Hue

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Our last evening in Hoi An was great. We went to a cooking class with 5 others from the group taught by a local chef. We cooked spring rolls, fish, squid and sweet chilli sauce and wontons and were then able to enjoy our hard work by eating the food! Was a lot of fun and got some recipes to try for when we're back home! We then walked along the river and bought a lantern from one of the many street sellers who were selling them for 3000 (5pence). On full moon night all electricity in the town is turned off and you can buy a lantern and let it off down the river to celebrate the full moon. Just as we were buying our second lantern it started chucking it down so we went back to the hotel for an early night! We'd have loved to stay in Hoi An another day and gone to the beach...although im sure theres plenty of beach time to come!

The next morning we woke up for an 8.30 coach journey to Hue which took 3 hours. The journey was beautiful all along the coast and up through the mountains and into the clouds. When we arrived in Hue the heavens opened and it rained all day. After a nap we decided to brave the weather and head into town to see one of Vietnams main cultural and historic sites, the citadel and purple forbidden city home to the emperors of Vietnam from 1800 to 1945. It was an impressive site with a 6m wall for 10k all around and very grand buildings once inside. The sad thing was that it had been bombed during the war and very little work had been done since so it looked more like a thousand years old than 60.

In the evening we went out for food and decided on a pizza and cheeseburger to settle a hungry stomach! Afterwards we went to a backpackers bar with most of the group and had a bit to drink, chatted and played pool. In this bar you can write on the walls so me and Yasmin have a permenant marker now in the toilet and behind the bar! We woke up this morning to much better weather so we're going to stroll down to the river where there are some nice parks and then come back to check out before lunch. We've then got a horror of a journey to Halong Bay leaving at 3pm and arriving in Hanoi at 4 in the morning before a 4 hour drive to Halong Bay...hopefully it's worth it!

Hope ur all well back home...we're slowly trying to upload pictures onto facebook but it's a real pain so keep a look out on mine and yasmins facebook and we should get more on soon!

Jamie and Yasmin

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Comments

[mike]

food
Looking foward to some home cooked vietnamese food then when your back!!! We had viet spring rolls the other night and they were georgeous