Hue in a Day

Our boat brought us back from Halong Bay at around 1 and we transferred into a minivan for the 4 hour trip back to Hanoi. Alex had a close call after starting the journey, but managed to make a "Happy House" (toilet) just in time. We all knew why our tour guide (Cuong) called it a "happy house" after Al came back to the van (massive grin on his face). Anyways, 4 hours later, we were back in Hanoi and got dropped off at the bus stop, where we would get picked up by our sleeper bus for the trip to Hue.

At 6pm, our sleeper bus turned up. It wasn't what we thought it was gonna be - from the pictures, it looked like we were gonna get something similar to lazy boy seats, but in actual fact, the seats were much much smaller (and two storied...) I was ok with length, but was pretty snug width-wise, Alex battled with length. They were definitely vietnamse sized seats. After figuring out how to make ourselves semi-comfortable, we started our 15 hour trip to Hue from Hanoi. The road was pretty bumpy, and the driver was loving his airhorn, so the sleep was fairly rubbish. We stopped somewhere along the way for a feed - 2 Pho Bo (beef rice noodle soup). Met an Austrian dude, Helmut, who was on our bus and he shared round his bottle of local red wine. Tasted ok, but pretty sure it was a rice wine, not a proper red.

We arrived in Hue at around 9:30am and the moment our feet touched the ground outside, we were instantly accosted by hotel reps. We talked to a guy who said he had a free taxi to his hotel and that it would cost $15 a night. Not too bad a deal, so we took him up on his offer. Sweet room with aircon, hot shower, fan, and wifi. I won the coin-toss again, so got the double bed, while Alex had to resort to the single. I'm sure his time will come, but for the moment, i'm loving the coin-toss system, much better than the rock-off system from our last trip to SE Asia. Hue was a warm change from the coolness up north in Hanoi/Halong. By now, it was about 10am, so we went to grab a feed. As soon as we walked out onto the main drag, Happy Thuan (a local tour guide) started talking to us. Classic dude - he had a notebook full of comments from all the people he's taken around. Apparantly, he was the number 1 tour guide in the city and he's on wikitravel. Anyways, we had a yarn to him, i thought he was legit as he was wearing a Sydney Roosters cap, and he said he could take us on his motorbike to a local joint to hav a cheap as Pho for breakfast. Cos it was so late, we had missed all the proper tours to see the DMZ (demilitarized zone) and all the old war sights, but Happy Thuan said he could organized us a car that would take us where we wanted for about $40 each. Was a sweet deal as most places were charging a bit more than that for same same but different. We first checked out Khe Sahn (the combat base of the Americans in the Vietnam War). It was a massive drive to get there, about 150km (so Thuan reckoned). There were some old tanks and planes there, you could see the old runway and where the barracks etc used to be. There was also an old american war vet there that was visiting the site for the 11th time. He served in the Vietnam war, but was based further south in Da Nang. He had some interesting chat about the war and the hills surrounding Khe Sahn. We could've stood there and listened to him a bit more, but Happy THuan was hungry and wanted to get us to the DMZ and Vinh Moc tunnels - so we jumped back in the car and headed north (stopping for a feed along the way).

We stopped for about 10 mins to check out the DMZ (5km north and 5km south of the old border between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. There was the old bridge there that we walked halfway across - but due to time constraint, we had to boost to the tunnels. The Vinh Moc tunnels were pretty sweet. They were Vietnam-sized (about max 1.6m high by 1.2m wide. Was sweet for our guide, but a bit cramped for Al and I. It was pretty buzy seeing how small the family rooms were (for a family of 5, you would get a space about the size of a single bed. We could only explore a small portion of the tunnels (about half of the top level) due to the rain. it was still about 12-15m below the surface, but the third level went down to about 23m. After the tunnels, Thuan took us back to Hue via the coastline, where we passed some fields full of american bunkers. By the time we got back to Hue, it was about 7pm and dark.

It was an epic amount of time to be sitting in a vehicle - 4 hours from Halong to Hanoi, 15 hours from Hanoi to Hue, and 8.5 hours cruising round seeing the sights round Hue. Showers were well overdue, so we showered up and check-in online. Matty Mee is currently in Vietnam, and he happened to be in Hue the same time we were here. Managed to get hold of him and met up at Bar Why Not for a few beers. He's got about 4 days left on his tour before he heads to singapore and then thailand. Hopefully we'll catch up with him in the Southern islands in thailand - get him across for the full moon party on Koh Phangan. We called it quits around 11pm, Matty Mee had a flight out of Hue at 6:30am, and we were leaving on the bus to Hoi An at 8am.

We arrived in Hoi An, the city of cheap suits, round lunch time. Will give you an update on Hoi An later. We're here til tomoro evening (bus leaves at 6pm) and head to Nha Trang (550km away - about 12 or so hours on a sleeper bus). Oh yea, Facebook doesn't seem to work that well in Vietnam, so will only be on there sporadically.

Two week down - time's flying pretty quick!