After the two epic trips to halong bay and Sapa, also living in Hanoi for the best part of 10 days which was fantastic but so hectic, it was time to move down the country to hue.

Got another sleeper bus which took 14 hours to get to hue, upon arriving it felt even hotter than Hanoi, and since its coming into summer it's only going to get worse.

The first thing that struck me was how much more quieter the roads and streets were, it was still busy but had nothing on the chaos of Hanoi and it was a nice change, the people trying to push motorbikes, taxis and food on you as just the same as always which is pretty damn annoying. Me and Tasso got the bus down together and also ended up in the same room at the hostel so we hung around a bit longer and had a wander into town with a kiwi called jonno who was also in our room.

One of the "go to" places in hue is the citadel which used to be the old capital of Vietnam, but after the war in the 60s most of the city was destroyed, the citadel shows the ruins of what is left of the old city, not much to look at really it was quite boring, but the impressive part was that to this day they are continuing to redevelop the area.

The weird part of hue is that because its a city that's trying to get back to normal is that for every swish hotel or fancy building there will be old crappy building in the same area or street, there's still an echo from the communist days the way in which some buildings still look to this day. All in all the city is alright, not an awful lot to do and the old citadel is just a couple of ruins.

I booked a trip for the D.M.Z which is the demilitarised zone, a day trip which was suppose to show stuff from the war but the trip wasn't great. Took an hour and a half bus journey to get to dong ha to get tour lady then she explained we would be in the bus all day and every so often we could get out to take a picture of whatever we were shown. At first we thought fair enough it's 39 degrees outside but in the end everything was stretched out so far it took ages to go everywhere.

The first stop was literally a mountain with a flag, next was a street that an ethnic minority lives on, the next was sign that said Ho Chi Minh trail. The only cool parts was going to khe Sahn which was where the us military had their base, not much there now except a little museum wich was interesting. The other part was the tunnels which some Vietnamese people had to live in for a while when the Americans were bombing the area. At first it was cool and crazy to think anyone could have lived down there it was so, small and cramped but you can only have so much fun wandering a dark tunnel.

Ended up staying an extra day because after the tour I didn't have time to sort out bus and accommodation for the next destination. It unfortunately pissed it down all day but on the plus side it was the rugby match between the lions and wallabies and two for one offer on the dollar beer in the hostel so I had a few drinks and chilled for the night.