Four old girls on a train to Hue

Today we left a sad faced Trinh for an 8.40 train ride to Hue.

Our train arrived – not too flash but we were pleasantly surprised to find it was air conditioned.

We had been told it was a great journey and we weren’t disappointed. It follows the coast north from Hoi An with wonderful views of the water and the jungle.

The train was crowded , mostly with Vietnamese headed to Hanoi. They were sleeping or eating and quite a few wore the face mask to avoid germs. The trip should have taken about 3 hours but was closer to 4 – but with spectacular scenery we really didn’t mind the occasional hold ups.

We were entertained by a little boy who took photos of us on his iPad. We figured he would be thinking of us as ‘the old girls’.

A cart was wheeled through with little plastic trays all ready to be filled with the cooked food in various containers on the trolley and rice in a big red drum.

We arrived and caught a taxi to our hotel which is just back from the river.

Hue is the former capital of Vietnam and has many lovely old buildings – though they lost many during the war. It was also the site of the Tet offensive, one of the worst battles during the Vietnam war. Tomorrow we are going on a tour to the Imperial citadel, where much of the battle was fought. We’re also going on a dragon boat cruise and to visit a pagoda.

This evening we took a cyclo tour of the city. We only wanted half an hour but of course our drivers made it an hour with several stops along the way for photos. Naturally they also wanted more money.

It was a funny ride – along the river and through the main areas of the city. We ran through many reds lights, went down the street the wrong way and overtook buses and cars. Let’s not mention the roundabouts. We felt lucky to arrive at the end in one piece!