Thanh Noi Hotel Hue

Steve and myself began our tour of the sights around Hue today. First stop was the old rustic japanese bridge, built in honour of Mrs Tran Thi Don, a wife of a high ranking general. The bridge was quite nice, even on this overcast day. On the bridge I got roped into having my palm read by an old vietnamese lady. My future apparently involves me marrying at 28, to a 23 year old and having 3 children, 2 ...

... by Emperor Gia Long. There are 10 gates all accessed via a bridge. Much of it had also been bombed by the American War (as they call it here). Temple after temple, imperial enclosures, the architecture was more than impressive. There seems to be a lot of renovation work going on using modern day pieces of blue china, a wee bit questionable.

The next morning we arranged to take a motorcycle tour of ...

... to the north of the river and 5 kms wide to the south of it. In this zone, it was agreed by all parties that there would be no fighting, no bombing, no army bases, just a completely neutral zone. To the south of the DMZ, the Americans set up a few camps all along Route 9 to keep an eye on the area and to intercept the Ho Chi Minh (HCM) trail.

The largest base on Route 9 is at Khe Sanh where between 40,000 and 60,000 American and South VNese ...

... side of the bridge. Same-same train and everybody used his same-same train ticket and sleeper coach.!! If this would have happened any where in Europe there would have been Murder and Shouting and maybe even debates in Parliament!! But not here.! Brilliant, simpels, and all quiet and happy! Well done Vietnam..!!

So we moved on, a bit of delay for all of us but at least we moved again. Rebecca stopped at Hue around 8pm. Very late and dark..the town looked a bit "Ghosty ...

... on Trip advisor that these guys hang bout there & recognised the name. I asked for Quy & they called him!





Went out of town to a lookout that had a big Us bunker from the war & looked over the pretty Perfume River. There was an attractive pagoda on the river with nice views over the river, we followed the ...

... with Jonathon. We cruised out to the beach on the non-touristy part and kicked it. The ride out was through rice paddies, workers, and ladies selling ocean dwelling animals. Once there we just sat on the beach and talked about life and love. On the way back in we stopped at a local soccer game and watched it in it’s entirety. A fight broke out which was interesting to me, seeing as how they aren’t supposed to "lose face". A dude got his ass kicked by a soccer player and he ...

... in Hue was RUBBISH! It started really sunny but turned about half way through the week, leading to floods. It did make it nice and cool though...

So, our first night in Hue was spent having a couple of drinks at the youth hostel which was nice. Drew wanted to watch the football (shocker!) so we were there a while... We noticed they had loads of home made flavoured vodka so what started as a quiet drink to watch the football quickly escalated into seeing how ...

... a palm tree. I show them and instantly the one closest to me, lights up, grins from ear to ear, says, "OH!" and extends his arms and wiggles his hips the best he can in his seated position. Another catches on and he proceeds to wiggle like he's got ants in his pants too! The third is holding his side and cracking up uncontrollably. I hang on tight to that U-shaped bar trying desperately to not fall off in my own fit of ...

... they had buttons that to this day i have no idea what they do, and for all i know I have accidently started a nuclear missile. So half an hour was spent either not moving at all and looking confusedly at the moped, or zooming off at alarming speeds with the other 3 yelling 'stop stop!' and the unfortunate one yelling back 'BUT HOW????'. Eventually we mastered them enough to make it 5m down the road, then found out actually we had no petrol. Jesus, this meant a full turn in ...