Blogs from Thua Thien - Huế, North Central Coast, Vietnam, Asia - page 75

The 5 hour long bus trip to Hue was relatively painless and we checked into a nice family run guesthouse (where the owner brought me a portable tv just so that I could watch the footy). Hue is a really pretty and relaxing city situated astride a river and with loads of trees everywhere. However, even with the breeze from the river and shade from the trees it was still horrendously hot which made exploring somewhat tiring. On our first full day we wandered around the central part of the city inside the city-walls which is known as the citadel. Within the citadel is another walled area called the Imperial Enclosure which was originally for the emporor's official functions (such as entertaining his concubines in an area called the Forbidden Purple City where only eunuchs were ... read more

After a horribly hot bus ride from Hoi An, we arrive in Hue and are dropped off in the middle of I don't know where. All I know is I'm really frigin' hot and I am now carrying three bags, the newest being my $2 nike duffel bag with all my new clothes, and I want a hotel room with A/C ASAP! I have been living happily without A/C up until now. It is so bloody hot here I can't take it. After the binging in Nha Trang this is really the perfect detox. You just sweat and sweat and out come all the toxins. Pretty gross really. Anyways, we dump our stuff onto the ground at some random corner in Hue and try and figure out a plan of action. It's the last weekend of ... read more

After spending a couple of days catching up with Roxy and Mark in Mui Ne, we felt that we still hadn't really experienced much of Vietnam, and indeed didn't really feel that we were in Vietnam - or the Vietnam we had expected to experience at least. So we jumped on a bus to Nah Trang to see what that was like. We drove into Nah Trang city and found a guesthouse called the Perfume Grass that had lovely rooms for the bargain price of $10 a night. The guesthouse was right by the seaside and the long stretch of beach that attracts not only foreigners but many Vietnamese tourists. We did our usual walk around the city to get a feel for the place, and found a nice place to have some of the local ... read more

Hi All We've now got 4 new people in our tour group for the next 2 weeks in Vietnam. Adam & Ross (20/21) from London area, Liz from Sydney (26) and Hedd (pronounced Heth) from Wales and he's 24. Got the sleeper train from hanoi to Hue (pronounce Whey not Hugh as i thought!). It was a 12 hour journey but the beds were reasonably comfortable and it had air con so had a decent kip. Hue is smaller than Hanoi so there isn't as much traffic or as many things to do. With the tour group we visited the Citadel, had some lunch and then for some real fun - beer and playing pool!! Had an indian meal at night which was the best i've had in ages, and another few beers! Then today we ... read more

Today was the day for a history lesson, the day started very slowly at 5.30am so we could meet our 6am bus and begin our 12 hour tour of the DMZ. The DMZ was a designated military-free zone 5km either side of the Ben Hai river (an unofficial border between North and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War) Today there is nothing here to distinguish this point apart from a few bomb craters, memorials, hundreds of tombstones, and a truck load of tour buses. The tour also included an extremely impressive tour of the Vinh Moc tunnels, these are made up of 2.8km of elaborate tunnels, we went down to 23m below ground. People lived in these tunnels for up to 6 years during the war for periods of up to 5 days at a time. ... read more