Hue

We took the open bus from Hanoi to Hue. The bus is cheaper than the train, takes about the same amount of time, and is probably a bit more luxurious. The open bus is like a moving hostel, sleeping around 35 people. Matt and I snagged the back top bunks, giving us five beds to ourselves. We were told the bus had a toilet--lies. The bus made stops every so often where we could run to the  bathrooms and pee. At first it was dirty squat toilets, and then as we got further from Hanoi, dirty trenches. I am proud to say that peeing in trenches and squat toilets is skill that I have greatly mastered.

One that I have not mastered is sleeping on a sleeper bus from Hanoi to Hue. The road must have been built before the Vietnam war and has never been repaired after various bombings. The road was awful! I was buckled in and still was flopping all over the place. Just when the roads got better, the bus would speed up, go around a corner and we'd all skid to the other side of the bus. We once very noisily passed (every one honks like mad in Vietnam) a wrecker pulling a destroyed sleeper bus. I thought for sure I was going to die on that road. Once I finally did managed to fall asleep, we had to stop for an hour because of a car accident. Still every one was honking and emergency lights were flashing. Matt slept through it all. We arrived in Hue after 15 and a half hours on the bus and three to four hours of sleep (for me that is).

Hue greeted us with hotel vultures pressing to the outside of the bus doors. These are the people who meet the tired souls coming off the bus and try to sell them a hotel room. And after you decline they follow you on their motor bike or rickshaw still trying to sell the hotel. Sleepy Carmen was angry and stubbornly insisted that we find our own hotel (and we did). We then walked around Hue with a parade of motorcycles, rickshaws, tour guides, fruit sellers, and jewelry sellers trying to get us to buy their services. We spite them all and ate lunch at a place run by a deaf and dumb person (I think it is an act because I swear to God I heard him say some thing to his wife). But even he sold us a motorcycle tour of Hue. This time we took it, and enjoyed a five hour tour of Hue and the jungle.

I highly recommend the tour via motorcycle and not bicycle. The best sites are away from the city sandwiched between rice patties and jungle and are the sites that have turned to cow pasture. It is quite surreal to see a ruined temple or tomb being eaten by cows and jungle trees. Women dressed in traditional Vietnamese wedding garb or bright red engagement gowns following the groomsmen and a large camera crew over roots and through the mud to get the perfect wedding photo. Men fish at the banks of the now wild moats. And a couple of tourists stop to take pictures of some left over blue and white porcelain tiles.

We turned down the $20/person offer to take motorcycles to Hoi An over the mountains because we were afraid of rain. However, we took the bus and the weather was perfect and the sites were amazing. We really wished we had taken the motorcycles where we could have visited waterfalls and more temples high in the mountains. But we still got to stop at the beach for half an hour before arriving in Danang and Hoi An.