(Note: with the loss of my camera, all photos in this post are courtesy of Nick)
Arriving into Hue, the bus stopped outside a hotel that was associated with the Bussing company (fairly common practice it seems) and we decided that we’d pay there price for a seemingly alright room.
We wandered around town, found the “Busy” section, which was all fairly quiet, and had some dinner, I ordered a “Mixed Hot Pot” which is essentially a giant pot over a burner put on the table in front of you, and you cook your meat until cooked in the soupish broth.
The mixed meats were as follows:
After dinner we found a local night club, “Apocalypse Now” (it seems that Apocalypse now and Good Morning Vietnam are common names for restaurants and clubs). As the only westerners there and with the place only full of about 8-10 people Nick and I played pool against each other joined with one of the Vietnamese waitresses each. After best of 3, turned into best of 5, and then still losing, I started to learn a bit of Vietnamese from the staff there:
The following day, after our first and only night in Hue, we headed out for breakfast, when we came back to the hotel to check out, Nick commented that it was dodgy that just as we walked in, the receptionist made a quick phone call. As we walked up the 7 stories of the hotel, I started to think I should start running up, as I got to our floor, there was a very nervous looking youngish looking man trying to get there key ring out of our door and pull it closed. He was empty handed and after a quick assessment his excuse for “fixing our hot water” didn’t really stick, but he didn’t seem to have taken anything valuable. Even though I had my laptop all but in the open although high up on a wardrobe where I assume he couldn’t see it. We checked out, took anything of value with us and left our bags “safely” in the hotel lobby.
This is a picture I also took on my once mine camera, I still find it quite amusing that the new and the old clash so often here in Vietnam/Asia. The straw hat wearing workers under a monstrous bridge crossing the “Perfume River” in Hue.
And then you get the cyclo drivers that seem to double as truck drivers, carrying everything from full size fridges and furniture to this one, carrying a huge number of push bikes.
The Imperial city, one of the few sites to see in Hue initially came off as pretty but fairly small, then you start to realise, it’s in fact massive, whilst mostly in ruins, you can wander around the entire thing and access almost everything in the walled area.
The ruins, whilst expansive, had hidden jewels (not literally :P) in numerous places:
Big lakes/motes around the palace too filled with big fish and lily's. Not that I would go swimming in there.
Reconstruction work was going on everywhere, but it seemed like there was a lot more to be done if it would be returned to it’s glory days.
We returned to our hotel that evening, and prepared for our big overnight bus trip to Hanoi, the real capital of Vietnam.
No comments:
Post a Comment