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Halong to Hue
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Writing this from Hue in central Vietnam at the moment, missed out a day on here so allow me to fill you in.
After our night in a hotel on Cat Ba Island we travelled by bus to the other side of the island and a port where a small boat was waiting to take us among the rocks of Cat Ba national park to a small floating house where we were able to rent kayaks out. Me and Jen got in a kayak together and after a short debate on how to steer it I let Jen, the more experienced oarsman, take over. We paddled around the rocks, fully appreciating how massice they were and how hot it was becoming, returning after an hour we were missing a kayak and one of the Vietnamese blokes we were with was missing a girlfriend. 15 minutes later we became a search and rescue team and eventually found the two missing persons on another tourist boat which was luckily passing us. So girlfriend and anxious boyfriend were reunited, poor Aussie who got them lost was chastised by old Vietnamese man and we were on our way.
Back at our hotel I displayed my eating prowess by clearing a table set our for about six people, both our appetites are unusually large - I blame the chopsticks, they dont have the shovel like quality of forks. We then departed Cat Ba, taking a half hour minibus ride to out original port through a couple of lovely villages complete with waving children, flea bitten dogs and rambling chickens and goats. We boarded the boat we were to spend the night on and cruised the bay some more, the weather was better and so was the vision - Halong BAy looked even more picturesque. We moored amongst around 30 other similar boats in an open area for the night and ate dinner, we were shattered and hit the hay at about 8pm, listening to the crew get drunk and listen to Miss Vietnam upstairs on the TV.
That night we slept for around 12 hours and only woke up once when what sounded like a large rat was scrapingat our wall, a thrown flip flop and a lightswitch saw to him. We visited a fishing village (yes another one) floating in the bay and took a rather rustic cruise to see some caves. We were loaded into two small boats which were then tied together, one providing motor power and one providing steering - it didnt really work and we spent half our time either holding on to the other boat or pumping out water. The floating village was good, there was a small floating school there (paid for by the British Government, thank you very much) and we saw some kids of about 6 years old rowing to school.
Journeyed back to Hanoi, everyone slept except me again, bought a bus ticket covering whole of Vietnam (like a travelcard) for about 12.50 (pounds). The first few hours on the bus were the worst since we arrived; the apparently tourist bus went out of its way to pick up every yokel and potential axe murderer around the back streets of rural N.Vietnam leading to us being about 2 hours behind schedule (the timetable clearly makes up for this seeing as all the drivers are lunatics) then once we were loaded and ready to sleep for the 12 hour journey ahead the driver decided to play some sort of Vietnamese version of X Factor for a few hours on the screen at full blast. Vietnamese pop music sounds like cats in washing machines, or trying to make that noise with the rim of crystal glasses but with a dentist drill - it didnt really grow on me either. Woke up around 4am, driver was speeding along a narrow road with about 1metre visibility due to fog - went back to sleep.
After around 14 hours our ordeal was over, kind of thing you can look back and laugh at, until you realise you have to do it again in a couple of days. We arrived in Hue and found a hotel run by a nice fella who organised us tours of the city on the back of motorbikes so off we went. Thankfully the roads in Hue dont compare to Hanoi so the ride was enjoyable, Hue is a nice city with a laid back feeling, its a UNESCO heritage site and there seems to be something of interest everywhere you look; ruins, palaces, pagodas and pillboxes. We visited the citidal, the capital of the country during the last centuries of the imperial dynasty which ended last century, it was huge in scale and very peaceful, some of the buildings were beautiful, most of the buildings were levelled by US bombers during the 'American War.' The bikes took us to a Buddhist pagoda where monks lived and worked and then on to one of the royal tombs that are spread around the countryside here. The tomb was very impressive, it had previouslt been a residence of the emporer and so was ornate and beautifully designed to fit in with the natural surroundings.
Its been a long day so far, its a lot hotter here than up north, tomorrow we have the option of a DMZ tour which takes in some of the sights from the war or the beach which is not too far away. Hows that for a cliffhanger? More thumbnails ...
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