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Back to me (Em) again to let you allknow about our goings on, this time it's Hue.
We arrived after a 12 hour journey on an overnight bus, constantly looking back over our shoulders to see the lucky sods who'd got on before us and had claimed the beds... grrrr. We were approached by the usual touts, trying to get you to go to their hotel and so off we went with one of them who was from a place in the guide book. The hotel was nice but we were dragged up 5 flights of stairs to our room which wasn't ideal at all but we sure as hell couldn't be bothered trapesing all the way back down them again carrying our backpacks. They need lifts in that place! We didn't want to waste any time and so after an omlette we headed to the Citadel. Lonely planet informs me that the walls are 2m thick and 10km long and was begun in 1804 by Emperor Gia Long. Inside were royal enclosures and temples and as you can see in the picture for this blog, a huge yellow dragon which by the way had a strange smell permeating from it that made us both screw up our noses. Parts of the complex were quite sad as once beautiful buildings had been destroyed in the war. The Emperors' mother had her own house and the remains of this can be seen as a couple of crumbling walls and a pile of bricks. The residence was bombed in the war and then some years later was finished off by a typhoon. In one of the buildings there were 2 thrones which you could pay a small fee to dress up like an Emperor (they had several outfits to choose from) and go and have your picture taken looking like a prize idiot. It seems to be quite a popular concept as we've seen it in several places since. Lunchtime took us to a small cafe/ restaurant owned by a deaf man who served very cheap but very tasty grub. Afterwards he insisted that we scrawled a message on his walls for him which were already covered in recommendations from other visitors. The afternoon involved a lot of walking around aimlessly until a cyclo driver decided he was determined to get our business and so hassled us until we finally gave in and agreed to a one hour tour of the city. I didn't mind to be honest as we'd been walking the same streets for about 2 hours and we had no idea where we were on our map; seeing as he agreed to drop us off at the hotel again later, it seemed like a good option.
The following day involved posting things home and moving from cafe to bar to cafe. We tried some ice drinks where they put flavoured pudding in the bottom of the drink and gave you a massive straw to suck it up through- great idea, not so cheap! Next on the cards was a trip to the demilitarised zone. This included going to some of the tunnels used by the Vietnamese during the war to shelter from the bombs being dropped by the Americans. Some of the tunnels went as far down as 25m. They used to spend most of their time in these tiny tunnels and when they were under particularly intense fire they would even have to cook inside them. Perhaps even scarier was that something like 17 babies were born in the 'maternity ward' which was a cove in the tunnel walls about 1.5m deep and 3m wide. Other stops on the tour included the Ho Chi Minh trail, Ben Hai river, Cua Tung beach and The Rockpile which was just as exciting as it sounds. The final stop was Khe San base. It had some interesting photos there and a couple of preserved trenches and an American helicopter and the likes. I got a bit frustrated though as eveything was so incredibly biased with captions underneath the photographs making out that the Americans were really struggling whilst the Vietcong were finding the whole thing really easy... not sure they were to be honest but hey! The trip was a bit lame and we wished we hadn't bothered as it was basically 12 hours on a bus but on the bright side, the weather was crap and so at least we weren't missing out on sunshine!
I don't know if it was the confinements of that bus or the weather that made me agree to riding on the back of a motor bike with Dean but the next day we decided to head to some of the royal tombs about 16km from the centre of Hue. So off we went, Dean trying to work his first ever bike and me, holding on for grim death. After a near miss at the start, where driving it across the road from the hotel we almost smashed in to the curb, we were on our way and the rest of the journey was actually very smooth so kudos Deano. The tombs were in really pretty grounds and felt almost mysterious as they were really quiet and a light mist was about. We were a bit cheesed off though as the tomb we paid the most to visit was having work done on it and so we only got to see the surrounding area and the cheeky sods even charged us full price! At least the price for tourists wasn't 25 times that of the one for the Vietnamese like it was at one place in Hampi. We managed to navigate our way to each tomb pretty well and even managed to find a petrol station which filled the tank for 80p!
Thankfully neither of us were attacked by scary bracelet yeilding women in Hue but we did almost get nibbled at by rats as we were playing cards one evening. I think the rat shrieked as loud as I did when I spotted it and jumped out of my skin.
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