Saturday 26th May

We packed our stuff up again and checked out and waited around the lobby for our bus to pick us up to go to Hue. A tiny minivan came and we jumped on and got taken to the middle of nowhere, supposedly the 'bus station!' We waited for five minutes and the bus did arrive! We all jumped aboard and were on our way to Hue. It wasn't a long journey about four and half hours, should have been three!

We arrived at the bus company office in Hue, which is good as I managed to locate our position and walked past the moto drivers and walked to our hostel. We have since learnt that the maps in the lonely planet guide are RUBBISH! Their map scales are literally out of this world, when they say its 400m scale more like 1000m! But we have learnt that if it's on the same page, it's not too far away!

We managed to locate our hostel, big yellow sign, of Hue Backpackers! It was a nice hostel to be honest. Points for Stu, I can trust him! We checked into a double bed bunk and had some half price pizza at the hostel. We stayed in the hostel and played some cards (still reigning champion!) and had some passion fruit punch. Not to self, never play speed next to your laptop and in close range of your passion fruit punch. Luckily most of it missed the laptop and landed on my feet! Didn't stop Stu for whinging though! After thin incident I thought it was best to put myself to bed!

Sunday 27th May

We woke up earlyish and headed out to see the citadel and forbidden purple palace. It was a long walk to the citadel walls and through the gates. We then walked along the wall to the citadel within the citadel! We were followed by a crazy guy in a cyclo that obviously wanted our service; every time we slowed he slowed too. In the end the only way to get rid of him was to cross the street through the park!

We arrived at the citadel which was badly knocked about during fighting between the French and the Viet Minh in 1947, and again in 1968 during the Tet Offensive, when it was shelled by the Viet Cong and then bombed by the Americans. As a result, some areas are now only empty fields, bits of walls, and an explanatory plaque. Other buildings are intact, though, and a few are in sparkling condition.

It had a definite Chinese feel about the place; Hue is intimately connected to the imperial Nguyễn Dynasty, based in Hue, who ruled from 1802 to 1945, when the Emperor Bao Dai abdicated in favour of Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary government. We exited out of the North entrance and walked round the outside taking in the locals going about their daily lives before heading back towards the hostel.

We then experienced the most frustrating experience I still whinge about now! I'm used to people trying to sell and rent motorbikes here, but one guy did not get the hint that we did not want to use his services! He kept asking and asking while following us, hoping to wear us down to say yes. Luckily we reached the hostel before either of us really said what was on our minds. I am beginning to dislike the hostility of the Vietnamese culture; it is all about making money here. I miss Cambodia!!

We stayed in the hostel and had a few beers before trying to find a bar, we found them, but they were completely empty! We played pool, until I got annoyed that I couldn't beat Stu!

Monday 28th May

We woke up and did the usual checking out and booking our next hostel, and waiting around for the bus. We have got into watching Hawaii Five-O, so spent the day watching many episodes to bypass the time.

We walked back to the bus company to wait around for the bus, we had another sleeper bus 14 hours' worth! Better than 20 hours from Hoi An! We located our beds, top berth, and settled in. This was distracted within an hour as the bus broke extremely hard (harder than normal) and we saw a smaller van stopped in front of us. We all tried to look what was going on, but I was on the far side of the bus (thank god!) Stu managed to see what was going on and a little girl, about 10, was lying motionless on the floor with blood everywhere. We assumed the worse and felt a little wary and sick. This pretty much set the whole feeling of the rest of the journey. I hardly slept (worse than usual) and woken up many times in a hot flush which was made worse when I realised it was raining more. I swear I had dreams of the bus crashing. It was possibly the worse journey, only due to the events earlier today. I later found out someone else saw a bus in a ditch as well. Glad I missed that too!