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!

Hanoi, a walkable city

I have a fault I'm willing to admit.  I hate asking for help.  I hate asking for directions and I don't like confrontation.  All of this generally leads to a lot of walking while I'm traveling.  A LOT of WALKING.  Some cities I would consider walkable and others not… my list of walkable cities… Amsterdam, New York, Chicago, Shanghai, Auckland, Phnom Penh, Chiang Mai, Siem Reap, and Hanoi.  (*walkable for me may not be walkable for you!)

Because of the many negative blogs I read before heading to Vietnam, I felt like I really didn't want to deal with any Tuk Tuk drivers.  I didn't want to haggle a price and I didn't want to be taken to a jade factory or down some alley and left for dead… So my friend Ben and I looked at a map and started walking!

The weather wasn't that great.  It was foggy and raining (?) almost the entire day.  A little colder than we had hoped, but that wasn't going to deter us!  Here was our trail for the day.
1)Hanoi Cathedral  2) Hoan Kiem Lake  3) Ngoc Son Temple  4) Coffee Break
5)  Hanoi Flag Tower  6) Temple of Literature  7) BEST LUNCH IN VIETNAM
8)  Ho Chi MInh Mausoleum  9) One Pillar Pagoda  10) HCM Museum
11) President's Residence

We did all of this in one day, and although we were exhausted in the evening, it was all well worth it and I would say that you can definitely see all of the "important" things of Hanoi in one day.  If you want a little more of an experience then perhaps plan for 2 days.  Below you will find pictures from all of the places with a few descriptions to give you a little bit better of an idea of our day in Hanoi.

This is the Cathedral.  I don't recommend staying in a hotel too close to it,
like my friend and I did.  On Sunday morning they ring the bells at 5 am.
Consider yourself warned...

Pagoda in the middle of the lake.
There is a legend that there lives a giant turtle in this lake,
however with all of the pollution its too hard to tell
and no one has seen it for a few years.

Here is a petrified giant turtle that sits in a glass box in Ngoc Son Temple.

Intersection in Hanoi.  The view from our coffee stop.

Gray skies.  Hanoi Flag Tower.

At the Temple of Literature

This is my friend Ben and myself.
I suppose if you only smile in pictures it can get boring.
Thanks Ben. ;-)

Temple of Literature. Built in the year 1070 and dedicated to Confucius.
In this location was Vietnam's first University.

Just outside the walls of the temple of literature lies the best and cheapest dining experience
that I had in Vietnam.  It was INCREDIBLE and only $1.20!
Its just a street stand with tiny plastic chairs.  But golly is it good!

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.  If you go early enough (before noon)
you can walk past the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh, the beloved leader.

One Pillar Pagoda

At the end of the day we were quite exhausted and opted for an $8/hour massage.  This was the one "bad" experience I had in Vietnam where I feel I was "scammed".  BUT at the end of it all I was mostly just disappointed that I felt I had been tricked.  On the door a one hour massage was advertised at $8 for one hour.  But when it was time to pay they charged me $13 because they used oil. (not telling me it would be an extra charge).  It was an average massage.  It was still within my budget.  I just had that icky feeling of, "hey, that wasn't very nice".

To be honest though, this was probably the worst thing that happened while in Vietnam.  Certainly I can't complain about that!  Stay tuned for more Vietnam travel stories!  Ha Long Bay is up next on the travel itinerary!