Hue

So my last post was from Hanoi but I'm going to go back in time and update ye with what happened before we got there. Colm & myself had been driving up from Hoi An to Hue. We arrived in Hue right at rush hour and encountered some pretty manic driving. The highlight being making a left turn against about 100 motopeds coming towards up, trick is to follow another local turning left and put them between you & the oncoming traffic. Then edge slowly through the flow hoping everyone will avoid you!

I was pretty sick for the majority of time we were in Hue, the new antibiotics worn me down a lot. I think I spent the first night & day in bed, the lads went out and met a couple of different people but mostly faffed for the day. They went drinking that night & I stayed in with pizza & the worst film I have ever seen! I did manage to pop out & join the group for a couple of games of pool but then it was back to bed for the first leg of the champions league. Don't need to say much about that :(

The next day I felt a bit better so we headed to the citedal, the entire old quarter of the city is enclosed within a massive citedal. I think each wall is 4km long, and within that is another citedal with a palace. The palace once had 148 buildings within its grounds but all but 20 were destroyed in the war so the place was pretty empty and run down. Still got some good pictures, I felt pretty run down again that day so it was back to bed!

The next morning pretty much decided how we got to Laos so fast, we had had plans of travelling into the HCM trail or driving north, but the worsting weather and my worsting condition changed that. A quick talk with Colm & we decided to put the bikes on a bus to Hanoi that night & skip all the original plans. The bus journey was pretty horrible, they shoved the bikes in on their sides with our bags underneath them then we climbed into the back row of beds as those were the only ones I could fit in! The journey took 13 hours, we were the only westerns on the bus (all the others were put on another bus, we guess we went on the bigger one because of the bikes) so the locals took pictures with us on the bus. We got into Hanoi at 6am, discovered my bike had leaked oil all over Colms bag & ruined everything. The next 2 hours were spent driving around in the Hanoi maddness trying to find a place to stay and getting lost. I did develop a fancy "GPS" system though, (lonely planet and bungee cords) .







We eventually found the backpacker hostel street and were there for maybe 5 minutes when Daniel came strolling down the road to us. Himself & Alan had gotten the train and gotten in at 5am. So that pretty much covers that part of the journey, next post Hanoi & Halong bay!