Close encounters with a giant dog turd!
Trip Start
Jul 10, 2008
1
20
Trip End
Jul 10, 2011
Hue,
Vietnam
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The bus was on time, surprise surprise, no need to worry though we were first on the bus and by the time we'd done the round of Hoi An to pick up people it was another hour or so before we left town. We stopped in Danang and a grotty service station. I had to pick up some tissues so I wasn't a sniffling mess. Not too much to see on route apart from more rain.
The great thing about Hue was we had managed to reserve a hotel - The Bihn Mihn Sunrise Hotel 2 - and they picked us up from the bus station, no fighting the touts in the rain, it was a nice feeling
Erica in Imperial City
. We'd splashed out the big bucks for this place, $20 US, and had the top floor penthouse, balcony and city (read rain) views included! Well the bonus of this place was a real bathtub, before we did anything else I was filling the tub and in for a soak, hopefully this would help shake the cold! I think the hotel owner must have thought one of us had a runny bum while we stayed there as I went through a couple of toilet rolls during our stay just to stop my gushing nose!We were recommended a place close by; the name slips my mind, that's not important as the most memorable point was that here in Hue we had two new beers to chose from. Festival and Huda. We went for the Huda as that seemed to be the drink of choice, but guess what? Yep pretty similar to all the other beers we'd tried! We did get a decent set menu meal here, the reason I sour a bit is it was close to $5US per person - I know what your saying, pricey! The 6-course meal went something like this
Soup
Spring Rolls
Hue Special Pancakes
Chicken/rice
Fried Noodles
Mango
On returning our receptionist had tried his damndest to sell us a tour, but we had learnt our lesson, no bus full of Muppets for us this time! He did give me some tiger balm type liquid to put under my nose though the sort of cleared my runny nose.
Well we woke in the morning to no rain; despite the receptionist telling us 'take a tour it's going to rain'
Giant Flag Pole
. After our toast and coffee we were on the road, but first to the chemist to stock up on some of this wonderful new medicine the hotel receptionist had recommended, it took some sign language to get what we wanted but eventually we managed. It must have been time to go home and I think a bout of travel fatigue had set in. After one cyclo driver had tailed us for over 10 minutes I turned around and in the most obnoxious way told him we would not be taking his cyclo ride even if he paid us! The buffoon kept following us for another minute or so before disappearing!
We went for a wander around the inside of the Citadel first and an area where there were some islanded lakes when the emperors used to go to relax. After missing a gigantic dog turd on the way over the bridge I stepped smack bang in the middle of it on the way back over. We were over seeing a pagoda and at that point the monk must have seen what happened and came to clean up the bits that weren't stuck to my shoe!
We headed back to the imperial enclosure, another UNESCO World Heritage Area. It was a pleasant enough place and we had a few hours doing the rounds. This place was one of the big flash points during the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War and some areas had been flattened
House by a lake
. Home was on our minds though and once the skies started spitting at us we headed back passed the giant flag pole and the huge cannons, back across the river and settled in the Mandarin Café for a long lunch and the opportunity to try Festival beer!This place was one of those places you would likely return to day after day. The owner, Mr. Cu was one of these fantastic people, a photographer whose pictures dotted the walls and albums were available for perusal or sale! He even gave us some complementary postcards of his as we left. To top it all off his Spring Rolls were some of our favourite since we arrived in Vietnam, so much so we ordered a second portion after our main meal!
Another afternoon in the bath, even Erica, got into the whole hot bath thing, I think we could make a Brit out of her yet. That evening we did another dash through the rain and arrived at Little Italy that the 'book of lies' a name we had heard Lonely Planet referred to told us had fantastic pizza. The pizza was so so, but the bottle of Dalat red wine we tried turned out to be quite palatable - the white we had tried two weeks previously hadn't lived up to our low expectations! As an added bonus the rain had stopped by the time we exited to walk home!
As we sat at breakfast on the final day watching the rain we both had a feeling of sadness to be going home, yet I think for the main part were happy to be going home
Imperial City Doors
. We had a layover in Saigon for 4 hours while we waited for our flight to Darwin and rather than pay $7 for a crusty old sandwich we went over to a mall we could see from the airport. In here we had our last Vietnam culinary experience - a seafood hot pot where they bring everything out raw and uncooked. You have a hotplate on the table and you cook your own food. We had clams, shrimp and fake crab. There were a lot of different mushroom varieties and other green veggies. It was all rather good considering we were in the fast food joint in the Mall.The trip to Vietnam was great and just what the doctor ordered. The outstanding memories would be the food, truly fantastic. My highlight day would be the Easy Rider tour through Dalat. The people over there (bus stations and airports not included) were truly great people. What I didn't like was the fact that we kept getting bundled into these organised tours, such as the trip out to My Son. It would have been nice to have been able to go out on a bus and return at you own time. This was often hard in Vietnam.
