Woke up feeling quite disorientated this morning with calf muscles hurting a bit...must be from the long walk yesterday. We had a leisurely wake up, went down for our buffet breakfast which easily rivalled the last hotels breakfast for less than half of the cost. There were all sorts of fruits, toast, pancakes, dumplings, spring rolls, bacon, egg, tomato, noodles, tea, coffee and fresh fruit juices. It was really nice and we spent spent a good 45 minutes down there just taking our time and enjoying the food. Plus it was still raining outside so we were in no rush to head out!
By the time we set off it was about 10am, we decided to go get my hair cut because it was getting a bit thick and heavy. It only cost about £3 but she chopped off way more than I expected....bless her though she tried so hard, she was so eager to do a good job and please that I was happy despite having hardly any hair left!
We walked for about 30 minutes or so to practically the only attraction there is in hue. There are tombs that look brilliant and a couple of pagodas but it costs a good £15 to even travel to let alone pay for getting in! So we decided to do the stuff we could walk to. The citadel was good, it was a bit costly to get in but considering it was the only thing we cold really see we were willing to pay it. It was only built in the 19th century so not particularly old compared to a lot of things we've seen, and it's mostly in pretty bad condition. But there are a lot of grounds to see and some wonderful decorative halls that look great even in disrepair. We stayed there for maybe about a hour and a half wandering around, looking at photos of the emperors, the royal families, concubines and mandarins of old, and the decorative clothes they wore, the palanquins and thrones.
On our way back we walked through some pretty gardens with lots of sculptures and looked at all the street stalls. There were a lot of people selling fish, and we even saw one selling baby turtles...we really wanted to get one they were so cute!!!
We then saw a shopping complex and Liam bought a pair of sunglasses because his broke the either day. I bought a top, the price confirming my suspicion that we had been ripped off in the shop yesterday! We also looked sound a supermarket and bought a few snacks including fruit, yogurt and various juices to last us the day and a couple of travel days. We saw a bakery on the way home and bought 2 baguettes with the fillings in each too and just lay on the bed munching them whilst watching the very first new episode of the walking dead....heaven!!
After packing a little, showering, and me doing a bit more despairing over the length of my hair making my face look fat....we headed down for our hour with the students from the local university.
It was such a good hour, I could have easily spent longer there. There were about 12 students and one older lady also from the uk at the other end of the table...so far away that we didn't actually get to really speak to her. We talked about all sorts of things like accents, schooling, sports, tourism, places to see, marriage and culture. They were actually really good, although there were areas that wernt great and difficult to understand at times I was very impressed with their skills. There was a young boy of 15 there as well which we thought was wonderful. We had spoken about football and they had picked up that we were going to a bar to watch it although I didn't really like it much. So at the end a couple of girls approached me and asked if I would like to join them in going for a drink so that I wasn't bored! I said I would go and I would meet Liam in half an hour or so at the bar but he was reluctant to leave me alone and I think he wanted to spend time with them too so we both went. There were 5 with us in total, they took us to a cafe/ restaurant only about a minutes walk from our hotel which straight away was great because the dmz bar is about 10 minutes away. It was a really lovely cafe obviously for locals but a great feel to it. We ordered some screwdrivers and sat talking about all sorts of general chit chat for about a hour. We spoke about films, music, school, healthcare and just general stuff with them teaching us as well as us teaching them. It became time for them to leave, but the match was actually on in the cafe so we stayed behind to watch it with a couple more drinks.
We're back in the hotel now eating m&ms and watching music channels, almost time for bed. Up early in the morning for our journey down to hoi Ann, we've booked a motor cycle tour that will last the whole day rather than taking the 3 hour bus route just down the main high way. We're both looking forward to it!
