1 day and a half in Hue

We took the train from Hanoi at 8 pm and 13 hours later, we arrived at Hue. We decided to take the train because it was less expensive than the plane, safer than the bus and a lot of people told us that the views were beautiful. I can confirm two of these tips, it is less expensive than the plane, and safer than the bus, other than that, I don’t remember seeing much of the view, maybe while arriving Hue, yes, it is quite nice.

We shared a cabin with another couple, they were danish and very nice! We were relieved to have them as our roommates because the cabins are really small and you will bump with them every time you want to go to the bathroom or every time you want to move outside the bed. We moved as little as possible. I prefer the top bunks, I know it’s annoying to go to the bathroom, but you have space to keep your bags and if someone comes in, you’ll feel safer, at least I did.

This first time on the train wasn’t really pleasant, but it wasn’t a disaster. The couple was nice, we had food in our cabin, but besides that, it is really hard to sleep in the train, it’s really noisy, the “air condition” it’s mainly air, coming out from the selling always cold no matter if you put it in to hot, or if you turn it off, and a funny thing happened during the night (it was our fault for not locking the door. Lock the door!!), a gentleman entered our cabin clearly thinking it was his and prepared himself to lay down in one of the beds where they were sleeping in, obviously when he realized it wasn’t his bed, he started to apologize “oh my God, I’m so sorry! This isn’t my bed!”. It was scary at the time because we were sleeping, but we had a good laugh in the morning. So that’s why I choose the top bunk!

A tip, remember to bring food to the train, the breakfast they have it's only a banana and a pastry and if you want to have dinner I wouldn’t recommend it going to the restaurant (no, no). At every stop, they have stalls with food, right outside the train door, so you can buy some fast food (they have instant noodles and you just have to add water) and bring with you to the train.

I don’t have any pictures from this first train ride, but I do have of the second one from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh, and this one, believe me, was much painful. 16 hours and it’s mainly a local train. But I’ll talk about it on the Ho Chi Minh post.

9h30 am and we arrive at Hue. It’s time to say goodbye to our new friends/ roommates and prepare ourselves for a really intense day (we only spend 1 night there) of checking in the hotel and exploring the city.

We stayed in Alba Spa Hotel and it was really good! It’s the kind of hotel that if you’d stayed in another place other than in Vietnam, it would cost you a fortune! It had a spa, the beds were really comfortable, the breakfast was also very good and the staff was amazing. All these hotels have bikes to rental and they’re really cheap, some have them for free, but most of them you have to rent, which is fine because it is really cheap.

Check-in done, second stop, luuuuunch and Imperial City.

This place is magnificent and it was very quiet too. Not really sure why (probably because it was so late in the afternoon), but we didn’t see a lot of tourists. And because it’s so huge, there were times when we were completely alone.

Next day - Start by exploring the Dong Ba Market!

Next stop - Thien Mu Pagoda. We walked from the Dong Ba Market to the Thien Mu Pagoda, but I wouldn’t recommend you to do it. We were very foolish to think it was going to be fun! haha. It’s almost an hour walking in the sun and in the middle of the roads. Just grab a bike!

For the return, we decided to take the boat back to the center and it was a great choice. We usually don’t accept any deals from people who are outside the tourist places, because it probably will be more expensive than calling a grab, but in this case, we just thought, why not? We were the only ones on the boat and I was pretty sure they were not allowed on the main dock. It was an old boat, not like the ones that we saw full of tourists, and it was only me, Pedro, the lady who sold us the ride, the husband and their kid. I’ve got to say that I enjoyed this boat ride very much, there were no other tourists taking pictures and being annoying, it was just us and it was a very peaceful ride.

The funny thing was that when we were arriving at the center they asked us where we wanted to stop. We had no clue, so we just pointed to the dock near the center and they said it was ok. Haha. Funny. They stop reaaaally close to the dock, but not exactly there. They stopped at the nearest shore and told us “here, here!”. The lady was docking the boat and we were rushing to pay them (they forgot!) and getting out in time! It was funny because the people in Vietnam are extremely sweet, and they were being so nice, but we were so confused! So I decided to jump off the boat and landed on the grass, but Pedro was really funny because he just kept asking me, “But should I really jump now? Here? In here? Are you sure?” Hahaha. From the boat, it looked like we were pretty far from the road, but we weren’t and we just had to walk a little bit from the shore to the center. They knew what they were doing, it was a clever way for them to make money, even though they weren’t a tourist boat.