Day 9 - Hoi An | Main | Day 11 - Hue
Travel day Hoi An to Hue
We left Hoi An in a huge down pour of rain, it was literally bucketing down and our little hotel had to serve breakfast inside by the pool rather than out on the back deck over looking the paddy fields. As we had collected all of our shopping purchases, (clothes and shoes) we needed to send some stuff home so the hotel arranged a friendly man from the Hoi An post office to come and bring us a box, pack our stuff up and send it all home Air Mail - not cheap but much better than the excess baggage costs! As I watched the man put the box on the back of his scooter and ride away, I sat wondering if we will actually see the clothes arrive at the other end - but not to worry I have his gmail address!
The drive to Hue from Hoi An takes you back past Danang and we decided a quick trip up the Marble Mountains might be good, actually it was still drizzling down but we felt we should be out seeing the sights, so we climbed the steep, slippery, marble steps up the mountain - at the top there are a series of pagoda's and temples which lead further into temples in Caves in the mountains - it was actually quite fantastic and we were really pleased to have taken the effort, the feeble light that came into the cave made the experience even more serene. The Vietnamese are interesting in that they seem to pray to lots of gods as well as the elders, the fact that many of the religions seem to get a bit mixed up is not something they worry about, Buddhist temples are often beside Hindu temples and sometimes a temple will contain both Buddhist and Hindu artifacts.
We returned down the marble mountain steps past the thousands of people ready to sell you a carved marble something or rather - what is quite amazing is that they will ship you anything there to Australia for $60 per square meter!
We continued our drive on to Hue through the Hai Van pass and all the way into town to our new hotel La Residence. This is a big hotel built around a french deco theme, the building sits on the edge of the Perfume River and looks out towards the walled Citadel and Emperors Forbidden City. We wolfed down a club sandwich and rented some bicycles heading out to investigate the town, Hue is a more of a city than a town, and this was our first time actually in command of a vehicle while in Vietnam and Eve is not particularly confident on a bike, but we both had a fantastic time riding around (even if all the temples we visited were closed) we peddled all around the town then over the river and visited the markets (another opportunity for a watch) and on around the citadel. The rain had stopped so we really had a great time of it - when you ride past the locals they think it is hysterical to see a couple of white tourists riding around on bikes - all the kids say hello!
The outside walls of the inner city within the Citadel
We came back to the hotel and took a swim in the amazing L shaped swimming pool exhausted with the day.
Posted by crispin at December 30, 2007 05:49 PM