Motorbike

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They wake up early in Vietnam and then the average day goes like this. Breakfast, work, 3 hour lunch and finish work around 5!


We had a delicious breakfast and then we went out for coffee by the river. This was a regular thing for the family we are staying with. What was a little unusual for us was the motorbikes (scooters). Any short journey involves using a motorbike walking doesn't seem to exist. So we put on our helmets and each jumped on the back of a scooter. We weaved in and out of the Hue traffic for a couple of km before finding a cafe with a beautiful view of the river. 

The coffee was amazing. It sounds a little odd but it had condensed milk at the bottom of the cup and a layer of coffee floating on top of that. The grand finale was a slightly salted whipped egg white on top. Honestly, it tasted divine! We watched a group of school children perform songs on the promenade before our next stop - The famous citadel of Hue.

We decided not to go inside but walked the walls of this huge fortress, surrounded by a moat. Inside there are various pagodas but we could see some of them through the imposing gates. A huge Vietnamese flag flew outside the citadel and we watched tourists pass by in groups transported by their cyclo (pedal rickshaw) drivers.


Next stop was a small museum. Most of the displays had no English but a QR code revealed English text for each display. We believe, not having read every display, that it was about famous members of the Vietnamese military and the revolution. After here we continued our walk around the citadel before visiting the Ho Chi Minh museum. It was a rather short visit as they closed 10 minutes after we arrived.

It started to rain but we continued to move towards the train station. Hiding under shelter from the sudden short bursts of heavy rain. We purchased tickets for the most scenic rail journey along the coast down to Da Nang in a couple of days. Our journey home for lunch followed the river and was very pretty. Awaiting us was a beautiful feast of sweet meat, spring rolls and jack fruit!


In the afternoon we met another family member who was studying to be an English teacher. We shared some language tips before the whole family left for their elderly parents house 3 hours north.

After dinner we hit Hue nightlife and strolled along the river. Hue really comes alive on a Saturday night with many neon lit clubs, trendy people and people hanging out by the river. 2 streets are closed to traffic and bars overflow onto the streets. We walked along the river and watched the arm wrestling 'club' do their thing. The bridge was lit beautifully and dragon boats plied the river with tours. We didn't go clubbing for 2 reasons. The first was that the loud music would definitely have burst our ear drums. Secondly, Darryl left his glitter dance shoes back at home.


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