We arrived in Hue at 9am relatively refreshed after a proper night's sleep, it makes such a difference to arriving before 6am when it's still dark and you know you've got at least 6 hours before you can check in. A swift coffee fuelled us into town to find somewhere to stay, which took a while on account of the random lane numbering system they have. But, by 11am, we were breakfasted and checked in for a few nights. We were feeling a bit lazy (ok, so not quite as refreshed as we would have liked) so had a slow amble down by the river and stopped for an early afternoon beer hiding from the rain! I don't think Hue was quite what we expected, although I'm not sure what we thought we were expecting either, but it seemed nice enough, if a little touristy and eager to cater for a party…unfortunately as we found out, our hostel backed onto the street where the party was and we were treated to some lovely loud techno until the small hours.

Anyway, we were both excited to see our buddies Hannah and Elliott again - we met them first in Varkala and then again in Koh Lanta, so this was our 3rd and final country of meeting. They are doing the Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi route on a motorbike and had picked up another couple (Frewen and Juliet) so there was a little group of us which was fun.

James and I rented a couple of scooters and we had a day out with the gang riding along a beautiful stretch of coast rode and dipping down to find suitable bathing spots on the near deserted beach. The sea was a little rough, but we found a good enough spot for some Frisbee! The rest of the day didn't really work out as planned though as we couldn't find our intended lunch stop and there didn't really seem to be much else going on in the little villages we passed through. So we ended up doing about 100km round trip, most of which on the big highway, which although not too heavy with traffic, wasn't as scenic as we had hoped. Also, my bike made a funny noise at about 50km/h, so I wasn't too keen on pushing it any faster. The day was rounded off nicely by arriving back into Hue city at rush hour - what an experience…one we're not likely to forget in a hurry! Looking back on it, it was fun, but at the time, it was rather stressful!! Bikes, cars, people everywhere and all driving their own drive. It's amazing that we haven't seem more accidents around the place, it was mental! All arrived back safely though and we celebrated with an evening of beer and ribs!

The bike crew left the next day to continue north and we agreed to meet them again in the Phong Nha national park which was our next stop as well. We had a very chilled day, taking about 4 hours over walking the 2km to the train station and back to book our train, stopping in a few cafes along the way for a refreshment. James even treated himself to a hair cut in a proper salon (I think my last attempt has put him off me doing it!), the people in the salon seemed quite surprised to see us walk in, not sure if they get many tourists in there! But the highlight of the day was stopping into a random little Indian restaurant and finally having proper Indian chai!! We were so happy and it tasted so good, that we went back there for dinner. Who'd of thought that we would both miss India so much, it's definitely on the list of places to go back to, maybe even on this trip! Luckily, they mucked up our order a little bit though as we fell into old habits, ordering 5 rotis and a cheese and garlic naan - we only received one of the rotis which was a godsend as it was huge…and the naan was (no joke) bigger than James's plate! It was totally worth the little splurge though.