I felt a little sad at leaving Hoi An but there was so much more of Vietnam to see, so I continued my travels going from South to North , by taking a 3 hour bus journey to the ancient city of Huế (pronounced Hway I think?).
I didn’t stay long but it made a little stopover before the long journey to Hanoi. In heinsight, I shouldn’t have bothered with Huế – it was a big disappointment from the heights of Hoi An.
The bus came to pick me up in the morning. Interestingly enough the boyfriend of Kimmy, one of the receptionists at my Hoi An hostel was a worker for the bus company so saw me off. He’d come to the dinner we’d had on the previous night so he already knew me.
I got off the bus at Huế and made my way down a side alley to the homestay I was staying at, and it was a lovely little place. It was like a mini hostel run in the house of a small Vietnamese family. They welcomed me in when I arrived, sat me down and gave me a drink and some fruit before showing me to my bed.
I started to chat to one of the English guys there and we went out to find some street food. Soon enough whilst sitting on our tiny plastic stools a couple of English girls came to sit and eat with us. One was staying at our homestay, and another was working for an international charity and had just arrived.
After our food, we went out in the evening and had some local beer before retiring to the homestay to sleep.
The Imperial City
Huế was the capital of Vietnam from 1802-1945 and the main attraction is the old Imperial City…
And without doubt it was majorly disappointing.
As always, it was blazing hot as I walked for around 30 mins to get to the city.
Eventually I got there and had to pay a pricey 150,000 dong (~£5) entrance fee.
Sure there were some nice pictures there to be had, but there was no real information about what you were seeing. I honestly couldn’t tell you anything about the place other than it was an old citadel in nice looking gardens. It’s like having 3 blind people staring at a picture in an art gallery guessing what the picture depicts.
So without further ado, here are some pictures I took of this ‘Imperial City’:
In short; there isn’t much to do in Huế, if you go, stay at Huế Happy Homestay, and don’t stay for long – 2 days was more than enough here.
The adventures of whitepastychris 