Sunday, March 16, 2008

Hue and Hoi An

Hue is an overnight bus ride down the coast from Hanoi. Unfortunately it was pissing wet when I got here. A guy called Tri got me a cheap hotel and I did a tour with him on the back of his motorbike that day. I saw a couple of pagodas, one of the tombs of the former emperors (where I splipped on some stairs and bashed my poor wee knee), the elephant ring, the Japanese covered bridge and the walled citadel (a sort of forbidden city style palace which was unfortunely undergoing lots of building and restoration work). A day was enought time in Hue and I got the bus to Hoi An (another 4 hours down the coast) the next morning. The tomb and palace were quite good, but not in great repair and sort of mouldy and mossy in the rain.

Next was Hoi An, which has nice old streets by the river, with lots of nice looking restaurants and shops, and the restaurants all seemed to be selling draught beer as cheap as 12p as a loss-leader. The day I arrived I was quite knackered and slept most of the afternoon, the next day I toured the sights: you buy a town ticket and you get to go to one attraction in various categories: museum, old house, temple, "intangible culture option". The museum I chose was pure pish, but the old house and temple were very nice, however it all took up about half a day, and having decided to give the nearby My Son ruins a miss (from a Hindu Kingdom, and nothing like those I'd seen in India or will see in Cambodia) I was left with some time to kill before the dreaded 22 hour bus jouney to Saigon that I'd booked for 630 in the Evening.



This was the elephant ring in Hue.

A Pagoda in Hue



A statue in Hoi An.

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