Hue, Vietnam

We arrived in Hue after our overnight train at a much more decent hour - 8am.  The ride was very comfortable and we actually both had a good night's sleep on the train, the only real drawback was the small child vomiting strawberry milkshake in our cabin the next morning!  We were silently gagging, but it really didn't seem to phase him, since he was jumping from Dan's bed to his bed about 60 seconds after the incident :>)  We easily found a fantastic place to stay.  For a little bit more money you can get such amazing value here.  We got a room on the third floor and there is a communal balcony with lots of potted plants where we could overlook the street.  Dan headed off to the grocery store and we took a break from noodles by enjoying a feast of baguette, cheese, watermelon, mango and passionfruit on the balcony...yum!

Hue is a UNESCO world heritage city and was the National Capital until 1945.  It was also the imperial capital of the Nguyen dynasty and as such there are several historical monuments in and around the city.  Unfortunately the city suffered considerable damage from the Americans during the war, but much has been or is being restored.  On our first day we headed off to the citadel (built by the Nguyen dynasty) and wandered around the forbidden city inside (where only emperors and and those close to them were allowed) for a few hours.  The following day we took a tour which involved heading down the Perfume river by boat to see several tombs of the Nguyen dynasty.  A few of them were on huge grounds with lakes and rivers and gardens and were therefore quite beautiful.  The emperors would apparently spend time at these grounds in the years before they died, fishing and relaxing.  One of these guys had 104 wives before he finally realized that maybe it was his fault that his wife couldn't get pregnant :>)

The following day we took a bus to Hoi An, which is about 150km south of Hue.  It is also a UNESCO world heritage city and the old city here is really really lovely.  It goes into the list of my favorite Asian cities along with Penang and Luang Prabang.  At night they light up the downtown with colourful lanterns over the river and it's so romantic :>)  We have also found perhaps what is our best accomodation in Asia yet.  The hotel has a pool (which for some reason we havn't used yet...we need to get on that) and has an amazing buffet breakfast along with many other amazing features too numerous to mention :>)  So we are in a beautiful romantic city in a beautiful, affordable hotel....ahhh....life's good right now.  There are also more tailors here than noodle stands!  It's impossible to know which one to pick from, but we would like to look decent for Peter's wedding in 3 days so we currently have a dress for me and a suit plus 3 shirts in the works for Dan!  We are a little worried but we are keeping our fingers crossed everything turns out okay.  We have to go back for a fitting tomorrow.  They have some really nice looking winter jackets that you can have made, but it's kind of hard to shop for winter coats when it's 38 degrees outside, plus there is absolutely NO way it would fit into my bag at this point.  So we are pretty excited about seeing Peter and meeting Che and her family in a few days.  We fly to Saigon on May 17th where Peter will (thankfully) meet us at the airport and navigate us through what will perhaps be our most chaotic city experience yet.  We've heard it's nuts.

Well that's it for now!

Love from Hanna and Dan xoxo

At the citadel

 Alternative to airbags??

 Pagoda

 Goofing off at the Royal Tombs

 My attempt