Away to Hue (day 41)

  Hue, Vietnam
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

We woke up at 5.30am packed up and headed to our trusty Quang Binh hotel for breakfast. We weren't sad to leave the Hoa Hong hotel in Dong Hoi, after cold showers the night before it seemed that all we had paid for was the bed ! The 4* Quang Binh hotel called us a taxi to the station and after a little wait the train arrived and we found our hard sleeper berth. Luckily we were the only people in the compartment, so we plugged in the ipod speakers, read up on Hue and played cards for the 2 and a half hour journey. Out of the window we saw the landscape become more hilly and we were looking out for bomb craters, evidence from the American war - but we couldn't really distingiush what were craters and what were ponds!

Dong Hoi station

Arriving at Hue we were really pleased we had asked the hotel to come and pick us up, as we pushed our way through the incessant taxi drivers to find our man with a sign with Paul's name on it. We felt like fresh meat again! The hotel checked us in and we tried immediately to get the wheels in motion for our visa extension - Thursday and Friday this week (30th April and 1st May) are both holidays here and we have a leisurely week in Hue waiting for the paperwork to get done. The girl on reception didn't seem in such a rush, she promised we'd have our passports and correct visas, extended to the 9th June, back next Tuesday - we have a nervous wait, it's not nice being without our passports, and we've already booked our cruise up the mekong into Cambodia for the 4th June, so we have no margin for error !

We dropped our backpacks in our spacious room (with balcony overlooking the busy tourist street: Pham Ngu Lao), then we headed to Japanese Restaurant (the clue's in the name). Set up by Mr Michio Koyama, who also set up a safe house for deprived children in Hue, the restaurant provides employment to some of the children he looks after, so we felt good as we munched through the sushi, tenpura and fried tofu. How we miss Japan, its delicious cuisine, its people's polite manners, its cleanliness.

We headed across the perfume river on the Trang Tien bridge built by Gustave Eiffel (the man who built the Eiffel tower) and we turned right to find KFC - slightly embarassed we walked past the other westerners to get an ice cream sundae. The weather was overcast but hot and muggy - around 28 degrees. We then went to the strangest supermarket, Paul and I have decided that working here would be a living hell, it has a very strong smell, that makes me gag, we think it may be the fish sauce - or something has died in the corner near the crisps aisle, but almost worse than that, over the tannoy every 5 minutes they play the Happy Birthday song. Amusing at first, it must really wear you down after a while. A couple of days later we awoke to the sound of a bus reversing with the Happy Birthday song playing! We stocked up with chocolate milk and Huda beer (30pence a can) and headed back to the balcony. Huda beer is brewed here in Hue and apparently the town's biggest income earner, we like it!

Our hotel room has HBO (a movie channel) and BBC world news, so we're able to relax in the room and keep up to date with the swine flu epidemic. We're feeling pretty safe here in Asia and because we've registered our details with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Locate program, we have already had a letter from the British Embassy here in Vietnam telling us to wash our hands :)

Pau searching for cockroaches

Having watched the world go by from above we decided to go for dinner in La Carambole - a french restaurant on our street (ok food, full of westerners) which seemed to serve both of our courses with the same sweet tomato sauce, no marks for originality there, and then we crossed the street to Why Not Bar? - a funky little place with great tunes and good cocktails for under 2 quid each. Paul and I played pool until I got too grumpy, the ball never goes where I plan it to and it's just too hot and sticky. Nethertheless it was a great way to end our first day in Hue.

Back in the hotel room we discovered we were sharing our room, a cockroach scurried across the floor and when we moved the wardrobe we discovered 4 more of them. I went to get support from downstairs and they came and sprayed some Raid around. After a few minutes Paul bravely scooped them up with the old upsidedown glass and piece of card trick and threw them off the balcony. (No matter how cute the cockroach was in Wall-e, they ain't cute up close at midnight!) Then we tucked ourselves up in our permetherine bubble - bed bug sheet and mosquito net, ear-plugs in and eye-masks on !!