HuYEEEEEE

For some reason Al woke up like this! We are not sure if it is mozzie bite on his eye or i biffed him in the night and neither of us noticed! Mystery!
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Jes here (again),

We decided to travel here to Hue (or as said huYEEEEE) however this was an experience we were not expecting and to be honest we were not in the mood for!

Magical SNICKERS

I thought the old met line trains in London were a mess and old, but its nothing compared to the trains out here. We were on the FAST TRAIN, the SE2, which took forever (3hrs)to cover the smallest amount of distance (103km) from Danang to Hue! The train was busy, but we didn't have a problem finding our seats. People were crammed into their seats however, and everyone seemed to travel with half their belongings too(about as much stuff as us!).

One of the entrances to get into the Citadel.
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We set off and after an hour a trolley came round offering a few delights, including coke-a-cola....green Tea.....boiled eggs... smelly fish.... ?!? Need i say any more, apart from the nose cleaning process i had to endure once leaving the train! Talking about leaving the train - well this was an experience in its self. 25mins before the train pulled into the station the train came to life and there was people evey where with their bags, boxes, children... crowing the Isles. Once we arrived at the station we got our bags down and hauled them onto our backs. We stood in line, just like you would in England awaiting to depart from the train. all of a sudden after moving a few feet i could hear a little shouting from in front of Al (who was in front of me) All i could hear was some strange screeching from a (small) vietnamese woman and 'There is not enough room - get off the train' from Al.

A large space inside the first part of the Citadel - Strange that the streets are so crowded, but there is soooo much space here in the centre of town!
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Al: Well, We'd got our bags on our backs which aren't small and we were blocking the aisle near the door to the carriage (similar to british virgin train carriage layout) due to the fact that no one could get off. There were still lots of people behind us trying to get off and then 2 small vietnamese women pushed their way onto the train and tried to push passed me. I had my big bag on my back and my small bag on my front. They didn't seem to understand that there was no possible way of squeezing past me. I knew no vietnamese, so just shouted at them in english "where the F**k do you think you're going to go?" then they tried again to push past me whilst screeching and shouting at me. Meanwhile people are trying to push us from behind to get off the train. And guess what? nobody is going anywhere. Next thing I hear, is the whistle for the train to depart. So, I grabbed a small pushy lady in each hand and literally chucked them onto the platform whilst I shouted back at them - "Let us off the F**k*ng train" Then jumped off and pulled Jes off the train after me.

Another entrance.
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After getting mildly annoyed at the stupidity of these bloody irritating pushy women, I was not in the mood for being ripped off by more taxi drivers that think I'm rich! After being quoted a few prices that were over the odds and having that now familiar blank look when you ask them to use the meter. I blew my top and told Jes we were walking to find the hotel. This maybe wasn't the best idea, as the hotel we had chosen was about 2km from the train station and we were carrying about 30kg each on our shoulders. But the hotel we had chosen (Binh Duong III) was nice, clean, very friendly and best of all free internet in our room for only $20 a night, bargain!

Tiggies meeting their Ancestor!
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Jes again - he has finished ranting...

And i wasn't too happy walking here, but the temp is about 15oc (chilly for what we are used to!) and the brisk walk kept us warm!. Once in our room Al decided to book a flight with Vietnam Airlines for the next day as he was so pissed off with the country! I however had other plans, thus made Al run back down stairs and change the ticket for the following day.

Where we currently are in Hue is down a back(packer) ally, where there are a few little cafe's and many mini hotels. The area has many backpackers and there are 5 universities here, thus everyone speaks quite good English :o). The food is very good here, but Al and I experience the Deli Belli daily, well one day its me, the other its him.... So we are careful about what we eat, however we still never know what the kitchen is like! The little Cafe's however are full of backpackers and the staff really do go out of their way to please you, it is same here in the Hotel. Yesterday when we arrived we were given an extra blanket (as there is no heating, well what do you expect for $20!), also when Al went down for another blanket (upon my request ;o) they only had a thin one, but 10 mins later arrived with a fan? Huh? nope its not a fan, its the sun :o) (well a infrared ceramic heater). It really isn't that efficient, but it takes the cill out of the air, and also drys my undies!

Fishies :o)
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Today was our old day in Hue, so we decided to explore on foot (although i wanted to take a Honda-om - a guided ride on the back of a moped) Al was happy to proceed on foot. we headed for Pho 24 (the Mc D's of Vietnam serving Pho - noodle soup) then onto the Citadel:

'the whole 520 Hectares are enclosed within 7meter high, 20 meter thick brick and earth walls built with the help of french engineers and encircled with a moat and canal" - Rough guide.

Within the Citadel there is another moat and inside that, there is the Imperial City (which is similar to Beijing's Imperial City). Inside the imperial city most of the buildings have gone into ruin because of floods, war, termites - you know the kind of stuff? Inside this was the Emperor's palace called the Forbidden Purple City - although now it is a cabbage patch!

Raarrrr (golden dragon)
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So this is what we spent our day looking at in the drizzle! but there was one good thing - we got to feed the Coy Carps in one of the ponds :o) Well it made me smile. Shortly after this we were on a search for a sugar hit, well really we were after a Snickers hit! You would think inside the cities main attraction there would be a cafe? gift shop selling chocolate? Ohhh no - there was tat on offer in the form of shoes... figurines.... CD's.... small buddhas.....i digress! But nowhere seemed to sell any chocolate! we were getting that desperate that even a Mars would have done! In the end we paid 30p for some Coconut Candy! I think it should be sold under the glue section instead of the sweets section, but hey the locals seem to like it! - we have given it to people in restaurants and in our hotel and they seem to be chomping away on it perfectly well! So we turned down our alley way defeated - but then in the corner of my eye, i spied SNICKERS - Magical SNICKERS...... one each, with a cup of Tea & Coffee - HEAVEN :o) ( i feel out state of mind is in a fragile state currently).