Vietnam Day 6

Day 6:

Hue (pronounced  like "way") --> (Hoi An) --> Nha Trang: 400 miles of Vietnam in 1 day

We woke up feeling so refreshed. How novel to have slept and woke up in the same spot!

Although Raphael was not on the same time crunch as Nick and I, he had decided to only stay 1 night in Hue, too. He bought a ticket for the same bus that Nick and I were catching at 2pm. We spent the morning touring some of historic sites. Hue is in central Vietnam so it is close to the former DMZ (although we didn't go) but it's history extends much farther back than that.

How did we want to get around? We contemplated renting motorbikes because traffic here seemed to be much calmer than in Saigon and Hanoi. However, we only had about 4 hours and we wanted to go to at least 3 different sites before we caught the bus. In order to save time, we hired a car with A/C to bring us around. This turned out to be a wonderful decision because it was about 98% humidity and the traffic was not quite as calm as we had seen the night before:

Our first stop was the Tomb of Tu Duc who was the 4th emperor of Vietnam. It was a beautiful park!

It was especially beautiful because all the trees were blooming and dropping these gorgeous flowers everywhere!

See all those flowers all over the pavement?

There lies Tu Duc.

Our next stop was Thien Mu Pagoda, the symbol of Hue.

Raphael decided it would be awesome to photo bomb these ladies...

and they loved it! Too funny

Our third and final stop was the Old Citadel which took a beating during the Battle of Hue in the Vietnam War.

Big...umm...cannon ;)

This is the outer wall of the citadel and flying on top is an absolutely GINORMOUS Vietnamese flag, you know, just in case you forgot what country you were in... There's nothing to show the scale of it in this photo, which is too bad, because it was impressively large (that's what she said). (Gah! Sorry, don't know why my mind is in the gutter today!)

Overall, the citadel was a pretty disappointing site :(  It had been highly recommended to us but it was expensive to get in to and then there was nothing really to see. It was under re-construction so there was either super-fakey-Disneyland-style-plaster reconstructions of how they imagined the buildings would look or just old ruins (see below). The inner citadel was still standing at the turn of the 20th century but because Hue was in South Vietnam, it was not at all preserved when the Communist government took over at the end of the Vietnam war.

We had intended to spend a lot of time at the citadel but since it was such a boring disappointment we had time for a tasty Vietnamese fusion lunch for $7!

This was just one of our entrees. It's rice and shrimp steamed in bamboo (?) leaves. The rice was of the  of porridge mush specialty. At first bite, I found it rather bland and gummy. But then I had a second one and I liked that one much better. In fact, it was good!

Then it was time to catch our bus! It was another sleeper bus. There were no buses that went the whole way from Hue to Nha Trang (our next destination) and so we would have to change buses in Hoi An. OK, no problem. We picked out seats and settled in while we waited for the bus to fill up.

The back of this bus slept 5 across the back! Whoa! But there was also no bathroom...


Raphael was only going to Da Nang which was a few stops before Hoi An. It would be sad to say good-bye because he had been so much fun to travel with but alas, all good things must come to and end.

In this instance, it actually happened much more quickly than we had anticipated.

A few minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave, the guy that had checked our tickets when we got on approached Nick and I specifically, saying "You change buses now."

What? Why? We had only just got on? Why us? The bus isn't even full!

We were quite confused but the man had said this with a tone of urgency in his voice so there was no time for questions! I guess we would have to trust him. We had no reason not to, right?

We grabbed our stuff, said a hasty good-bye to Raphael and got off the bus. The man walked us over to a different bus stop, handed us some sort of receipt/new ticket and left.

Wait! Aren't you going to explain why we had to leave the bus? What are we waiting for now? This ticket only says Hoi An on it but we are going all the way to Nha Trang, is this right?

Oh yes, yes, he assured us. Everything is fine. (I realize writing this now that he probably didn't even understand our questions and just said 'yes' to appease us.)

Anyways, we were to wait for another bus that would be arriving shortly.

Maybe the first bus had to make many stops and we wouldn't make it in time for our transfer in Hoi An? We crossed our fingers and waited.

The next bus did indeed arrive soon, except we were the last pick-up for this bus which meant the bus eas already full except for 2 beds and they were not next to each other. Nick sat on the bottom bunk of the 5-sleeper and I sat on the top bunk of it. Between 3 sweaty strangers and a really stinky hippie. And about 500 ants. (Ok, maybe only 50 and they were very preoccupied with some chip crumbs to notice me but still, who wants to share a 3 hour bus ride with ants?) This bus was disgusting.

And then it started to rain. Hard. And the roof leaked. Badly.

It was a very unpleasant ride.

At one point, the bus did make a bathroom stop but the toilets there were indescribably gross. It was a western style toilet but it would have been better if it was just a squatty potty. But when you gotta go, you gotta go.

3.5 miserable hours (for me anyways, Nick slept the whole time) later we arrived in Hoi An. It was the last stop for the bus so everyone was getting off. Unlike when we had been dropped off in Dong Hoi, this was at some sort of bus depot and there were many sleeper buses loading and unloading.

It shouldn't be a problem to find our next bus, right?

Ha.

Right after getting our bags from under the bus, Nick approached our bus driver, showed him our tickets, and asked him where we could find this bus?

Not my company, he replied, and blew us off.

Nick remained calm and explained how, well, someone from his company had taken us off a different bus and put us on this bus so where can we make the connection?

He was no help at all.

Tried to find a bus schedule? There were none.
Tried to match the logo from our tickets to one of the other buses in the lot? No match.

So Nick patiently asked a few different people and finally, someone helped us, kinda. She made a phone call and then pointed us in the direction of our company's office.

Oh, she said as we left, the bus already left.

What? Seriously? We've been in Hoi An for about 3 minutes, how could it have left?!

We picked up our pace and hustled over to the office. We miss counted and walked right past it the first time but we got there less than 10 minutes later.

There was no bus in sight which was concerning so we went right in and showed the woman working there our tickets.

Oh, the bus left already, sorry, she told us. We didn't have your names on our list to wait for you so it left at 5:30. There will be another one tomorrow at 6AM that you can take.

Umm NO we couldn't because we had to be in Nha Trang to catch a train the next night! I felt like screaming at her but my better half (love him so much!) kept cool and calmly explained our situation again while I kept my thoughts to myself.

The woman gave us this pitiful look but said there was nothing she could do about it.

(Oh Lord, I prayed, I'm bowing out of this one. It's in Your hands.)

Ok, fine, Nick said, refund our bus tickets and we will book a train ride tonight.

Refund? HA she laughed at the suggestion but then started making some phone calls. On 3 different phones. All at the same time.

And then, out of no where this man on a motorbike shows up and says, follow me!

Nick and I glance at each other and the woman. She beckons us to follow him so we grab our backpacks and get moving!

Was he gonna give us a ride on his scooter to catch up with the bus? Where was he gonna take us? Did he have spare helmets?

So much was happening at once! It had still been probably less than 20 minutes since we'd arrived in Hoi An!

This is exactly how I felt as we left the booking office.

But, no, he didn't give us a ride, he just scootered along as we ran behind  him for a few blocks until we turned the corner and a bus appeared out of nowhere! He boarded and struck some deal with the driver or something because several tense moments later he reappeared and beckoned us on to the bus.

Mickey mouse, what are you doing on the door of the bus?

There were no more seats on the bus but it was headed to Nha Trang and someone would be getting off in 3 hours so we could take their seat when they left. (Oh thank you, Jesus!) For now, there was floor space in the aisle only. He pulled out some mats for us to sit on.

Not ideal (or halfway safe) conditions but who cares, we were on our way to Nha Trang.

Our "seats." Did I mention how narrow these aisles were?

So we settled in. As it happened, no one got off in 3 hours or at all, for that matter. This is where we slept. What a night.

There were some friendly Aussies, Dutch girls and an Irish girl we chatted with for a while though.
But still what a night.