A Dong 2 Hue

... the motorbike lying beside the bus. Soon a crowd of locals had stared to gather outside the front of the bus. Everyone inside the bus was sat up and trying to see what had happened. A couple of men with torches searched around the motorbike and the ditch and found a helmet and scarf. We feared the worst. It was awful.

Three hours later the driver got back on the bus. We overheard someone say that the motorcyclist was okay, and Dave thinks he saw him walking around ...

... down the Perfume River in a dragon boat, which sounds a lot more romantic than it is. The boat was noisy and the river was busy, large and a bit dirty. We visited yet another pagoda and touched the head of a giant marble turtle for prosperity.

That is it for today, slightly uneventful so quite relaxing. Tomorrow, we board an afternoon bus to go to Hoi An, we get there at 8:00 PM so not sure we'll have time to make an entry. Toodles for now!

... did argue it would be over the equivalent of
25 cents. And it's perfectly understandable – in a way it is fair
that as Westerners you don't pay the local price. All that to say –
it was very cool to get the real price.




Continuing
our tour we pass countless clothing stores and locals outside
enjoying the cooler night temperatures and head to Lac Thien – the ...

Its a tough one. A lovely city with a beautiful, impressive cittadel but a MEAN MEAN cyclo man. Just cos we wanted to walk around the city, having been on a bus for 15 hours, a cyclo driver got very annoyed with us and not only followed us for two blocks trying to convince us but when ...

... the Russian guy was there), both bikes started first time. amazing. The happy locals tries to charge us 300,000 VND (10 pounds), but we gave them 110.

We drove on through the flooded streets, bikes coughing and spluttering. Eventually, after leaving high water marks on the petrol tanks, ours died in the middle of the road. We pushed him onto the bridge, and tipped 5 liters of water out of the exhaust pipe. After 15 minutes we had him purring again, and all was well.

We ...

... t have the money or clothes for it. So I went on to Hoi An. Vinh was delighted to see me again. He gave me room 403. The gimpy room. No toilet seat and no sink. Minor inconveniences included no fridge for groceries, no AC, and the ceiling was less than 6 feet tall for the majority of it. I slept well though, the first night I bought Benjamin Button on the street for a dollar and rented a DVD player and had a little night to myself. That day I took my shorts by the lady that made them ...

... body. If I remember correctly, he had over a hundred concubines and something like 400 children. The walkway was really slippery because of the rain, and one of our fellow tourists had his feet come out from under him. He fell heavily onto his shoulder but recovered quickly enough. As a result, the mantra for the day became “Watch Your Step.”

Second stop, the tomb of Khai Dinh. This one was something to see. First off, we arrived in a deluge of rain. We had to ...

... pumped through the vents. The air that did make it's way to cool my brow was an icky, stale, sea-salty, moss-like smell. It was as if the minibus had been hauled out of the ocean after being submerged for some time and all of the sea gunk was still festering in the vents.

We trudge along, following the coastline, with open windows, and the front door wide open. We're headed north to Hue - the capital of the Nguyen ...

... my life!

Our first stop was at Elephant Falls, which is almost like a waterpark for the Vietnamese. It is called Elephant Falls because it is a waterfall with a large Elephant carved into a rock. The falls were characterized various wading pools, a large main pool, a water slide, a jumping rock and a wooden bridge. We immediately changed into our swim suits and jumped into the icy water which was an excelled reprieve from the beating sun. After swimming for about twenty minutes ...

Unfortunately Katie didn't sleep a wink on the train, but I was able to catch a few hours sleep.

The train itself was old, noisy and not very fast, but at least we were in a 'sleeper' carriage which was quite cool. I don't think that the Orient Express has anything to worry about though ;)

The train took us a total of 14 hours south from Hanoi to the ancient capital of Hue.

The landscape outside the train window was ...