Our journey to Hue was not an enjoyable one at all. It is meant to be around a 3 and a half hours Hue from Phong Nha, however it took us 5 hours. The bus driver decided to keep taking stops and then also stop outside a petrol station for 50 minutes (which was definitely not necessary). We arrived in Hue at 1 in the morning and the bus driver decided to drop us in the middle of absolute no where. As it was 1 in the morning there were no taxis around, only 1 b&b open in which I had to google translate to the man who worked there to order us a taxi. This guy for some reason could not do this?! So we eventually (after 30 minutes) found a taxi on the street. We arrived at our hostel where the poor man who worked there was asleep on the chair, he soon woke up and checked us into our room. The room was tiny with an extremely hard (Vietnamese style) bed. However we were happy to have made it and finally be in bed.
The following day I woke up and headed straight out to explore the city of Hue. I walked for around 40 minutes to the find the Imperial City which is the former imperial capital of Vietnam. The imperial city was huge, it is enclosed with 4 walls each at a length of 2km. It was really interesting to learn about the Hue history and culture that is once had.
After the imperial city I took a stroll along the river and came across the Dong Ba Day Market. I would describe the market as a well organised and packed out Primark. There was literally stuff everywhere and hundreds of women and men trying to sell you random stuff (oh and if you looked and didn’t buy they would literally physically hold onto you until you did).
In the afternoon George and I headed to the famous Khai Dinh King Tomb. The architecture of the tomb was interesting and the long, hot walk to the top made it worth it! After this we headed to the abandoned water park. This was a pretty freaky and eerie experience.
We got dropped off around 20 minutes outside the water park so you had to walk the rest to reach the side entrance. We firstly came across a huge abandoned dragon statue in the lake. We soon realised that the dragon used to be an aquarium as you could recognise the fish tanks within it. There was broken glass and smashed up walls everywhere. The whole place was very weird but so cool to visit.
We then arrived at the actual water park with the slides. There were 2 slides, a lazy river, a swimming pool (full of green smelling water) and a kids area (which looked like something out of a horror movie). The waterpark was super weird but really cool to visit, it almost felt like we were being filmed in some type of movie as it was completely abandoned and only a couple of others there with us; super spoooooky!
That night we had dinner and drinks in Hue and headed back to our hostel to pack up our bags ready to move on the next day. The next day we were renting a motorbike to do the High Van Pass which is a motorbike route from Hue to Hoi An taking around 7 hours; we were both really looking forward to it. We both had a good time visiting Hue and learning lots about Vietnams history and culture. It was also nice to be back in a city environment as we had been out of this for a while. Next stop … Hoi An!!!
Adventure Awaits... 