Hanoi to Hue, Vietnam

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5 Mar 2010

Hanoi - Huey

A bad start:

We were supposed to be catching the 6pm overnight “sleeper”bus from Hanoi to Hue, which was to take 10 maybe, 12 hours,. We were organised and looking forward to it!! However, our travels down the coast of Vietnam using our “open “ bus ticket started an hour later than advertised when instead of our bus picking us up at the hotel, we were collected by a surly youth and frog marched 500m through the crowded streets to St Josephs cathedral. Once nicely sweaty and stressed, 18 of us and 18 sets of backpacks and various other luggage were squashed into a 12 seater minibus where things got disgustingly intimate. 10 miserable minutes later we were spat out on to a busy road where 20 or 30 other cattle where milling around without a clue as to their fate. Backpacks were thrown out of the minibus and onto the road and chaos reigned as we were herded towards a nearby bus with those infernal bloody motorbikes whizzing all around us. Some people had tickets, others only had receipts, bags were put on, bags were taken off, people got on, people pushed their way off. Shoes had to be removed and placed in plastic bags and THEN we were allowed to get on board.
Whoever designed this wretched crate that purports to be a vietnamese sleeper bus should have unspeakable things done to them with sharp instruments:
3 rows of 2 tier “bunks” barely wide enough for Kate Moss, with only enough room between for her to walk down sideways.
Grubby, thin matttresses and grubby, smelly pillows and blankets.
A plastic,wedge shaped coffin covering the bottom 2 feet of each bunk meant that anyone over 5'8” with feet any bigger than about 4 inches had to keep them at right angles ie flat to the bed's surface or draw their knees up to their chin.
No access to the toilet as rucksacks and sleeping locals clogged the aisles.
If you imagine all this combined with crap a/c, chain smoking drivers and conductors who drunk tins of beer and shouted to each and blasted the horn every few seconds throughout the night you may understand why I would seriously advise anyone against using CAMEL TOURS from Hanoi.
Travel information: all agents seem to display photo's of the same luxury sleeper bus and it's beds, whether it exists or not I do not know. We never saw anything resembling it. Whether you get a better service by paying $60 for your open ticket or $37 as we did seems unlikely according to other traveller's tales.
Despite the best attempts of the driver to kill us all, we eventually arrived in Hue, bleary eyed and filthy at about 0930 the next morning and after fighting our way through the greeting hoards of tuk tuk drivers we got safely to the Thai Binh 2 Hotel which seemed like heaven. ($20 booked through the Golden Plaza Hotel in Hanoi - part of same group we think - but very comfortable and good value).
A largely lost day followed as we cleansed ourselves and caught up with some sleep.
Huey is a city with plenty of history going way back beyond the French and American sagas. It is large and busy but with broader streets than Hanoi does not seem quite so frenetic. It does however, seem much hotter and we found ourselves retreating to the A/C of supermarkets on a regular basis.
Partially due to the heat we decided against exploring on bicycles and opted for a motorcycle tour which cost $18 for 2 bikes and 2 pilots. This turned out to be great fun and great value. We were shown the Royal arena built for elephant and tiger duels by the same king who used to insist that he had 50 servants serving 50 different dishes all cooked by 50 different chefs. This was some time ago but I don't recall the exact dates. We also saw ornamental bridges and the site of French and US Army bases aswell as plenty of the countryside which is largely green and lush rice paddy's. According to our excellent guide (from the One Stop Cafe) 2 or 3 crops a year starting Jan to April etc etc. Our tour terminated at the Citadel of which only 30% remains but as it was 2pm and the heat intolerable we missed it out and went to a bar!!
Huey has a wide range of eaterys accomodating most tastes and budgets (burger chips and fruitshake 65000 dong - 28000 = 1GBP, chicken noodle soup, chips and 2 soft drinks 80000 dong - beer: large bottle Tiger 20-22000 or local draught 22000 pint) and some great bars. The DMZ bar is probably the most well known and deserves its recognition, great tunes, good beer (well, lager) and always plenty of travellers to swap tales with. The nearby “Why not?” bar is also worth a guzzle or 5.

Anna: Typical Vietnamese city, the main draw being the citadel which we failed to see and have since met many people who did brave the heat and they said it was really just a pile of ruins, some bits interesting but unless you're a history buff you didn't miss much! So Im glad we saw Hue but for anyone who is short on time, like we were at this point I think it is the place on the travellers trail that you could safely miss out.

Dave:As our plan involved a “2 night” strategy we were soon on our way again and dreading the next bus ride from hell..

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Photos

Is that a smile or a grimace?!
bus form Hanoi to Hue

Banana seller
anna selling bananas in her pyjamas,??

The tiger and the elephant!
Outside the fighting arena