Blogs from Thua Thien - Huế, North Central Coast, Vietnam, Asia - page 2

We are off again today, with an 8.00 am departure for our trip by coach 80 miles north to the city of Hue (pronounced 'hway'), the ancestral home of the good old British comedy actor and 'Carry On' stalwart, Jack Douglas - those readers of a certain age might get what I'm on about! If not, Google: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VLg-DB-q65k and perhaps you'll see what I mean. We are only one night in Hue (before moving on again to Hanoi), but we have a lot to pack in before our flight out of Hue tomorrow night. Our first stop, just outside Hoi An, was at The Marble Mountains, an outcrop of limestone promontories, of which the main ones are named after three key Vietnamese elements of fire, water and iron and the biggest of the three was 'water' ... read more

After a fairly good sleep we arrived in Hue to a pretty bleak outlook but surprisingly it cleared up into a bright day (27c but much higher humidity than to date). After a late breakfast we were set up with our new bikes which will take us the rest of the way to HCMC (happy to return my old one as it had seen better days). Riding was restricted to a leisurely 40kms exploring the former imperial capital of Vietnam as well as getting used to our new bikes. Stops on the way included the war ruins of the Forbidden Purple City, the Imperial Citadel, temples, tombs and pagodas. The Forbidden City was hugely damaged by the French after they tried to reclaim the country after WW2 & further damaged during the Tet offensive. Some of ... read more

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 ... read more

Our flight landed in Hue after dark and we were met by the driver from our hotel. One of the benefits of travelling with a bit more cash and slightly more advanced years are airport pickups - gone are the days of trying to sort public transport to our accommodation. From the taxi it was obvious that Hue had changed dramatically since our last visit. At our hotel we were greeted with a big plate of fresh fruit which was very welcome as I was feeling dreadful and had no desire to face the busy streets to look for a meal. I woke next morning feeling no better but after breakfast at the hotel we heard out to walk the couple of blocks to the Perfume River. I promptly fell flat on my face after tripping ... read more

We were sitting on the balcony of our hotel in Hue, when Tom said, "Look at that man!" He was repairing a window on a building a few blocks away. This was not the only time we saw such daring, but usually the worker wore some sort of safety harness. Not this guy.... read more