Hue 27/07 - 29/07

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Our train got into Hue around 1pm and after following maps on our phone and ignoring signs on the road we eventually noticed the 10ft sign and checked into our hotel. We were starving by this time and went straight for the nearest street food food fried rice we could get our mits on. We then hired bicycles (bit of an error, should have forked out for mopeds in hindsight) and began making our way to the abandoned water park. It was raining pretty hard which meant we couldn't use our phone gps so we had to keep stopping, taking shelter, having a peak and trying to remember the directions "ok, second left, fork right, 5th left, 2nd exit on roundabout, cross the bridge, look out for a hotel...." needless to say we couldn't ever agree on the directions we had just recited and cycled double the distance we needed to. When we arrived we were surprised that the water park appeared structurally sound, it was covered in graffiti and algae but otherwise we couldn't understand what went wrong. We later found out that it cost $3 million to build and opened before it was totally finished and then closed 2 years later due to "business problems". Anyway, we quite liked it. There was an amphitheater for shows and water displays, an aquarium, water slides, lazy river, flight simulator and bungalows for guests.. kinda like a small Vietnamese centre parcs. After getting our fill of spooky water park we cycled back without any wrong turns and treated ourselves to cheeseburger and chips at Nook cafe.



The next morning we were keen to find out what Hue had to offer, we had delicious fresh spring rolls and banana panacakes for breakfast, the sun was shining and everything was shaping up to be a good day. The gem of Hue is the Imperial City, within which stands an old citadel which used to be home to the Vietnamese royal family. It was alright, the main sight of the royal throne was being refurbished so that was missing. There were a few interesting videos of times gone by showing the guards and elephants in traditional ceremonies but the buildings themselves had been blitzed by America and so nothing very spectacular remained. There was a good bonsai garden which was nice to walk around and we watched craftsmen making hats and incense sticks. Then we were pretty much done but had foolishly booked to stay the night and we had missed the opportunity to catch a bus that day.





We managed to arange a bus for 2pm and so spent the morning eating French pastries and blueberry smoothies before finally getting out of pretty crappy Hue.

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