Welcome to Hue!

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Arriving from the train around 10 am, we were abruptly bombarded by taxi drivers and hotel soliciters. We decided to keep walking a bit, but when we came to a crossroads, we were left not knowing where to go! Do we cross the bridge, do we follow the highway? Luckily this was a decision we were saved from when another hotel soliciter came and showed us his hotel’s brochure. He said he would go in a taxi with us to his hotel and we could check out the rooms; the taxi should be 40 or 50. We went with him because the double rooms were $10 and with a balcony $12. We sprung for the balcony, paid the 50,000 for the cab (it should have been way less with the distance we went) and immediately showered. Boy were we dirty.

We set out to find Hue Riders, a motorbike company I had found through TripAdvisor. It took us a while to spot it because it was actually a restaurant. We had lunch there and two delicious smoothies and then decided to take the 1-day tour from Hue to Hoi An. They could carry our bags on the back of the bikes, so that wasn’t a problem. It was $48.00 (960,000 VND) and they would pick us up at the Phone Nha Hotel at 8:30. Perfect. Would only have to go down the stairs and they’d be waiting. Looks like we’ll be in Hoi An for the New Year.

First we went to the Imperial City, Da Noi. You cross the Perfume River and there are no hotels, only the old city and the Imperial City. Da Noi is surrounded by a moat, is very large, and is being renovated. It’s 55,000 to get in and then you can just wander all around the ruins and buildings. There’s even a section inside where you can dress like a traditional Viet and ride an elephant.

We left and decided to take the 1 hour ride around the city in the open bike taxis called cyclos. These are mostly for tourists, but I have seen some locals riding around in them. I sat in between Ronald’s legs while he sat a bit higher than me in the back. He offered this to us for 150,000, we said no and he offered 120,000. We got on, saw some cool things (including a local in their homemade boat harvesting water spinach and an old tower that had used syringes in it...) and he dropped us off at our hotel. This was annoying as when we paid him he said “tip”, I said no, and then he tried to make it as if it was supposed to have been 120,000 each. We paid him 220,000 and walked away. Robber!

Ronald worked for a while and when we emerged for dinner we decided to go to the floating restaurant on the river and we did not like it. We ordered some (really weak) drinks and some spring rolls and sweet cream soup with chicken. The soup ended up being some sort of weird chicken noodle soup meets cream of chicken meets corn kernels. Not good.

Technical Details
* "Trong Rang" means "dentist" (keep in mind that these all have different accents which I'm not using here, so this what I just wrote could mean something different than dentist...)
* Cho Dong Ba is the local market and it's a lot like La Vega in Santiago but sans cats

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