Sunday 14/10/07
We bused it from Hoi An in the morning, and stopped on the way at Marble Mountain - where they make marble statues. I befriended a cat. Hayley was funny on the bus, trying to entertain ourselves she suggested 'we could expand our brains and play countdown!' genius idea i say. And other funny things which aren't funny if ya don't know her so i won't put them down here :-) We stopped again at the former border between north and south, it's where the weather systems change, i was totally excited to be going into the mist and cooler system. The next stop was a beach for lunch, then we finally got to Hue. Becky and i went for a wander, evidently in the wrong direction (away from town) and found it to be far less touristy and waaaay less friendly than down south. To be fair, Hoi An had the nicest people ever so anywhere compared to that was gonna be a bit gloomy. The group cept for Becky and another group that was a couple of days ahead of us joined up and went for a Royal Banquet; we dressed up in traditional clothes and looked silly for photos and generally got too hot. Alexandra and Jen were the King and Queen. :) They had to sit at a table on their own which they found a bit boring, and Valentina and i were relegated to the far end of the main table to the vegetarian end with 2 girls from the other group, separated from everyone else by the 2 guides who spoke only to each other in Vietnamese. One of the girls and i both ate seafood so there was really no need for us to be stuck down there as there was only one meat dish anyway, and there was practically nothing for the actual veggies to eat (we kept pilfering the seafood dishes from everyone else), so we got increasingly pissed off - i think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were right next to the er, musical entertainment, which yet again sounded to me like a lot of bad noise. Seriously, one of the instruments was someone banging 2 teacups together, it ain't pleasant! Anyhoo, once we'd shed our traditional finery in an act of rebellion we cooled down and saw the funny side. Afterwards we trudged back through the mud - everyone wearing their new purchases, oops - to the Brown Eyes bar. Played some Jenga, had some cocktails, had a lil boogy (couldn't resist dragging Hayley and running to the dancefloor when they played my ultimate cheese song La Gasolina, oh yeah baby!), much fun.
Monday 15/10/07
We were all a bit the worse for wear in the morning, except for Becky, who with her nice early night could laugh at our sorry state. It was time for the motorbike tour and it was raining. Now, i wasn't too thrilled about this tour anyway, motorbikes not being my thing, i prefer my transportation to have at least 3 wheels for added stability. And what with the rain i was increasingly nervous evolving to petrified when my motorbike man insisted on overtaking everyone in sight, had visions of aquaplaning, skidding, crashing, not good. Missed all of the purported pretty scenery. But when we stopped to look at a bridge Jen offered to swap drivers, but i ended up swapping with Patrick so the guide could drive me, he was very nice and reassuring, felt looooads safer with him and really enjoyed the rest of it. There was a resident fortune teller at the bridge who read Jen's, Alex's and Hayley's palms. She was pretty good actually, she told Alex she wouldn't like being a doctor (she starts medical school next year) and will go into music (she's an opera singer!!), pretty freaky stuff huh?? Next stop was a tiger and elephant fighting arena where the guide told us a legend about a woman who left her abusive husband, found a new one, the old one became a beggar and came to her door where she gave him food, the new one came home so she had to hide him in the oven - then the new one wanted to cook something so the old one was being burned alive but didn't cry out to protect his ex-wife from the new one's anger, she then realises and decides to throw herself in the fire too so overwhelmed that he was dying for her, then the new one realised, he couldn't live without her and did the same. So they all burned to death. Nice story huh? The moral being....? Then we saw how insense and conical hats are made, pretty cool. After a couple more stops and cutting it short cos of the torrential and stinging rain we felt in need of a pizza so went over the death bridge (not even an attempt at a pavement).
Tuesday 16/10/07
Still raining, was a storm overnight and voila everything is flooded. Nothing to do in the morning so we all rather foolishly decided to go to lunch across the bridge (only the bridge was closed cos it had become part of the river), so after lunch it transpired that we were stranded on the wrong side of the bridge with no way of getting back cos the taxi driver said it was now too deep to drive, whoops! So our luggage and Hung were back at the hotel and we were not. Hung being informed he came to 'rescue' us, the rescue being motorbikes through knee deep floodwater - oh goodie. Naturally there were some breakdowns, especially mine. And alot of wading through water inches from being run over by motorbikes every step. Fun fun. Then of course we had to do the whole thing again to get to the train station, only this time with luggage, woo! Everyone was soo stressed but we made it with a few minutes to spare. I was sooo close to joining the smokers, but had some of Matt's chocolate instead and all was instantly well again. So that was the last overnight train to Hanoi.
