We got back from Halong Bay and had about 2 hours to kill until getting on the bus for Hue (pronounced “Hway”). This was perfect for us and gave us some time to freshen up and get on the internet before yet another long over-night journey. When it was time to go, instead of being taken to a bus station we were dropped off at a curb full of foreigners and some Vietnamese people who apparently had been waiting for the bus for a long time.
After over an hour of waiting we knew there was some kind of problem. We were transferred to a regular bus that took us a few blocks down the road to unfortunately, another curb to wait at. Finally, a bus came and Vietnamese people surged forward yelling and pushing to get on the bus. The crew of the bus were yelling and pushing peoples tickets away, and as I was also determined to get us seats on the bus I was standing in the middle of all of this. After a bunch of arguing that I didn’t understand, sadly, the sleeper bus drove away apparently already full. We finally found someone from the travel agency who told us that the bus we were supposed to be on was having mechanical problems so was being fixed, but should show up in a few minutes. After about 20 minutes our bus FINALLY was there. You would think me being in front row right by the doors would get me in the bus first, but before I knew it once again the Vietnamese forward and in a frezy started pushing their way to the front. I HATE people pushing, and really can’t wait to get back to a society that uses lines or first come first serve rules, which has been totally absent in Asia, but you gotta do what you gotta do and if they were pushing me I was going to push right back. After getting elbowed and rocking back in forth in tight crowd (me being tall really is an advantage, all I have to do is reach over their heads for the doors), and with the help of another foreign traveler being me pushing me forward we got on and raced to get good sleeper beds. We’ve gotten used to many, many overnight bus or train trips but this had to be the oddest sleeper I’ve been on. They really wanted to get as many beds in there as possible because as opposed to the normal two rows of beds there were three rows dividing the bus with beds on top and bottom. The beds were like little coffins, and reminded me of being in something like a narrow racecar bed you might sleep in as a kid. If I sat up my head was going to clash against the window or ceiling but already tired we just accepted having to lay down for the whole journey ahead.Sadly, we soon found out all the bus problems weren’t actually fixed. We tried to move into traffic and almost immediately broke down, right in the middle of all the honking motorbikes. After some serious engine revving, we started back up again, only to ever go a few yards before breaking down again. After the hours of waiting and all the trouble to get on the bus, and finally comfy in my bed I just kept my eyes closed hoping we would make it. After a few more break-downs somehow, we made it on the road, full speed ahead.
About 12 hours later we woke up in Hue! It was a pretty rocky ride, that involved some rain leaking on Felix’s head and the beds shaking so hard on the bumps it sounded like glasses constantly breaking through the night but were happy to finally be at our destination and finished with our last overnighter for a good while. It was raining in Hue so we were soaked immediately after getting off the bus, but jumped in a taxi and headed to the “Sports Hotel”. We got to our place which was centrally located on a travelers streets and immediately were greeted by friendly “Good Mornings!” by all the staff sitting around in the lobby. I’ve noticed a great difference in service here in Vietnam, compared to Thailand. While I love Thailand dearly, and the people are the friendliest I’ve ever met, when it comes to eating in a restaurant or going to a hotel, MOST OF THE TIME, I’ve learned to not expect good service, let alone any service at all. A waiter will take your order, but don’t expect them to do much else, sometimes they don’t even speak which was something I didn’t even know was possible as a waiter to do. In Vietnam thus far though, in every restaurant we go to, or hostel we book the people are above and beyond friendly. They speak good English (which also may attribute to lack of service in Thailand as they rarely they speak much English) and never tire of using all the English phrases (“Nice to meet you!”, “Good evening!”, “Have a good day!”, “See you again!”) as much as possible. It has been more than I would have expected and very refreshing that everyone at least seems to care about your general well-being here. We were taken to our room which although we requested a single bed to save money, had not only a single but also a massive double for the same price (she told us it was our choice if we wished to imagine it as a single or a double room). The room was huge and included a large balcony to look down on the street and only cost us about $10 each!
After cleaning up, and eating some fried shrimp and noodle soup at a café, we rented bicycles from the hotel to start our tour of the little city of Hue. This was my first time being right in the heart of the traffic of Vietnam and even though we were in a small city, it was a little nerve-wracking and exiting all at once. Knowing you aren’t in a bicycle lane but right in the middle of the road with hundreds of motorbikes flying past you only inches from your bike was pretty crazy. But just like our experience of walking through the busy traffic, it was far easier than I expected. The only things that made my heart jump for a minute was crossing the roads at an intersection (you may have bikes coming at you from all 4 directions all trying to cross) and the fact that people coming out of side roads onto the main road don’t look or even slow down for a second as they fly onto the road in front of you. It’s pretty apparent that everyone just watches out constantly so you can do pretty much whatever you want and know people will move themselves of avoid you. On a bike I adopted the same nature, it I wanted to cross, I knew the bikes would see me and just move around, or greet me with startling loud honks to let me know they were there.
We headed to the Citadel, the sight Hue was most famous for. The Citadel was a giant enclosure with walls that stretched about 10km along the bank of the river. It was pretty badly bombed by an American attack around 1968 but a few buildings still stand and informative video and some plaques gave us a gist of the grandeur that once lied within the Citadel. We spend most of our time in the Imperial Enclosure, which once housed the emperor’s residence and main buildings of the state. The place was huge and laid out with houses for his mother, theatre buildings, areas for “relaxation and prince training”, meeting rooms, temples, and his own home. Again, most of this wasn’t standing today however as only 20 of the 148 buildings survived the bombs in the French and American wars. What was left was pretty beautiful though, and you could tell the buildings covered with mosaics, dragon statues, and stones with drawings carved into them were once very beautiful.
The royal theater room, and me sitting on some overgrown ruins
After visiting the Citadel, we pedaled our way back into the busy streets to check out a local market. The market was very similar to ones we have seen in Thailand, and India, packed full of just about anything you could wish for in tiny spaces. We walked through spices, coffees, fruits, and even seahorses to each in the food section. The rest were filled with your regular knick-knacks and junk we didn’t have much interest in. There was a section with the triangle hats that all the Vietnamese wear here, and they were stacked up by the thousands, and of course everyone in every booth had one on their head. The funny part about the market was that half the people in the booths were asleep. This is a trend I’ve seen all over Asia, that naps are just an inherent part of the day and you can take them pretty much wherever you like, whether working or not. You can walk into any shop or even mini-mart kind of place and the owner will be asleep right in front of you either sprawled across the middle of the floor or hidden under some display. Can you imagine if we did this in America? The people curled themselves up on top of hundreds of bags of flower, or had narrow carved spaces out of whatever they were selling towered high above them. We got a kick out of a ancient old lady in her pj’s sitting on a stool perfectly straight up and her mouth wide open sleeping. The market was a bit too small for us, and at times Felix could barely walk having to duck under the roof made of tarp, and it was pretty dirty with all the sludge from the rain so we walked around all the aisles of thing we could and headed out. We biked around the town a bit more, trying in vain to find a silk market we heard about, before grabbing a bit to eat on a some tiny stools on the side of the road, and then heading home.
We had pretty much seen all there was to see in Hue and it was only 2:30! We figured this would be a good day for us to just rest for once as even on the relaxing cruise through Halong Bay we were still constantly on the move doing something. We lazed around before dinner at a pretty place filled with colored lanterns and looking down on the busy street scene below. We had a bus the next day at 1:30 to Hoi An so for once in our whole trip would not have a scheduled time to wake up. We had a complimentary hotel breakfast and later a snack of fresh mango shakes and the local Hue specialty, banh khoai (fried rice panckaes), which are a thick kind of pancake/tortilla filled with veggies, beef, and shrimp served with a peanut sauce. After eating we wandered around a bit without being rushed before leaving quiet little Hue.
View from our balcony
About 12 hours later we woke up in Hue! It was a pretty rocky ride, that involved some rain leaking on Felix’s head and the beds shaking so hard on the bumps it sounded like glasses constantly breaking through the night but were happy to finally be at our destination and finished with our last overnighter for a good while. It was raining in Hue so we were soaked immediately after getting off the bus, but jumped in a taxi and headed to the “Sports Hotel”. We got to our place which was centrally located on a travelers streets and immediately were greeted by friendly “Good Mornings!” by all the staff sitting around in the lobby. I’ve noticed a great difference in service here in Vietnam, compared to Thailand. While I love Thailand dearly, and the people are the friendliest I’ve ever met, when it comes to eating in a restaurant or going to a hotel, MOST OF THE TIME, I’ve learned to not expect good service, let alone any service at all. A waiter will take your order, but don’t expect them to do much else, sometimes they don’t even speak which was something I didn’t even know was possible as a waiter to do. In Vietnam thus far though, in every restaurant we go to, or hostel we book the people are above and beyond friendly. They speak good English (which also may attribute to lack of service in Thailand as they rarely they speak much English) and never tire of using all the English phrases (“Nice to meet you!”, “Good evening!”, “Have a good day!”, “See you again!”) as much as possible. It has been more than I would have expected and very refreshing that everyone at least seems to care about your general well-being here. We were taken to our room which although we requested a single bed to save money, had not only a single but also a massive double for the same price (she told us it was our choice if we wished to imagine it as a single or a double room). The room was huge and included a large balcony to look down on the street and only cost us about $10 each!
After cleaning up, and eating some fried shrimp and noodle soup at a café, we rented bicycles from the hotel to start our tour of the little city of Hue. This was my first time being right in the heart of the traffic of Vietnam and even though we were in a small city, it was a little nerve-wracking and exiting all at once. Knowing you aren’t in a bicycle lane but right in the middle of the road with hundreds of motorbikes flying past you only inches from your bike was pretty crazy. But just like our experience of walking through the busy traffic, it was far easier than I expected. The only things that made my heart jump for a minute was crossing the roads at an intersection (you may have bikes coming at you from all 4 directions all trying to cross) and the fact that people coming out of side roads onto the main road don’t look or even slow down for a second as they fly onto the road in front of you. It’s pretty apparent that everyone just watches out constantly so you can do pretty much whatever you want and know people will move themselves of avoid you. On a bike I adopted the same nature, it I wanted to cross, I knew the bikes would see me and just move around, or greet me with startling loud honks to let me know they were there.
We headed to the Citadel, the sight Hue was most famous for. The Citadel was a giant enclosure with walls that stretched about 10km along the bank of the river. It was pretty badly bombed by an American attack around 1968 but a few buildings still stand and informative video and some plaques gave us a gist of the grandeur that once lied within the Citadel. We spend most of our time in the Imperial Enclosure, which once housed the emperor’s residence and main buildings of the state. The place was huge and laid out with houses for his mother, theatre buildings, areas for “relaxation and prince training”, meeting rooms, temples, and his own home. Again, most of this wasn’t standing today however as only 20 of the 148 buildings survived the bombs in the French and American wars. What was left was pretty beautiful though, and you could tell the buildings covered with mosaics, dragon statues, and stones with drawings carved into them were once very beautiful.
The royal theater room, and me sitting on some overgrown ruins
After visiting the Citadel, we pedaled our way back into the busy streets to check out a local market. The market was very similar to ones we have seen in Thailand, and India, packed full of just about anything you could wish for in tiny spaces. We walked through spices, coffees, fruits, and even seahorses to each in the food section. The rest were filled with your regular knick-knacks and junk we didn’t have much interest in. There was a section with the triangle hats that all the Vietnamese wear here, and they were stacked up by the thousands, and of course everyone in every booth had one on their head. The funny part about the market was that half the people in the booths were asleep. This is a trend I’ve seen all over Asia, that naps are just an inherent part of the day and you can take them pretty much wherever you like, whether working or not. You can walk into any shop or even mini-mart kind of place and the owner will be asleep right in front of you either sprawled across the middle of the floor or hidden under some display. Can you imagine if we did this in America? The people curled themselves up on top of hundreds of bags of flower, or had narrow carved spaces out of whatever they were selling towered high above them. We got a kick out of a ancient old lady in her pj’s sitting on a stool perfectly straight up and her mouth wide open sleeping. The market was a bit too small for us, and at times Felix could barely walk having to duck under the roof made of tarp, and it was pretty dirty with all the sludge from the rain so we walked around all the aisles of thing we could and headed out. We biked around the town a bit more, trying in vain to find a silk market we heard about, before grabbing a bit to eat on a some tiny stools on the side of the road, and then heading home.
We had pretty much seen all there was to see in Hue and it was only 2:30! We figured this would be a good day for us to just rest for once as even on the relaxing cruise through Halong Bay we were still constantly on the move doing something. We lazed around before dinner at a pretty place filled with colored lanterns and looking down on the busy street scene below. We had a bus the next day at 1:30 to Hoi An so for once in our whole trip would not have a scheduled time to wake up. We had a complimentary hotel breakfast and later a snack of fresh mango shakes and the local Hue specialty, banh khoai (fried rice panckaes), which are a thick kind of pancake/tortilla filled with veggies, beef, and shrimp served with a peanut sauce. After eating we wandered around a bit without being rushed before leaving quiet little Hue.
View from our balcony
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