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I've spent the past few days in Hue, which is a really nice town, even if there's not that much to do around here. On Monday I set out to explore the citadel, which Lonely Planet put on their 'must sees' for Hue, but I'm not entirely sure why, since it's just another district of the city, and just happens to have an old wall around it, I felt a bit let down to be honest, but such is life.
On Wednesday though I went on the most boring tour ever! It was to the DMZ, which in itself is quite interesting, but our tour guide spoke very little English, most of the sites we either just drove past as they were pointed out to us, or we got to stop to take pictures for a minute or two before being loaded back onto the bus (luckily it was a nice bus). The highlight of the day was a 'tour' of the tunnels the Northern Vietnamese lived in during the war, which were really interesting, and I really did feel like a guerilla fighter while we were in there, as we were running (if you can run whilst practically on your hands and knees) the whole time, so we didn't get any information about what actually happened in there. I met some really cool people on the tour, and we all had a good laugh that one of the places we went to was a bridge built in 1999, so had absolutely nothing to do with the war, I'm still not entirely sure why we went there. Anyway, on Wednesday night I went out to dinner and then drinking with the people I'd met on the tour, which was really great, we ended up in this brilliant bar, called Browneyes, and they had cocktails for 50p and free pool, so we stayed there for ages, just messing around.
Yesterday, despite a pretty impressive hangover, I hired a bicycle and cycled out to the tomb of Tu Duc, who was emporer in like the 1800s, when he was alive he insisted on having 50 dishes prepared by 50 cooks and served by 50 servants at every meal, and his tomb is like an entire town, it's really pretty though, with a lake, and very peaceful, which was perfect. On the way back I got chatting to this vietnamese guy, who happened to be cycling the same way as me, we ended up chatting about everything from David Cameron to rice farming in Vietnam, and it was really great.
Tonight I'm catching the overnight bus to Ninh Binh, where I'll be getting close to Halong Bay! According to people I've met who are going in the opposite direction, that will be a real highlight, so I can't wait!
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