Another dark morning in the room with no windows. Sometime during the early morning it had poured with rain, somewhere up on the roof it sounded as though there was a possum running around. Was it a monkey? was it a very big rat? No idea, at least it was on the outside!
A bit of a hurry to pay the hotel bill and make it round the corner for the 8 o’clock bus, then a forty minute wait in the bus for some other passengers! Same bus, same driver, as yesterday.
Winding up the hills between Hoi An and Hue
Out of Hoi An and passing the marble mountains there were, strangely enough, a million and one monument carvers and headstone carvers. Strange, limestone-like hills sitting straight up out of the flat plains. Drizzly rain beat against the windows, a good day to be on a long bus trip!
Misty and foggy as we wound our way up to the 600m pass, glimpses of the 1100m peak off in the clouds. Thick vines and jungle all around us, the north-south rail line visible down at sea level snaking its way along the coast. We were supposed to stop for twenty minutes up at the top of the pass, I think the car-park was full, the driver slowed a little, gave only one quick toot on the horn, then continued on down the other side — a shame, I would have liked to get out and look around! It wasn’t the first time that the written itinerary turned out to be advisory only!
Lunch stop near Lang Co beach for an hour or so — I had to laugh, the itinerary implies lunch on a beautiful world-famous beach, not a truck stop two kilometres inland! Bus-trip lunch stops seem the same the world over, pull into what ever business has an “arrangement” with the company, disgorge the passengers into the queue, fill them up, empty their wallets, get back on the bus… Jo and I didn’t eat or drink anything, just stood around and chatted with a young girl while the others ate. I think she was about 12, spoke excellent English, and apparently French and Japanese as well! A combination of school lessons and selling souvenirs to the tourists seven days a week. For once someone actually seemed interested in talking, not just “you buy…,” “you give me….” She showed us an impressive collection of foreign coins and notes… maybe the kids all do collect coins, not just scam them off tourists!
Hue’s fortress in the rain
Jo outside the Hue citadel in the rain
Still drizzling lightly when we got to Hué, then increased to a very constant rain for the rest of the afternoon. After checking in to the hotel and a bite to eat at the end of the alleyway, we walked across to the citadel, accepting that there was nothing else to do but go there and get wet. A strange sight, we had to fend of cyclos left and right, very persistent in offering us the dubiously dry interiors of their vehicles. We chose instead to keep walking, buying cheap disposable plastic raincoats that made us feel we were walking around inside freezer-bags.
After a couple of photos at the eastern gate we made it around to the main gate, only to discover that in our hurry in the rain, we didn’t have the 111.000d to get in! The rain was getting heavier, it was getting gloomier, so it didn’t really need much to send us back over the river — the perfume river — towards the hotel and some dry clothes!
Dry again, nothing much to do except sit around and watch the rain for an hour or so, then back out for a beer and to find some air tickets back to Ho Chi Minh City — quicker and easier than the train or bus, and looking very attractive in this Melbourne-winteresque weather! The front desk of the hotel offered to get the tickets for $86 a head, which was a bit of surprise compared with the advertised price of $52 or $53 we’d seen in Hoi An! We walked around the corner to the first travel agent we found, $56 and we were happy.
Tickets found, must be dinner time — walking around in the rain, looking for somewhere to eat, its not really hard, its just that sometimes nothing seems to appeal. Along the way one lady stall holder launched automatically into her sales pitch; gesturing at the bottles and asking “You want water?” I laughed and waved my hands at the sky, “Lady, I’ve got plenty of water.” All three of us burst out laughing.
