Hue

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As soon as I got back to Hanoi I had a shower in the hostel and as soon as the taxi arrived we were off to meet the bus, when we got to the bus stop outside the a branch of the tour operator there were 9 Israeli travellers in 2 groups waiting for the bus. I got chatting to them expecting to be on a different bus as some of them were going to Hoi An and others to Dalat. Thirteen hours later we arrived in Hue and went our separate ways. I checked into a hotel where I managed to negotiate half the standard price including breakfast. My room had a double bed, aircon, cable TV and a private bathroom all for $12. I wasn’t planning on spending much time there though, as soon as I checked in I went in search of breakfast, as it turns out I had Pho again. I then set off to find a place to rent a moped for the day to see the sights and try to organise my ticket to Hoi An. A few moments after leaving the restaurant a driver approached me and we negotiated a fair price including all the sights the tour operators and hotels visit plus a few extras like an American bunker and a trip to the beach for sunset. My driver Tien took me to the travel agent to organise my ticket and we haggled for a price in the morning to get me there with my gear as well, this done we went to the citadel where I met a Dutch girl, we walked round the Citadel and the Forbidden Purple City and stopped for a Vietnamese iced coffee before I went back to meet Tien and onwards to the Thien Mu Pagoda, famous for a Monk who gave his life in self immolation in protest over religious freedom, at Tu Hieu a working Buddhist temple a monk walked round and chatted to me, he also allowed me to take his picture. I visited the Khai Dinh Tombs where the emperor is buried. To finish our day off we went to the beach and sat for an hour where we had a beer. I spent part of the evening walking around the town where I stopped for dinner and fought off the Moto drivers who repeatedly approached me asking if I was in need of sucky sucky, fucky fucky, boom boom (which i wasn’t, at least not if I was paying), marijuana. I then went back to the hotel with a couple of beers and watched some TV for the first time in weeks.

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