From Dong Hoi we took a 3 hour train in the early evening to the town of Hue. Our train ride was a interesting experience! When we got to the station to purchase our soft seats (air con, soft seated 2nd class) they only had hard seats left (wooden seats, no air con 3rd class). We suprised the ticket lady by taking the hard seat option and not waiting for the next train. I mean we had travelled on crazy Sri Lankan trains how difficult could this be?

Well we were slightly tested to our limits on the journey, it was a bonus that you are assigned a seat even in 3rd class so we made ourselves comfy on our hard wooden chair and waited for the train to set off. It looked like Sri Lankan 3rd class carriage with locals everywhere and not a westerner in sight. Although the views was stunning through rice fields and distant mountains we opted out of getting a camera or phone out as we had become viewing entertainment to the locals. A group of older gentleman sat near us talking and staring over, they then proceeded to pull out an old plastic container from under their chairs, it was rice wine. They offered their hand made glass, plastic bottle cut in half, of rice wine to Matthew who had to decline repeatedly to their offer. Rice wine is seriously strong and its not recommended to drink from a random persons homemade concoction. Well we could smell this stuff and it was seriously strong, we are glad they stopped asking and left us alone... Or so we thought.

One hour later after they'd drunk their wine and had a meal to eat, we became entertainment again, especially as we had decided to look at our Asia travel book to plan our next journeys as the locals around us fell asleep on benches and the floor, they must be doing an overnight journey. The oldest of the group of males leant over and asked Matthew our names and wanted to see our book. Well he held that book for a good hour looking through it at the pictures and words he recognised. He kept tapping us hard on the arm or knee to ask us a question. It was a shame we weren't able to speak much Vietnamese to him as he did not know hardly any English, we relied on picture and actions. To be honest he wasn't that much of a problem, he was just very curious about us.

The main problem was his friend who we hope was drunk. He was only interested in Nicole and our relationship towards each other. He did at one point introduce us to his wife who sat behind us, this did nothing to stop the constant questions of what we think was 'are you pregnant?' (Mildly offensive) ,'do you have children?' (They couldn't accept no, they assumed we must it made no sense to them) and 'how old are you?' (After working out or age difference Nicole was given the seal of thumbs up approval by our new mates). It's not only the questioning but also the looks, being a western woman in Asia is definetly a different experience to being a man at times. Even if your covered your still looked at in a certain way, it does make you feel uncomfortable in crowded situations such as on a train with some drunk men. We don't think they meant too much offence they were just curious and needed to pass the time, but they had a lot to say in Vietnamese after every answer we gave.

After that fun experience we caught a taxi with a friendly young driver who loved English football, sadly we had no idea about these players he was talking about as we weren't too up to date on it all. Our hotel was lovely, the same standard we've had everywhere, with a tiny 2 person lift.

We spent our 1 full day in Hue exploring the old citadel, this was our main reason for going to Hue. However this was our first day to also experience the Vietnamese rain! Sadly we both will never be allowed to complain about the rain in England, we experienced the short torrential downpours of Ella in Sri Lanka, but somehow this is worse. We should mention we are visiting in rainy season for the middle of the country. But the rain here continues all day, from start to finish, although it did vary slightly from serious drowning torrential downpour to just torrential downpour, it still saturated every item of clothing we wore even with a huge umbrella covering us. This rain is normal for Vietnam for this season, at home this rain would have alerted flood warnings in every town! We couldn't believe people worked in it!

Well the citadel was a 15 minute walk from our hotel, that turned into 30 minutes with puddle avoiding thrown in. We were slightly wet when we arrived but it didn't dampen our spirits, we paid our fare and headed inside the open area. Hue was the old capital of Vietnam and this citadel was home to its royalty, although some of it was damaged in the war they are restoring buildings all the time. With a tall dark brick wall around the area and large decorative gate houses to get inside it was a important place. Inside was full of various small assembly hall type buildings, used for different functions, and decorated with bright roof tiles and mosaic pictures of dragons and phoenixes. Attaching all these small buildings together were covered wooden walkways, decorated in bright red sliding shutter doors and wooden beams. Small gardens had been added, but there was still lots more restoration work left to do, the land was huge. We continued getting soaked while visiting as many parts were not connected by walkways yet, but it was a lovely place to see and interesting to learn about the past before the war.

On our walk back to the hotel the rain really upped its game and decided to give its all, so our trainers were drenched, socks saturated, trousers felt 10x heavier and our tops were soaked. We decided to stop at a resturant for some lunch and a bit of drying off, Matt ordered vegetable noodles and Nicole crispy noodles. The crispy noodles look like noodles lightly deep fried, they could have been long wiggly quavers, it was a strange thing to eat. Later that evening we had another meal out at a Italian that did local Vietnamese food and we both ordered some delious river fish with ginger and soy on rice, it was lovely.

Aside from the historic citidale Hue wasn't the nicest city we had been to, it was similar to the tourist areas of Spain with bright bars, pricy restaurants and lots of shops. We had already been warned by several people, hence why we only allowed one full day to see it. Next stop Hoi An.....