Hey Hue!

After a quick visit in Dong Hoi, it was onwards and southwards to Hue. We jumped on the 6.40am train which was delayed by 40 minutes and got comfy in our carriage which only had about 5 people. Jamie was content watchingi The Walking Dead while I desperately wanted to finish my third book of the trip, while taking in the scenary outside. 3 hours later, we found ourselves pulling into the station and jumped into a taxi to take us to our hotel.

The taxi driver did his best to con us by saying it would cost 100,000 dong to our hotel even though he had a meter in his taxi. Jamie insisted that we went on the meter much to the taxi drivers disgust. 10 minutes later and with 38,000 dong on the meter we arrived at our hotel. The taxi driver refused to drive us into the hotel carpark where the baggage guys were waiting and dumped us and our bags on the side of the road with the doorman having to come to us while negotiating the traffic.

After our less than fun start in Hue, our check in comparatively, was pretty awesome. We went to the front desk where we were told we would be taken to the 10th floor for a VIP check in. Bemused, as we didn't think that we were that important, we were accompanied by a hotel staff member who took us up in the lift and once we arrived at the 10th floor we were served drinks and fruit while we were explained the facilities of the hotel. As we had got an early train, we had arrived at the hotel well before the normal check in time. That being said, we were assured that we wouldn't have to wait around as housekeeping went and cleaned our room straight away. 15 minutes later, we were in our room. The service was pretty damn exceptional!

Once checked in we made our way down to the waterfront, and the Walking Street in search of lunch. However, we couldn't find anything open except a coffee place so it was time for a Vietnamese coffee before making our way back towards our hotel in search for actual food. We ended up at a place called "Mandarin Cafe" with walls adorned with impressive local photographs taken by the owner of the cafe. After lunch we headed across the river to the Hue local market where we perused the local delicacies and observed the way of Hue life.

Pretty tired after yet another early start we made our way back to our hotel via a walk through the riverside park complete with art installations and numerous insistent offers of boat rides along the river. We also identified a few bars for later in the evening as we had plans to meet up with Anja and Will who were also now in Hue.

Not even 1 hour later, we found ourselves at Century Bar with Anja and Will, enjoying some very heavy and loud trance music while drinking some pretty decent Mojitos for just over £2 a pop. This place is definetely my heaven!
After a few cocktails, we decided to make a move to grab some dinner and walked back down to the Walking Street where we found an outdoor restaurant situated right beside the Perfume River. After some pretty decent mojitos at the first bar, I was let down massively at this place with a drink that was very watered down. Not only that but my main meal (being claypot aubergine) just turned out to be steamed aubergine with no sauce or other vegetables so I had to order another dish which was only served well after everyone else had finished. By this stage, we were now being serenaded by what we thought was some very loud and very bad kareoke but turned out to be 2 legitimate male singers playing to a crowd of about 25 local people. We quickly moved on before ear drums burst and found ourselves shopping up a storm in a lantern shop where Anja and I made some purchases.

We decided to go and find more drinks before we called it a night and went to the rooftop bar at the DMZ restaurant where Will and Jamie proceeded to share 3 litres of beer between themselves, while Anja and I, being the more sensible pair of the group, stuck to one cocktail each. Jamie and Will thought they had all the time in the world, but as Anja and I were getting tired, the boys had to revert to their younger days and downed the beer in good time.

And with that, we left the bar and went our seperate ways with promises to meet up briefly in Hoi An before Anja and Will leave to head to Nga Trang.Read more