So I’ll continue from where I left off, just about to board our first overnight bus from Hanoi to Hué . The journey is supposedly meant to take a whooping 14 hours for a journey only 573km long! In reality is took about this long however we had a few delays which turned to be a pattern with the company.
Again we failed to do proper research before leaving so went with Hanh Cafe tour company which we booked through The Hanoi Backpackers we were staying at. We found a cheaper open bus ticket with another travel agency in Hanoi but decided to go with Hanh Cafe as the backpackers recommended them and we figured it would be easier to communicate with them should anything go wrong. I can’t find a website for the company, *shudder* but I can find some pretty terrible reviews, here and here. If I were to do it again I would probably use Sinh Cafe or stick with Hanh Cafe as personally I didn’t have too bad of an experience. Perhaps I should write them a review to give them some credibility, although they certainly had enough customers; on our Hoi An to Nha Trang leg there were a good five people sleeping on the floor!
Anyway so we were both very apprehensive about this overnight bus trip and in general all of the bus trips which we had now committed to by buying this open ticket.. Oh I think we paid around 1,200,000VND for the five stop ticket to include a stop in Dalat after on of the staff gave as an amazing recommendation to go there ! I guess that’s the beauty of being somewhat disorganised, you can chop and change your plans once you start hearing people’s suggestions ! So we readied ourselves by purchasing too many snacks which we didn’t even eat and fasting all liquids from lunchtime. This was a good move!
We were told to be ready to go at 6pm at the hostel, well 6pm came and went and then 6:30pm and you could tell the other people waiting for the bus wee obviously quite concerned too. I have to laugh because the fact that we were stressing at half an hour late just shows how new to Vietnam we were ! Finally before seven someone came and ushered us down a dark alley to the waiting bus ! Ahhhh finally we could get this show on the road! Alas, we got on the bus and drove all of 200m before the driver pulled over and said we had to wait until 8pm for another bus to arrive back with people for us to collect. Everyone was pretty pissed off, they’d been late to start wi and now we had to wait another hour ! Most of us got off the bus and had a wander around and grabbed some street food and exchanged stories we had heard from others about overnight buses. Lucky’s sister had an absolutely terrifying experience on an overnight bus from Halong City to Hanoj which ended with them dropped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere at 3am with bags which had been robbed following a trip which was meant to take 16hours but took more like 23hours! One girl said a girl she met at the hostel had done this bus ride and had been robbed on the bus, people came on the bus and demanded everyone’s money and phones ! So needless to say we were quite concerned as we had also just withdrawn a large amount of cash which we were carrying on us !
As we were waiting for the bus we noticed our bus driver was smoking something in a bong. It didn’t smell like tobacco and it didn’t smell like weed… Someone thought it could be meth to help him stay away. I had to close my ears at this point so that I could force myself to get back onto the bus.
Anyway so we finally got back on the bus and picked up some more people and headed out of town! I managed to score a window seat but upstairs which actually turned out to be fine for this journey as it wasn’t too bumpy however I would recommend going for the floor level beds next to the windows. You have to take off your shoes when you board the bus, they are very strict about this so didn’t even think of putting them back on a metre early when you’re getting off! You will be slain in Vietnamese! The beds aren’t super long, stretched out my toes hit the end and I’m only 172cm so for taller people it gets a bit harder. The feet cubby hole also doubles as your bag cubby hole so unless you want your bag to take up half of your bed I suggest bringing minimal onto the bus! Again rookie mistake 😞
And guess what…. The buses have Wifi! At fist I thought it was a hoax but then I realised it actually worked! The speed was average and it was hard to connect but still free wifi is everywhere, even buses now apparently!
A few snaps of the bus. Apologies they’re pretty shocking quality but I didn’t want to be THAT guy taking pictures of a bus. But you can kind of get an idea of the set up
You get a blanket which at first I made a mental note to not use as goodness knows how many people have slept under it but then the air conditioning got the better of me through the night and I ??????
It wasn’t too hard to get to sleep, the road wasn’t too windy or bumpy and the bus was super quiet so you were sort of rocked to sleep like you wee in a cradle. I slept really well overnight, I woke up a few times to readjust myself and check that all my belongings were still there but fell back asleep pretty quickly .
We detoured to Bach Ma to drop some people off, I think we were there at like 5am which would’ve sucked trying to find a place to stay at that hour! Originally Lucky and I were going to head to Bach Ma for a night but since we had spent an extra in Cat Ba we decided to forgo it and also it was meant to be raining and we didn’t have any wet weather gear or proper tramping boots.
We arrived in Hué at like 9am local time ( same Timezone throughout Vietnam) and were dropped off at the Hué chain of the Hanoi Backpackers. When we arrived it was raining quite hard and it didn’t really stop while we were there. We quickly grabbed some very stylish purple ponchos from a lady in the street for 20,000VND each. We enquired about a room at the backpackers but thought for $15USD for a double room with shared bathroom facilities that it was abut steep. When you get off the bus there are a mob of locals trying to get you to come with them to a hotel which they receive commission from if they take you there. We needed up going with one guy down the road to his ‘friends’ hotel Hong Thien 2 Hotel. We checked out the room and decided for $10USD a night that it was fine. The rock. Wasn’t ready for another wee while so we sat downstairs and went on the Internet and the lady even made us some Vietnamese coffee. Ahhh Vietnamese coffee is amazing , it’s super strong if you drink it black but nice and sweet if you get it white as they use condensed milk rather then cows milk!
We kind of mucked around for most of the morning as we were both quite tired but ventured out for lunch down by the river. The very dirty, muddy, flooded river so not at all picturesque .
We organised a bust tour of the Perfume arrived for the afternoon, I think we paid $8USD but it could’ve been a bit more. We came back at 1pm for our boat tour and were taken down to river to climb on board one of the boats. The boats are all identical on the outside I guess some are just in better condition on the inside then others. Ours wasn’t in too bad condition it just felt like it would sink very easily in the river..
We asked the wife of the captain if they had life jackets so she pulled some new ones out of plastic for us to wear. I at least felt confident that I could swim to the edge of the river should we go down
The river itself was not that amazing as everything was wet and the river was dirty and flooded. I really don’t know where the name ‘Perfume River’ came from, we certainly didn’t get that vibe? They took us around the river for about 40minutes and then dropped us off at a market. At first we thought they were kicking us off but then the wife got off and started to show us around. It was a real local market, we were the only white faces there and I even spotted a couple of rats scurrying along underneath the produce. Nice. But it was really cool to see a local market and not the gimmicky tourist ones you usually go to. We brought some custard apples after having a million types of fruit shoved in our faces which were actually really good. Fairly certain we got ripped off big time as when we asked for the price and tried to haggle the local ladies all laughed at us . Being laughed at seems to have become a pattern on this trip…..
We got on board the boat and went along the riverfront another wee while before they dropped us off at the start. We were pleased to be back on land and vowed that after our last two boat experiences we would not repeat them again. It wasn’t really that bad but just a very boring silent boat ride on a very unappealing looking river …
It wasn’t a cruise liner but it did get us there and back!
We wandered around the streets for a wee while before retreating to our room as our sneakers were soaking and we just weren’t feeling the ponchos. We decided to had to the My An Hot Springs for a soak to end the day. There is another set of hot pools about 30km away but we didn’t fancy paying for a taxi to take us this far so settled on My An even though they didn’t appear as elaborate .
We grabbed a taxi and settled on I think 50,000VND and headed off to the pools which are only about 3km from the city centre. The pools cost 120,000VND to enter which isn’t really that cheap and I guess does mean that it targets tourists as the locals probably wouldn’t want to pay that much. When we wee thee they were emptying and cleaning one of the pools so there was just the main pool which had a warm and hot side. When you get there a lady rushes over and leads you to a changing room where there are swimsuits and slippers lined up for you to wear if you dare. We passed on the swimsuits as we had our own but accepted the risk of foot fungi and put the slippers on. There are free lockers there to put your belongings in and the staff seemed friendly and unluckily to break into your bags.
The pools or pool, wasn’t too bad, working at a swimming pool I am very aware of how dirty they really are but I was pleasantly surprised! It was nice and clean as far as I could see and even better was that there were on,y a few other people there. We ended up talking to a local lady who was there with her friends and children. She had learnt English at university but hadn’t used it in a while so was really keen to practise her English with us. We were happy to talk with her and it was really interesting to hear what it was like for women in Vietnam . I don’t believe it is necessarily the norm for women to go to university though as it is very expensive . She did marry and have children quite young and now stayed at home looking after the children and the house which seemed to be norm. She even offered to take us around Hué the next day and show us the local sights but unfortunately we were going to head to Hoi An the next day so we couldn’t. I really wish we had taken up her offer though as it would’ve been cool to have a local guide not as part of an organised group.
We headed home after a nice soak and had to go down the road to book our bus for the next day to Hoi An. We did consider staying another night in Hué but the weather wasn’t meant to be any better and we figured we could tick off the Imperial Enclosure the next morning. When we were walking down the street a local guy in a motorbike pulled up next to us and asked “wanna smoke marijuana tonight?” which we quickly and firmly declined. I really don’t think there’s any point taking the risk when there’s so much in the line and everything is corrupt anyway so you are pretty much guaranteed to get caught.
So we headed home, sans any joints, and fell asleep pretty quickly.
We woke up relatively early and had some coffee downstairs before heading out in our ponchos to the Imperial Enclosure. We grabbed a taxi thee which was only like 30,000VND and then had to pay the entrance fee which was ????? . It was pretty quiet inside, all tourists with ponchos or umbrellas if you were lucky.
There are some interesting poster displays in one of the first buildings which detail the history of the IE. They are definitely worth a read as they shed some light on the use and operations of the IE. To be completely honest I can’t remember a lot of it so I won’t explain the history as I am bound to get things wrong.
All I could think when we were walking around in these ponchos was: A) How ridiculous I must look and B) PONCHO JUMP ON IT! (Like the song from Fresh Prince..)
The architecture was absolutely amazing and the IE was a lot bigger then I imagined so it might be worth hiring a guide to talk you through it all. Mostly we just wandered and looked at all of the buildings and pagodas. We caught the tail end of a performance in the performance hall which looked pretty cool . I think it usually costs to watch but they just let us in since there was only a few minutes to go.
We spent maybe three hours walking around which was enough to see most of the main buildings and areas although some were closed . It was worth the visit but I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed it more had it been dry and sunny! By time we were done we only had an hour, supposedly, until our bus came so we quickly found a place for lunch. The food in Hué was much better then Cat Ba , still relatively limited choices on the menus but more Vietnamese food on offer at the touristy restaurants.