Day 9 - Danang / Hue | Travel Blog

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January 24th 2008

Published: March 19th 2008

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doublesqueeeness

Danang

Railway Station

We actually spent day 9 in 3 cities/towns. And 3 very lazy but photogenic towns at that. Woke up in Hoi An, spent the first half of the day in Danang and ended the day in Hue.

It was still raining when we woke up so there goes our plans on exploring Hoi An before our shuttle picked us up for our 10:00 bus. But what a waste it was. Since the Japanese bridge was pretty nearby, we decided to pay it a visit (What? That's it? Luckily they didn't charge money!) Well, actually we're not sure if they did, because it was still so early in the morning, and everything looked abandoned, hehehe.

So we went back to Minh Quang, grabbed a coffee and our shuttle sent us to a travel office as the bus was delayed. We were told to surf the internet while waiting 😊 To our surprise, our bus was a sleeper bus - double deckered and all. Most passengers were actually on a longer journey to Hanoi, while ours was just a 45 minute ride to Danang.

We took a moto to the Danang railway station. Firstly, we got conned 4000D by the

Danang

View from across the railway station

toilet jaga. Then we had to figure out what to do for the next few hours since the next train to Hue was at 3 pm. So after getting our tickets, we crossed the road opposite the station in search of food. We found a sheltered stall selling pho (It was still raining). We ate, drank tea, people watched, ate, snapped pictures (lather, rince, repeat) and then it was time to board our train :D

The train ride between Danang & Hue was supposed to be the most scenic and beautiful BUT since it was raining everything was dull, grey, blurry 😞 Oh well!

Once we arrived Hue, we decided to get our tickets to Hanoi for the next day. Apparently it is not advisable to take a bus to Hanoi - 18 hour journey. The train will only take about 13 hours tops. So we got ourselves tickets for the hard bed sleeper, and instantly rendered ourselves broke for the next 2 days 😊 (937,000 D!)

Since it was raining pretty heavily in Hue, we had no choice but to take a moto to get to the backpackers area (Actually within walking distance) Initially we checked

Danang

out a couple of smelly, dodgy narrow rooms (with scary old people) After walking out of one of the aforementioned, a guy waiting outside took us to this 'clean, new' hotel just opposite the road, and it was for only USD8. Not bad 😊

After checking in, we washed up, dried our clothes and our stuff and jumped into bed to keep warm and watched a movie on cable tv. Couldn't remember what movie it was, but Robin Williams was a Presidential hopeful in it 😊

Come dinner time, we scouted for the cheapest possible food we could find (severely broke wut) so Eugene decided to have a bowl of pho at a stall, at the corner of a badly lit street. Could hardly see anything, but the soup reeked very strongly of essence of COW. By far the worst pho we've ever come across, so Eugene wolfed it down in a couple of minutes. Then went looking for MY dinner 😊

Since we were cold and broke, there's basically nothing else we could do. We headed back to the hotel, surfed the net for a while and called it a day 😊

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