but unfortunately time was short so a gander at the outside of the huge structure was all that we managed.

Finally finding our taxi driver (who had driven off with our bags, causing us both to hyperventilate) we made our way back to the train station and caught another train to Dong Hoi - using it as a base to visit the regions famous caves tomorrow.

Dong Hoi is very sparse in terms of people and buildings, even at peak times there isn't much traffic on the roads and the constant beeping found in larger cities is non-existent. The Nhat Le River that divides the city with its lazily flowing water has a brilliant bridge going over it - its structure in mundane but it has a spectrum of lights that are constantly changing rippling along its sides.

With a fair wedge of travel under our belts in a short space of time headed to bed in our £6 hostel. Pulling our slightly damp bedding over us we gratefully shut our stinging eyelids.