Small trouble along the way in Hue

I made my biggest mistake in Hue, Vietnam.  It sounds like a big deal when I say it like that, but really, this being my biggest mistake of the trip makes my trip that much more wonderful!

Hue (pronounced 'hway') is a city rich with history, tombs, palaces, pagodas and temples.  Hue is a 12 hour train ride from Hanoi and we decided a "sleeper car" would be the best.  And it was!  You can fly for almost the same cost as the train, but the train is just so much more of an experience!  Plus- I LOVE traveling by train!  If you have the opportunity, do it!  If you need help planning, check out this site: http://www.seat61.com/index.html#.U3AWhca09Cg


So, after sleeping in a 4 bunk soft sleeper car, sharing it with a couple for the first 5 hours or so, we arrived in Hue at around 8 am.  We took a metered taxi to our hotel ($2) and our room was available to check in early!  (yay!)  So after unloading into our hotel room and a quick shower to freshen up, we headed to the old Royal Palace/ citadel.

It cost 55,000 Vietnam Dong (About $2.50) to get in and you could easily spend 4 hours exploring.  We probably only took 2 hours to explore and captured TONS of great photos!

Iconic flag tower

Very Asian

And so the "door" pictures begin!

Broken ceramic mosaics. Beautiful!

Now, here is where my mistake comes in.  We went just outside the walls to a little cafe on the North end to eat a great lunch.  Now, everyone and their grandma will try to get you to take a tour in Hue.  We had already refused about 20 earlier in the day, so I was just used to saying "no".  The owner of the cafe was ready to offer us the best tour in Hue.  He and his wife would take us on the back of their motorbikes around the different sites for $40.  This price was way too high for my liking.  We got him talked down to $20, but I wasn't convinced that we couldn't do it for cheaper.  After all, the next cite looked walkable.  What if we walked to the next cite and found a guy there?  The man tried to dissuade us and tell us that it was much too far to walk.  But the map made it look not too far… after all, this man doesn't know how much I like walking! (See previous post about Hanoi).  So… we left him and started walking.  It was 30 minutes later, still walking that I decided he wasn't trying to scam us and indeed we should have taken his offer.

After the not so short walk to the 7 tiered pagoda, we had realized our mistake.  We tried to get a cheaper boat ride, but there were none to be found.  Finally, we took a metered taxi.  They won't scam you.  After more UNESCO heritage sites and 100 more pictures we got back to our hotel exhausted, hot and after spending $21 on the taxi… not too pleased with our mistake.  So, if you plan to go to Hue, learn from my mistake!  $20 for a driver for the day to take you anywhere you want to go is a really good deal!  Hue is definitely NOT a walking city.

And on another note, dinner at HOT TUNA was amazing! Our server was a super friendly college student studying English and we enjoyed our conversation and our charade trying to figure out the word "circus".  :-)

We only spent one night in Hue, but could have done at least one more.  Our day of sightseeing was packed to the max and left us with a pretty early bedtime, but that's Vietnam for you!