Hue....It's raining!

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Our sleeper bus from Hanoi to Hue was interesting as they nearly didn't let us on the bus for the crazy reason "you don't have a ticket". Our hostel forgot to give it to us so after much persuasion and thankfully the receipt we were allowed on the bus....last. This bus was huge and spotless and actually had rows of beds and the only beds now free where the row of 5 all together at the back, amazingly we had them to ourselves..bargain! This was until we picked some people up but non the less probably the best beds. The journey was fine and we managed to get some sleep after the driver turned off the Vietnamese opera he had blaring from the speakers. We arrived in Hue bright and early and it was raining pretty bad, thankfully we had arranged another pickup from our hotel and we checked in...dry ish.

Our Hotel was realy nice, big room, bath, sky tv all for 6 pounds a night, with breakfast! We had however arrived without much money so our first task was to find an ATM. We were told there was one close by and the rain wasn't too bad at this point so we ventured out to get some cash. On arrival at the cash machine we went through the normal procedure however it "wouldn't give us any money at this time". We thought this a bit strange so we ventured to find another ATM which gave us the same answer, we were getting a bit concerned at this point so carried on our serach for some cash. During our search the heavens opened......and i mean wide open. We thought the rain in Hanoi was bad, this was worse and we were stuck in the middle of it. To cut a long story short we were like drowned rats, our gore-tex shoes couldn't even hold out but that may have been down to the foot high puddles we were wading through, and worst of all pennyless. We put the ATM problem down to the storm and after getting dry and some food it was definitely time for sleep, day 1 written off.

The next day was dry but dull so we headed off again to the ATM where today there was no problem....yippeeeeee. We then headed to the Citadel which is a walled city where all the powerfull people lived when Hue was the capital city. It was pretty cool but most of it was bombed by the Americans during the war. We then headed to the market which was pretty poor so back to the hotel to get ready for a night out. Whilst we were getting ready we could hear a lot of drums banging and shouting etc. and after looking out of our window we could see some kind of carnival with dragons and kids with drums. As we headed out there were more dragons going into shops and dancing round to the drums and asking people for money. The idea is you feed the dragon the money and he scarpers....sounds like a racket to me. We found a nice restaurant close to our hotel as the weather was still a bit ropey and had a lovely meal follwed by the best Banana pancake ever!

Up early the next day as we were headed further down the coast in search of the sun. Hoi An is famous for it's tailoring so i am going to have to keep a close eye on Lisa who in my opinion already has enough clothes......and no they won't fit in MY BAG!

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Comments

[Dave Deane]

Rain
Don't think we met a single person on our travels who didn't get soaked through in Hue. It rained solidly for 3 days when we were there.