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Published: April 13th 2009
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So we're as far South as Hue..The ride down from Dong Hoi was a hard one even though only just over 150 K and the last stretch through yet another torrential downpour left us both feeling like a piece of chewed meat..Thank the lord we bought good waterproof gear! The Morin Hotel is absolutely fantastic and if you feel like a bit of a splurge when you get to Hue well worth the 75$ US we paid..(bargain hard!... Advertised prices are 150-200$) We chilled by the pool for the remains of the afternoon (Sunshine!!Hurray!!)and then headed out for a meal at Meditteraneo about 200 metres along the waterfront where we ate good italian food underneath tarpaulins weighed down by the heaviest rain yet.... When you're full of pasta and three sheets to the wind on good,cheap french wine who cares about a tropical style thunderstorm....A great nights sleep at the Morin followed by a fantastic leisurely breakfast and we're in tourist mode for the walk to the Citadel, Hues' walled city within a city, actually designed by a frenchman in the 18thC but if you think along the lines of Beijings Forbidden City you wont be far wrong..
On the way
there we sat for a while in an ornamental garden where a small group of kids on bikes buzzed around the dry fountains...Same sort of games they play back home in the UK..Small cute, child forced from bike by larger thuggish looking six year old...Small child complains breathlessly to larger sister..Sister laughs and carries on flicking her hair...Larger child hits smaller child over head with substantial shoe (especially removed for the purpose)..Small child retires in tears..Larger child also begins to look a bit sheepish and starts to snivvle...Sister ends up riding bike, eight years old and ready to rule the world....
Also in the gardens something we have previously seen in China...A handful of men sat around little cafes with birdcages of beautiful songbirds..The birds cages placed together on the ground for the birds to sing together for an hour or so in the cooler morning while the men drink tea from tiny cracked cups....
The Citadel itself was an incredibly atmospheric place...Unlike Beijings Forbidden City only a very small part of the buildings have been restored and, even though most of the palaces stand subdued in peeling paint, pockmarked by bullet holes the place has a tired,
dirty splendour ....We spent a couple of fantastic hours wandering around the walls and gardens, finding an elephant in a low-walled leafy garden, gorgeous flame tree lined lakes, hidden temples, their walls covered in polished glass and stone, cloisters full of plants in pots as big as a man, and incongruosly, a utilitarian housing block from the communist housing prgramme times surrounding a tarmac basketball court pushed up against the Citadels Northernmost wall.
The citadel is a state run tourist attraction which maybe explains why, when I was paying to enter, that the old girl taking the cash (Huge beaming smile) actually palmed a 50,000 dong note and insisted I needed to give her more..Ah well, only about 2.50 sterling but it leaves a nasty taste in your mouth...
We headed back to the hotel for the late afternoon where we had both booked a massage and sauna (well, I told you this Hue stay was all a bit of a treat after our first week on the road)...After all the reports I had read/heard about it being impossible to get a massage in VN without having your todger tugged I can state categoricaly that it IS a fiction...However between you and me even at the Morin which is about as up market as you can get it was pretty obvious that most requests would have been catered for.... The pace of the massage definitley changed at that "can you turn over sir?" stage...I just grunted a bit and pretended to be asleep!!!
Ended the day in Hue with another splurge..Cocktails in the 16th floor rooftop bar of the "Imperial hotel" and then dinner in the Hakkaido japanese restaurant...Back to thin gruel and water for the rest of the trip...
Hue was fabulous! More "French" than Hanoi and definitely more slowly paced..A fanatstic place for a bit of R&R before the journey kicks off again!
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