Last day in Hue

today we got a cyclo out to the citadel on the other side of Hue where we explored all the ruins and temples



and got up nice and close to an elephant!


it was even hotter today than yesterday (a lot of the shops appeared closed and even motorbike drivers and cyclo drivers weren't following tourists around so it must have been hot even by Vietnamese standards!) so we only spent just over an hour in the citadel before getting another cyclo (after ewen did a lot of bargaining) to a silk shop we had read about in lonely planet. this is a shop called Duc Thanh where Mr Kinh Van Le does silk embroidery art. apparently it is the best place to go in Hue as Kinh's family has been creating these pieces of art for over 3 generations now. Mr Kinh took us upstairs and spent over an hour showing us all of his work, patiently turning piece after piece until we found two that we wanted. he then took photos with us both for his book that he shows all of his buyers, the book is full of letters and photos of everyone who buys art from him. he also showed us the article about himself in the lonely planet book and two different articles in magazines, he was so proud of himself and so he should be! we got two silk embrodariy art pieces for under 700,000VND (under $40 AUS) in Australia these would easily sell for $100 a piece. Mr Kinh also showed us a teapot he has displayed in a cabinet that is 500 years old, he also had a magazine article about this with a photo of him in it.

after leaving Mr Kinh's shop we walked back to the main part of Hue and i had a cocktail, some icecream and some sweet chili potato skins at a restaurant before coming back to the hotel room to pack our bags because tomorrow we leave for Hoi An.
We had planned to get a bus to Hoi An but the girls at the front desk of our hotel said a private car is driving down tomorrow with two women staying at this hotel and they want two more people to share the cost. so we are going to do that, figured it was worth the extra $9 each to sit in air conditioned comfort and be able to stop whenever we want to.

Hue

This morning we hired bicycles to ride out to a temple on the other side of Hue. After making it over the bridge and about 1.5km from the hotel ewen ran over something and his tyre got a hole in it, we walked the bikes back and about halfway saw the man who had rented us the bikes and he quickly swapped ewens bike for a new one. Then we set off on our way again, it was nice to be riding and giving my blistered feet a rest from walking but it was very hot, at least 40 degrees.

We stopped at a flag tower along the way and then rode off again for the temple, all up it was about a 6km ride there and 6km back.





We had lunch at the dmz restaurant and then went back to our hostel to have a rest in air conditioned comfort before going riding again to some tombs. After about half an hour of relaxing we set off getting lost for about half an hour and then when we finally found the first one many things we planned to see(this one was a pagoda) I started to feel really sick. I got very dizzy, felt like I was going to vomit and pass out at the same time. We rested for a little while before riding back to the hotel where I slept for a few hours and realized our first aid kit is useless, we didn’t even pack panadol!!!


At about 7pm we went out for some tea finding what seemed like a nice place lit by fairy lights and colooured lanterns. We ate our meals and left quickly after I saw rats!!! More than one, ewen wasn’t too worried because they were only in the front part of the restaurant but I think if the waitresses weren’t worried about them been in the front then they were probably in the back too! We went to a different restaurant to have some dessert and while we were there a man approached us with his life story written on a piece of paper. Its hard to tell when people are trying to con you over here everyone is so nice but we got guilted into buying a painting from him. We got a fairly good price we think and the picture is nice.. we just have to work out how to get it home in one piece
Below is a photo of our spare bed...

Hanoi to Hue

We woke up at 6.30am today to beautiful green country side outside our train window, we had a nice talk to a Vietnamese girl who was travelling with us in our carriage and she translated for the Vietnamese boy who was also in our carriage. She told us she was 32 (we though she was about 20) and divorced with a son. She was on her way to her home town of Danang to sort things out with her ex husband. She told us that she really wants to be fluent in English and was amazed at all the places we plan to go over the next 8 months. It really put things into perspecitive for us when she told us she had to save up to get the train from Hanoi to danang for weeks when we were sitting there with our ipods and laptops and all of our money to travel, not that we didn’t work hard for it but things are so different over here. She told us that a Vietnamese person would never been able to save enough to go travelling like we are, they just don’t earn enough money, makes me feel a bit better about child care wages in Australia 
When we got into hue station we were greeted by a man with sign saying ‘Duuen’ which we assumed meant Ewen.. our hotel here (the sports hotel) is very nice, we have a big room with two double beds, a balcony and an ensuite with a nice clean shower. (as soon as we got here we had showers after 72 hours of no showers this was fantastic) we also have free wifi and cable tv which entertains ewen. Our first day we went for a walk to a market where we saw half of pigs heads for sale, along with basically everything you can think of… we also walked around the streets of hue and through a park. We had dinner at a restaurant called ush opposite our hotel where we could sit upstairs watching the people go past on the street and had a really nice meal of lizards tails with beef and with chicken.

Cat Ba Island to Hanoi

Today we got up at 6am to get a bus-boat-bus combo back to Hanoi. We wanted to get down the street early to make sure we didn’t miss our bus (like we missed the boat yesterday). We found the bus straight away and got on heading for the pier, the boat we had to get on had no plank to it so you had to jump down into the boat, we chose to stand at the back so we could keep an eye on our packs and suffered from a fair bit of pollution thanks to this, the boat had large amounts of black smoke pouring out the back of it the whole time. Also the men working on the boat spent a lot of time looking worried and opening various hatches and climbing all over the outside edges of the boat studying the sides so that was comforting….

After the boat trip we got on a bus to take us to Hanoi. We arrived in Hanoi at about 11am and got a taxi straight to the train station to book beds on the overnight train to Hue. The train didn’t leave until 7pm so we put our bags in some lockers at the station and set off in search of some lunch. We had lunch at a kfc which was about the same as in Australia… gross!
We then consulted our lonely planet book and found out that there was a café not too far away that had free wifi so we got a taxi here, I think the café was called Puku and despite been down a very dark alleyway it was really nice and relaxed inside with lots of travelers on their laptops. We spent an hour or so here before going shopping where I brought my very first souvenir, a silk scarf.
We did a bit more shopping then went and sat at Hoan Kiem Lake for a little while before going to have an early tea at the real kangaroo restaurant which was great, again we were surrounded by other travelers which I found very comforting.

We headed back to the train station and got out packs out of the lockers, after I took out my bag I saw a mouse crawl from under it and then scamper into the next locker so we spent a few minutes searching out packs for mouse holes but luckily their were none.
The train was pretty good, 13 hours of travel went quite quickly, we passed the time playing paddocks, watching a couple of episodes of big bang theory until our laptop ran out of batteries and then sleeping for the most part. The worst part was when I had to go to the toilet at 4am (Ewen had been earlier and had seen a cockroach on the toilet) the toilets were not great as you can probably imagine.

Halong Bay to Cat Ba Island

On Saturday we checked out of our hotel and I decided we should walk to the pier (where we wanted to get a ferry to cat ba bay) with our backpacks on so we could feel like real backpackers, after about 5 minutes we realized this was a big mistake!! It was about a 4km walk and our bags were very heavy, we had to walk on the roads with the traffic a lot of the time and it was HOT!
When we finally got to the pier after talking to a few people we discovered the pier we actually needed was another 15km away so we got a taxi out there. We had been told the next ferry left at 1.30 and it was only 11am so when we got our ticket and were been ushered straight onto a boat we were pretty sure we were in the wrong place but got on anyway. We ended up on a local boat with no other tourists but the people were really nice, a little girl was mesmerised by the lion hanging from my pack and her family gave us some ‘sophie’ cake which turned out was delicious. Another couple helped us when we thought the boat had docked on a different island than the one we wanted.
Once off the boat we found out it had docked 20km from the main part of town so got in a mini bus and drove with them down to the main part of town.
We then had to walk around for TWO HOURS in the boiling hot and then the pouring rain with our backpacks on because no one had any vacancies. We tried to get straight on another boat to go to Hai Phong but missed the first boat by 2 mins (it left 20 minutes early) and then the ticket lady disappeared so we couldn’t buy tickets for the next boat. After a while a lady approached us saying her family had a hostel we could stay in for 900,000VND her husband came down and walked us up to the room so we could have a look at it. This room was ok, although we used our own sleeping bags for the first time because they sheets didn’t look like they had been changed and yet again we didn’t get to have showers due to the bathroom been gross!! (This was two days of no showers and A LOT of sweating so not good!)
We went for a walk and found an internet café so researched how to get off the island tomorrow and decided to get a bus-boat-bus combo back to Hanoi and then an overnight train to Hue.
We had a nice dinner at a restaurant over looking the water and boats and cliffs.