After the stressful train trip we arrived in Hue, which is a lovely contrast to Hanoi. It is (relatively) quiet, pretty and very interesting. Our hotel here was lovely and the first thing we did was shower and sleep! the room wasn't swaying and it was clean!
Hoang took us to a restaurant owned by a deaf and dumb man for lunch. He was great - he has a special trick for opening beers too.... when I remember I'll add the name of his restaurant and you can go there to find out what it is.....
It was extremely cheap there, and the food was lovely - I think beer and lunch was about a pound. After lunch we got a chance to write on his wall, which was fun too! Then Hoang took us on a guided tour of the citadel in Hue, where the king and his mandarins lived until 1945, but it looks like it was built much earlier. They are currently restoring the site and in ten years it will be finished - by then it will be amazing - it is already (the site is huge-and abou a third of it is restored so far). The tour took about 2.5 hours and after that we had a look around the market and went home before going out for dinner.
The next day was to be a busy day! We got up and met at 8.30 for a motorbike trip - Everywhere people are offering to take you out on bikes, shouting mo'bike at you - its funny, even when they are obviously going somewhere! Anyway, today we had a group of drivers waiting for us and they took us out on their motorbikes - it was our best day so far, as it was so interesting and lots of fun! We talked to local people, saw where the lions fought the royal elephants, saw two kings tombs, took a dragon boat down the perfume river, saw the remains of US bunkers, saw how the local people farmed the land at the farming museum and all the while the little children ran out of the houses to wave and shout 'hello!' Wonderful.
A funny story was at one of the tombs when some Japanese tourists saw Eleanor and Kirsten (from NZ and Oz) and thrust their children into their arms for photos! I've never seen anything like it! It was because they had white skin and blonde hair! They were quite an attraction for the locals in Hue too, Kirsten complained that people in the market were touching her!
