Another point that made this Vietnamese train experience great--even though we knew we were at our destination, they walked up and down the cabin and checked with everyone to let them know where we were. This was not the case in China or Korea.
I got off the train with my new French friends and found Ashely and Helen. We had booked at the same hotel and got a taxi to it--we paid too much but we had no idea before we got in how close it was (it was so close we could, and should, have walked). No wonder the taxi drive was dancing like a bugs bunny in a fat suit as he ran to open the trunk for us.
The hotel was incredible nice. Binh Duong 2 (there were 4 Binh Duongs in this town. I haven't looked it up, but I'm wagering it means something like, Good Hotel or something really obvious). I booked a single room but got a room with a quadruple bed--2 double beds touching and an amazing balcony. All for about 14 dollars a night. Unbelievable. The staff at this hotel were helpful too, and did all the things youd expect at a hostel, like booking tours, transportation, and general tourist information. While we were in the lobby I bumped into Relf from Germany, whom I had met in Hong Kong. I had known he was going to Hanoi but had failed to find him there, so it was a bit funny that we ran into eachother in Hue.
The four of us, me, Ashely, Helen, and Relf hung out togethor for our time in Hue. The first afternoon there we went up and visited this Citadel area just north of the river that divdes the town. Most of it had been destroyed during the war and was in the process of being rebuilt. It was like a set to a play--from the outside the wall was perfect and sturdy and totally convincing, but then once you go inside most everything is just wrecked. Maybe the walls were built by ancient aliens and were imprevious to the bombs, or maybe they spent a lot of money rebuilding the walls to get people to pay the stiff entrance fee to be disappointed that its just a junkyard. It was still a cool junkyard though.
We saw some guys on the side of the street selling dog tags. At first we thought it was just junk, because they had so many, but then we took some closer looks. Most of them looked to be Vietnamese names, but I saw a few western names and I definitely saw one that said USMC. We weren't sure what to make of it, if these were real dog tags, is it appropriate that they are being sold on the sides of the street like trinkets? I wouldn't buy them, but I took some photos.
Later that night we met up with my French friends at a bar in a more tourist part of town. It was called "Why Not" bar, and since seeing this one, i've found a "Why not" something in the next 4 towns. "Why not have a place called Why Not". I'm really not sure what they are going for there, but the beers were cheap and the ambiance worked. After the bar we kinda got ferried into a fancy-ish Vietnamese restaraunt. The prices were pretty low though, dishes still average 2 bucks. But the portions--oh yea.. major miniscule. So we ordered about 12 dishes for the 6 of us and were still hungry.
We walked around the water after this, chatted it up with some locals, laughed at the crappy boats and the captains that were stewading them, and thought we saw ghosts walking on tops of the bridge supports.
On our second day in Hue we arranged for a car to take us to a local Hot Spring resort place. We didn't really need to arrange the car through the hotel, but we are dumb tourist, ignorant to the fact that it was only 5km away and would have been a lot cheaper to take a cab. Every hotel has a gotcha. where they get ya. The hot spring was totally deserted and run down. Maybe it was the place to be 20 years ago, but not anymore. Despite this, the water was great, and the sulpher aroma indicated it was probably natural. I mean, maybe they could have been using sulpher fragance to trick us. In all it cost like 2.50 to use it.
Ashley didn't like that there were so many gross spiders hiding in the little roof structures around the pool (it was raining so we were keeping out stuff under them). Relf laughed at her and poked fun, but the he was karma revenged upon later, as a phantom spider drew quite the girlish scream out of him.
We became frequent patrons at this restaraunt next to our hotel. It was my favorite food shop in town, and I had no problem dining there at least twice a day. The menu was huge, the food was cheap, and there were 2 dogs to play with. This was my first place where I had "Bahn Bao", the vietnamese equivalent of BaoZi. I liked this version a lot; it had meat, egg, and vegetable in it--a nice balanced meal embedded in sphere of bread. It was a lot less greasy than the Chinese variety too. They also had lots of juices here, for about 40 cents a glass: mango, banana, passionfruit, pineapple, and durian (the stinky fruit--didn't try).
Ashely, Helen, and Relf all left for Hoi An on the 3rd day, but I stayed for a little bit of culture. I rented a bike from the hotel and planned to ride south towards a bunch of Tombs from various Kings over the past couple hundred years (Hue was the Ancient capital, I think?). Hue was a much smaller and quieter town than Hanoi, so I wasn't as nervous about biking on their roads, but still a bit nervous. I only had to bike on busy roads for a km and then I was outside of the city, where there was just one road that was of crappy consitency but light traffic.
As I was riding I came up behind 2 other westerners. I road up next the girl in the back and asked if they were going to the tombs, she nodded, so I joined them and we road togethor . They were a couple from Belgium. We had terrible maps, but between the 3 of us, we managed to locate the first tomb--Kahn Dien or something like that. It was the best tomb. The outside looked like it had been used as reference for the game "Shadow of the Colossus". The inside looked like something Matisse would have done if he were a potter.
Next we found the Ming Tombs. We were told they were the best--maybe what those people meant was "furthest". They weren't nearly as cool as the first, but it was a worthy bikeride.
I took a morning train to Hoi An on my fourth day. I found Antonin and Damia at the station too! We weren't in the same car but we were going to split a cab to a hotel. I made friends with the guy I sat next to--Tim from UK. He was traveling in generally the same route as me, but at a faster speed as he had less time. We shared snacks with eachother and made 3 attempts to get beer from the dining car; The first time it just had a sign on it and was locked, the second time the sign was gone but it was locked and all the workers were sleeping on the chairs. The third time we got it. It was a really scenic train ride that hugged the coastline and crept along steep cliffsides. The train arrived in Da Nang and Tim, Dabia, Antonin, and I shared a cab to Hoi An.
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