The Bus Journey from Hell

It was my worst bus journey so far. The driver drove like he was in the film "speed" if the buses speed dropped below a certain level I think he thought we'd be blown up. We zoomed across pot holes and temporary bridges bouncing up and down in our seats, at one point as he slammed on the brakes everyone sleeping horizontally ended up on the floor or into the seat in front.

Like a game of musical chairs everyone rushes to secure a prime seat for the monster journey ahead. I thought I'd done quite well grabbing two seats with fully working recliners for once. My smugness was soon dashed when a Vietnamise man got on and took  the seats in front of me, I say seats because he proceeded to recline not one, but both of the seats as far as they could go! I was left with the smallest of spaces in which to operate.

The guy didn't even ask first like most people. I decided against the confrontation and headed to the back of the bus where there were spare seats.

I took up two seats one row from the back of the bus, all seemed great until I found the first seat wouldn't recline at all and the second reclined but wouldn't lock, leaving myself bouncing around for the whole journey. Needless to say I didn't sleep much that evening and the random switching on and off of lights on the bus really didn't help much either. As the sunlight shone through the windows in the morning, blasting from the speakers above my head, Vietnam pop music screeched.

I stumbled off the over night bus in Hue blurry eyed and in a daze. The bus took about 13 hours to go where I'd had been before (trying to escape the typhoon).

I managed to beat off the hotel touts who usually make your head spin at this time in the morning and picked up my rucksack. I headed down the street towards the area with the most guest houses with hotel touts still in toe showing various leaflets and muttering in my face "cheap room, you come see now".

On my way I met two Canadian guys from the bus and we checked out a few guest houses before picking one that I had been in just for the day before on the way up to Hanoi. I found myself a modest single room for 3 US Dollars a night, it would serve the purpose well.

The Canadian guys were only spending a day in Hue and planned to do a day tour, I decided to join them as if I didn't I'd probably never get round to doing anything as I was in such a daze.

The tour took us to two Royal Tombs (Minh Mang and Tu Duc) constructed on the banks of the Perfume River. The tombs of the rulers of the Nguyen dynasty from 1802-1945 are pretty impressive structures and I enjoyed strolling around there crumbling architecture although the sun was beaming down on us all day. We also visited the Hue's Citadel which we found very disappointing, not much actually remains of the Citadel and there seemed to be partly finished reconstruction work everywhere as well as litter, broken bricks and stone. Each place cost 55000 dong to enter, which was quite pricey in comparison to everything else in the country.

This is probably due to the large number of middle-aged tourists with money burning a hole in their pockets. I really didn't expect Vietnam  (A communist country) to be a place where the middle-age older tourist would frequent but it seems Vietnam has really opened its doors to the outside world. This comes in stark contrast to China where in places you were lucky to see any other westerners. In the eyes of the locals all tourists are the same, we can all afford to pay over the odds for everything including a can of beer or bottle of water. With middle-aged tourists splashing their cash around like theres no tomorrow it also leaves the traveller on a budget in the eyes of the locals looking like a free cash machine.