Hue

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Tuesday Mar 4 in Hue

It's 2:40 Tuesday afternoon here ( I mostly do that for myself cause I've lost all track of which day it is ) and we are in the city of Hue on the banks of the Perfume River. We stayed in this same hotel ( The Saigon Morin) when we were last here in 2006! At that time we saw what we thought was the most spectacular rainstorm imaginable (turned out it was the predecesor of a Typhoon that blew through a few days later).

Hotel itself is very interesting..originally built in 1901 as French colonial hotel and much of the original woodwork etc is still in place and amazing still. The large center courtyard has trees in it that I'm sure predate the building and its truly an oasis in this now busy, bustling city.

We saw most of the nearby sights on our last visit so mostly chose Hue as a stopover on the way up north just so we could stay in this Hotel again. We did wander around town for a couple of hours this morning but have been relaxing by the pool since noon or so.

No more N American food for me on this trip!!! After sampling all the asian dishes etc at every opportunity since we arrived.. who decided to have a quick "Cheeseburger and fries" in a 5 star hotel bar last Sunday night......

After a full blown nasty attack of food poisoning Sun night... Monday became a verrrrry long travel day.. 4.5 hr car ride to Saigon airport.. 1 hr wait in departure room..1.5 hr flight to Hue and finally to hotel where i dared try to eat a lil something. Good news is it was a food thing and not some nasty insect or flu bug.

Temp is in the mid 20's or so..quite nice and a bit relaxing after the mid 30's the last few days. Tomorrow morning someone will pick us up @ 10:30 and take us to the airport where we will catch a flight to Hanoi. We will be transferred to the railway station where we then catch an overnight train to Sapa..our final destination. We are looking forward to the train ride as it's a private train run by Victoria Hotels and is along the lines of the "Orient Express" with supposedly great sleeping cars, bar car, dining car etc.

Im not sure when we will next see internet access after leaving Hue.. Wed night on the train, Thurs night in The Victoria Sapa hotel but its way up in the mountains..Fri night overnight train back to Hanoi and Sat morning we board the big bird home. It's one of those weird time zone/international date line days. We leave Hanoi @ 11:05 Sat morning, fly for something like 16.5 hours and arrive in Kelowna @ 3:13 Sat afternoon.

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Photos

M in the park
along the Perfume River

Hotel courtyard
Little pagoda