God damn, its hot

For our last day in Hue, we decided to take it easy and start the day slowly. Unfortunately, it gets light so early here that I am awake as soon as the sun comes up (normally before 6am), I hit the unconditioned gym and ran as far as I could before I died of heat exhaustion. Luckily, our hotel room is the temperature of an ice box and I could cool down within a few minutes. After a quick cold shower, we headed to our delicious buffet breakfast, where large quantities of rice noddles filled with weird and wonderful things were sampled.

After breakfast, we tried to decide on our transport option for tommorow where we travel from Hue to Hoi An. We had the option of a bus which would take us straight to Hoi An or a private car and driver that would take us to landmarks along the way where we could stop as long as we want. We decided on the latter, partly because that meant we had a bit more time to muck around in the morning.

By the time we had finished our research and made a decision, it was nearly 10.30am so we made our getaway and started our 6km walk to the Pagoda. The walk was relatively uneventful, we waved to various children, stopped for yet another vietnamese coffee and dodged countless scooters and hawkers before we finally made it, 1.5 hours later hot and sweaty at the Pagoda. We wandered around desperately trying any means necassary to cool down and I took to standing in front of a fan for 10 minutes while trying to entertain the chubbiest vietnamese toddler I have seen to date while Jamie just stared on ashamed of my inability to deal with my own sweatiness.

We decided on a less physical mode of transportation back to our hotel and settled on a private boat cruise back to the walking street we had been at 2 nights previously. Jamie, being chief negotiator was initially quoted 350,000 dong but managed to knock 150,000 off the price by walking away saying "too much, too much". 200,000 was still well over priced but we couldnt be bothered negotiating anymore.

On board the boat, we enjoyed the sweet sweet breeze while admiring the heavily laden cargo vessels which had bows barely above the waters surface. During this time, we noticed that our boat started veering towards some anchored boats well away from the location we were due to be dropped off at and sure enough 5 minutes later, we were on the bankside being told to get off the boat. Jamie, unimpressed, considering we had already paid way too much for this service told the captain that we were not getting off the boat until he dropped us off at the preagreed location. The man seemed to agree but we couldnt figure out if he was going to take us where we wanted to go or straight back to the Pagoda. The boat set off again and panic set in when it appeared he was going back to the Pagoda but he was just doing a tricky manouvere, and 10 minutes later we were finally in the right place. Jamie and I pride ourselves on being good, polite and reasonable people but when people try to take advantage of this and try it on, we find it very very difficult to deal with.

After our eventful boat ride, we decided to go and get a spot of lunch, and made our way to Ninas cafe which had the best fresh vegetarian spring rolls and aubergine I have tasted in Vietnam to date. As it was so hot, we decided to head back to our hotel for a rest where we were going to have a swim but as there was a problem with our hotel door we ended up in the bar drinking beer and wine instead. When we were finally back in our room, we caught up on the daily show before we headed out for dinner at a local Indian restaurant as we are a little noddled out.Lue lisää