Day 19
After a good nights sleep in my fancy hotel room I woke up nice and fresh. I met up with Lewis, Hannah and Carly downstairs in the hotel for some breakfast. We then decided to book a tour to check out the city. Around Hue are some medieval thombs and pagodas to see.
We booked a taxi which drove us around to the highlights of Hue. We went to two thombs, the oldest pagoda and the old city. It took all morning and half of the afternoon to check it out. It was also good to see the sun was out.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel and decided to have a little chill out and a shower. I had a little powernap. After waking up we headed out to town to have some food. We ended up at a fancy floating restaurant in the river of Hue. The food was all right, although the cheesecake we had for dessert was not too good.
After dinner we had a few drinks at one of the bars in the backpacker street. Afterwards we followed the stream of backpackers heading over to one of the clubs in town. We had a drink and then Lewis, Hannah and Carly headed off back to the hotel. I decided to stay at the bar for a few more drinks. Around 3am I was done too and headed back to the hotel.
Day 20
I woke up fairly early again, as today we were flying from Hue to Hanoi. We decided to fly as a plane from Hue to Hanoi was about $50 while the bus costs about $15 but would take 18 hours opposed to a flight from less than an hour.
After breakfast we grabbed a taxi to the airport. We were flying around 13:30. After checking in and going through security we were waiting to get onto the plane at the gate. Unfortunately the plane we were going with was delayed. The time of our flight was being changed every 45 minutes.
We ended up waiting for about 3 hours before we finally got onto the plane. Once on the plane we were in Hanoi about an hour later. I had a full row of seats to myself, which was quite convenient.
We arrived in Hanoi around 17:30. From there we grabbed a shuttle bus which was completely loaded up with people (we felt like sardines in a can). After checking in we had a shower and some food. There we met up with Becky and Abby who arrived a day earlier. That night we went on a pub crawl with the hostel which was good fun.
At the end of the night I decided to walk back to the hostel, even though I didn’t have a map and I didn’t have an address. I did sort of know which direction we had walked, so I tried to just use my sense of direction to walk back. I walked for a good hour through the streets, but eventually I had to give up because I didn’t recognize anything. The people on the streets didn’t wanna help either, so I ended up grabbing a taxi. The driver asked 50.000 (2 dollars) to bring me to the hostel. I got in and we drove for about 20 meters and then stopped. It turned out I was about 1 minute away from the hostel. The taxi driver was laughing at me and I was surprised I was actually that close. I got out and went to bed.
Day 21
The next morning I had a little sleep in. I got up around 13.00. I walked downstairs to reception to rent a towel. There I bumped into one of the hostel employees called Adam, an Australian guy, who was already completely drunk. He said he had been to a wedding of a colleague in the morning and had been drinking rice wine all morning. He bought me a beer, even though I hadn’t even had a shower yet. I quickly realized this hostel was going to kill me if I stayed too long with all these drinks.
After my beer and a shower I went out to explore the city. I grabbed a map from reception and started walking around town. Hanoi turned out to be a nice city, but less choatic compared to Ho Chi Minh. I went to the prison museum, an old prison built by the French in the 19th century to lock up people who were against the government.
Afterwards I walked to the temple of litarature and had some lunch there. From there I walked over to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, the place where Ho Chi Minh is burried. It turned out to be a beautiful square with a lot of grass. The royal palace was right next to it.
Afterwards I walked back to the hostel. At a busy intersection I stopped to take some photos of the crazy traffic. Once I got back to the hostel I booked my trip to Halong Bay. In my room I met two Australian girls who were going to Halong Bay too. We decided to have some dinner together. After dinner we had a few drinks in the hostel bar. I decided not to go out, because we had to get up early the next day and I still had to pack my bag for the Halong Bay trip.
Soon more adventures from Halong Bay and Sapa!
Oct 19th 2013 – Oct 20th 2013
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