Arriving in Hue, All I can say is what a bumpy ride it was last night. I had got to know a few people on the bus and Neil (English) and Nick (American) and his family were staying on the bus for a further 13 hours heading further south, I don't envy them one little bit. Tom (Irish) and Eva (German) were the only ones to get off in Hue that I knew, and as they hadn't got anywhere booked to stay, they came with me to the Hue Backpackers Hostel where I had booked myself in a few days ago.

I think it might have been the free beer between 5pm and 6pm that convinced them!

Once we had got checked in, showered and dumped our stuff we headed out into town to have a look around and to go and find somewhere to get some lunch. We found very local noodle bar on the side of the road and they were probably one of the nicest chicken noodles that I’ve had in Vietnam so far and all for less than 50p.

After lunch we wandered around all the ATM’s in the local vicinity trying to find one that worked or one that had power, as most of our area had had the power turned off due to maintenance on the power lines. We spent around an hour looking and trying different machines only to give up and head back to the hostel, where they said the power should be on by 6pm and to try again after then.

I guess the only thing to do then was to have a beer while we waited for power and also for the free beer hour.

During the evening and despite all the warnings that were posted on the walls at the hostel about not going off with moto drivers alone at night, Tom went off with one from just outside our hotel as he was wanting to buy "something" from them. He was gone for ages and we spoke to some of the local people about what might have happened to him. They said if he was lucky then he would probably not be hurt as long as he hands over his wallet without resisting them.

After about 2 hours, Tom came back oblivious to the two hours that we had been worrying about him, we even sent one of the locals looking for him. He didn’t manage to buy what he wanted but at least he was brought back in one piece and with all his money still. I think he was very fortunate with the moto driver he picked. He was also sorry that he had made us worry and agreed that it was a bit of a stupid thing to do.

During the evening, we stayed at the bar in the Hostel and made plans for tomorrow for the 3 of us to rent out some motorbikes and go exploring the major sights around Hue, so we had quite an early night as we wanted to get going at around 8:30am.