Hue and Hoi An....try saying that out of breath.

Following a miffed fare-thee-well to Hanoi (did Uncle Ho have to take a holiday whilst we were in town, just plain rude man) we started our train 12 our train journey down to Hue.  We had been warned that there had been heavy rainfall and floods down the coast so the train may take longer than expected. What were weren’t told is that at 5 in the morning the train would have to stop due to the tracks being underwater and all the passengers would be booted off onto decrepit buses in the morning darkness. No one is at their best after being rudely awakened so I was getting up a head of steam to being a smidge grumpy but when the dawn light finally came I got back in box sharpish. The roads down the coast are raised about a metre from the ground and that morning I could see why. There was water everywhere, sometimes spilling over the surface of the road. Looking out of the window it looked like we were driving over a lake. Seeing all the wooden huts under about a metre of water was pretty sobering but the people looked like they were used to this living and zipping around in their canoes.

After a few hours on the bus then another few on the train we all arrived in Hue very late and in a very subdued state. The poor girl from our hotel who had come to pick us up had waited 3 hours at the station before giving up. When we got our hotel I’d like to say we were all geared up to experience Hue life but in actuality we fell into bed and only managed to drag ourselves out for dinner. Besides, the film Mongolian Death Worms was on the box so I wasn’t going out for anyone. The next day we prepared to get back into the tourist groove. Hue is a town on the river that is over a 1000 yrs old and (I think) may have been a  capital at one point. The upshot of this is that it was surrounded by lots of old stuff, tombs, a citadel and a forbidden purple city and such. We weren’t particularly keen on being herded around the tombs on a big tour so elected to hire a dragon boat to ourselves and do our own thing. The tombs were incredible but unfortunately (cough) our camera battery ran out the moment we set foot on the boat so we had a day of no photos. We did manage to get a photo of the car that a monk drove to Saigon. Sigh.

You can see the really famous photo of the monk on fire in the background

 You’ll also be pleased to hear that I slipped on a muddy bank and looked like I’d had a terrible accident in the posterior region. I had Al and a woman on the boat wiping my backside down with damp clothes getting rid of the mud. This did the trick but until my trousers dried it looked like I had had a different sort of accident already. Sigh again. In order my damaged zen we went out that evening and proceeded to get silly drunk sampling the delights of the many many happy hour specials. It was in a bar called Brown Eyes that we met an old sea dog (literally and figuratively) called Pete whom we would proceed to bump into in various states or inebriation all the way down the coast. This night of excess may have accelerated Alex’s malignant cold and the next morning he was a shell of a man. So off I trotted into the bright morning sun to visit the Purple Forbidden city. Very much like Beijing’s forbidden city but 1% of the tourists and this one has been allowed to aged gracefully. Did notice the rabid koi carp mind that followed me up and down the bridge waiting for me to throw some nosh in, or fall in, I couldn’t quite figure. 

The city was lovely, very much like a forgotten garden as you can see.

All was very peaceful until I looked at my watch and realised I had a very small amount of time to get back, pack and catch out bus to Hoi An. One look at my sweaty and determined face and I didn’t get bothered by a single hawker all the way back.

With minutes to spare we caught the bus, and what a bus it was. We’ve been on a whole variety of forms of transport recently but none quite like this. Basically the set up was like a normal bus until you got to the waist area. Instead of being a normal chair the bottom half stretched out like a bed. Basically we each had out own air conditioned chaise longue for the  hour journey which was VERY much appreciated.

After crossing the Hai Van pass (another reference to Top Gear there….sorry), we arrived in my favourite part of Vietnam, Hoi An. This is also  very old trader town on the river that has influences from the French, Japanese, Thai, Chinese…. you name it. It’s a world heritage site and very little of the old town has been changed, beautiful.

It also has the bonus of being about 5k from a very very long stretch of white sand of beach which we took advantage of for the day. If all theta wasn’t enough Hoi an was a foodie heaven. Top notch fare and proper desserts finally! Ask Al about the passion fruit and chocolate mousse cake when you next see him but be warned, bring a tissue to wipe the dribble of his chin.

Since we seemed to have based our entire trip on the Top Gear trip it seemed only fair for Al to go to the exact same place they got their lairy suits done and get a shirt. The measuring process was very amusing for me but I was a bit disappointed by the sober material he used…….they did have some lovely peacock feather silk prints.

So, as you can see, all was well in our world, not even the last evening of torrential rain could dampen (sorry) our spirits. Had we but known that this was an ominous omen we may not have been so chirpy………….