Rainy Hue, Hoi An and a "Spiderteam" visit to My Son

We landed in Hue only to find out it was even rainier here than Sapa. Yay........It wasn't really bad luck - every other person we've spoken to on our trip said they left Hue after one day because it was just 'so rainy'. For us, this was the perfect opportunity to have a lazy afternoon in our hotel 'Thang Long', where I'm almost sure we were the only guests.
Looking at the weather forecast for the coming week, we decided to change our travel plans...we had hoped to spend a few days relaxing on the beach in Nha Trang, but all we saw forecasted was rain and clouds, so we booked a flight from Danang to Saigon instead.

After a long shower and getting our big rain capes on, we braved it in the now even rainier Hue, sloshing through the water on the streets with our flip-flops (which meant our pants got soaked, cape or no cape) and walking along the river to a fun bar/restaurant called DMZ (a term referring to the not so fun Demilitarized Zone during the Vietnam war), full of backpackers. I enjoyed a surprisingly good French meal (well it was listed under French Food and it wasn't Asian, so I'll take their word for it) and several Saigon beers while me and Krista had to almost shout across the table (the music was pretty loud). Music in Vietnam is hilarious: they love everything 90's, so Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Ricky Martin are still top of the charts in their eyes (ears?)....so you'll hear these in bars, on the buses (if you're lucky, otherwise you'll be entertained by some Vietnamese karaoke music accompanied by hilarious 80's - 90's videos). In the DMZ bar we heard a Dutch song (thank you Dutch backpacker for leaving Jan Smit - 'Als de morgen is gekomen' on their computer), obviously I had to video Krista singing along to the tune for proof to the people back home!

After a good night's sleep we had the longest wait for breakfast (waiting about half an hour for a baguette and omelet is rare in Vietnam - it didn't help that when he did bring it he tripped and threw it on the floor along with all the condiments. Then he ran out -of shame?- and didn't come back. Someone else made a new one). We then assumed our tourist role and went to the Imperial City by cyclo. The Imperial city in Hue covers a huge area and is really beautiful, after walking through the first building it unfortunately began raining again but with our capes we continued to slosh through the garden.

Now for our completely embarrassing next move: we had looked at the map in the Lonely Planet and not really knowing what to expect in the 'Citadel', we thought that where 'the Citadel' was marked on the map there must be some kind of amazing building. So we exited the Imperial walls at the back and started walking to the place where it was marked on the map. We were walking through an area which wasn't exactly pretty and obviously no other tourists in sight (although this could just have well have been because of the crappy weather). When we got to the place on the map, we saw a university but nothing else, so we were asking locals we passed 'uhm are we close to the 'Citadel building''....Until we looked at the map again and thought, you know, this could just be a marking on the map for the Citadel as a whole....DOH!! Well, we met a lot of smiling locals on the way so we had a good laugh about it in the end. And when we did see a couple of tourists walking the same direction we did we thought maybe we weren't crazy for thinking that after all :)

That afternoon we left with our funky sleeping bus (it was only a four-hour trip in the afternoon, but I'm always happy to have a quick snooze) to Hoi An. We arrived in front of the 'open tour hotel' (they drop you there and tell you to go in) but we had arranged to stay at the An Hoi hotel on the other side of the river after our friends Paul and Ellen had told us they had a really nice stay there. Really glad we didn't go along with the tourbus 'hotel offer', as the places were a lot nicer closer to the river. These streets are all pedestrian/cycle/tuk-tuk roads and the area is a lot more quaint. The views of the riverside were lovely too! Again we had a great guesthouse (no bad experiences so far!) with comfortable beds, free internet and for the first time a complementary breakfast with lots of choice (not just baguette and omelet, but fruit salads, pancakes, yoghurt....). We walked around the small town where about every second store is a tailor, offering custom-made dresses, suits, winter coats, shoes - whatever you want, they'll make it. Lots of Next brochures to choose from!! Although I thought I would want to have something made, the choice was so overwhelming and I wasn't really in the mood to get measured or even decide on what I would want. So instead we had dinner :) We ate at a cute place called Eden (turns out it was a chain, but it looks pretty stylish) where we had a dinner which was kind of overpriced but fine. Then we had a drink in a bar which had obviously also really invested in styling the place and upped the drinks prices along with it. I found that a lot of the 'cool looking' places were nice but the best food we've had so far were the little, slightly scruffy looking cafes with a total lack of style but great noodle dishes for about 25,000 dong (about $1.50).

The next day we had booked ourselves on a day tour to the temples at My Son (which our dictator tour guide explained, you do NOT pronounce as 'My Son' how you would normally say it... but as 'Mee Son'). So, there was our tour guide, "Spiderman" as he called himself. And since he was "Spiderman", we were his "Spider Team"....our role was clear from the start, we were to obey him.

He talked and talked, we didn't understand much of what he said, apart from when he said 'Spider Team!!". When we arrived we had about 10 minutes to go to the bathroom, plenty I would say, before walking up a hill to the next 'station' with our tour group which was about 45 people (!!). Here we waited approximately 20 minutes for a mini-van, which could only take 7 people at a time, so there was a lot of waiting involved in the whole process of getting there. At the next station we got a brief explanation of the purpose of the temples, which I could not explain to you now, mainly because Spiderman spoke very bad English and on top of that I was standing behind 44 other people.

Then it rained. We got to the temples which weren't very far and to be honest, it was disappointing. Even if we hadn't been with the rest of Spiderteam. There were only a few temples which weren't in a particularly good state (I will admit having been to some of the Mayan temples and the Borobudur I am spoilt) and we walked around for about half an hour and had seen it all. So in this case I would say the review in the Lonely Planet was not very accurate!! The whole experience with the Spiderteam was still pretty entertaining though...Spiderman's bizarre orders, for example while he explained one of the temples to us he demanded: "No photos right now! When I'm finished explaining you will have 15 minutes of free time to take photos!!" and when he was done "OK now go take photos!!" Uhm, I think we'll decide for ourselves, thank you very much Spidey.

Other entertainment during the our My Son visit was when a girl in our group stepped on what she thought was a rock, only to find out it was cow dung! No fun when you're on flip-flops....I'm sure her feet were still pretty smelly even after a quick rinse in a puddle...

Fortunately we had decided on the 'short tour', without the slow boat trip back to Hoi An, so we said our farewells to Spiderman and got ready for our flight to Saigon that afternoon from Danang (no delays, yay!).

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