Wednesday 10th November:
The words "sleeper bus" instantly conjures up images in most peoples minds of relaxation, perhaps a nice fluffy mattress on wheels. Some may even go as far as imagining crisp white bed linen and reclining in comfort as the soothing motion of the carriage lulls you into a gentle slumber.
Well I hate to be the one to burst this rather perfect image for you but I can confirm that they were definitely being a little over optimistic when they named this service.
For starters the roads in vietnam are far from being flat or smooth so every 20 or so seconds, just as you have found a nice comfy bit that doesn't cause your muscles to spasm or lose circulation, your whole body is elevated then thrown across to collide with the safety barrier at speed.
It like a scene from the exorcist whereby you temporarily get to experience what levitation feels like before your head starts to spin.
Then you have the onboard entertainment system that generally consists of a low budget local film or the vietnam equivalent of X factor. At points it's not easy to tell them apart, even when there is a speaker strategically located directly above your head thats set to full volume.
Finally there are the lights, which appear at first glance to have been stolen from the control deck of the starship enterprise. These consist of 2 long rows of fluorescent lights, backed up by 2 long rows of blue lights, backed up by subsequent row of round led lights. Of course I don't have time here to detail all of the other lights that we counted in the cabin such as the emergency exit lights or the personal reading lights as that would be pretty petty but suffice to say it was pretty bright.
The really cool thing is that the operation of these lights have been designed to be completely random. For example, when they finally did turn off the overhead lights several hours into our journey, they would come back on again each time the driver accelerated, creating a sort of ageing disco effect that we could all enjoy.
Then, when the bus stops to let people off for a break, normally about 5 minutes after you finally get some shut eye, they turn the overhead lights off so that you have to stamp on people as you go through. It was like a compulsory game of twister played by groggy tourists and grumpy locals. If someone spun the "left foot, womans face" option then i definitely won the game hands down, literally.
So after 2 hours sleep on a 12 hour overnight coach ride we reached Hue refreshed, relaxed and ready to take on the new day, or to put it another way we slept, and slept for a very long time indeed.
The following day we booked a tour with the Hue riders, a group of experienced motocyclists that take you off of the beaten track and show you the highlights of Hue. They were all brought up locally so knew the area inside out which was great, we also had a guide each so between the three of us we looked like a warped episode of "Chips".
The first destination they took us to was an ancient monestary with 17 permanent monks who tend to the garden and seem to amble about for most of the day. We were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be invited in to watch their daily prayers. Whoppi Goldberg would have had a field day with these guys, they could all hold a note but unfortunately they were all different ones. It was very relaxing to watch them all but after 20 minutes our ears had decided it was time to escape and we continued on our merry way.
The rest of the day was spent driving around the various tombs and pagodas that are spread throughout the city, its a great place if you are into your history and although the sites havent been restored to chinese standards the sheer quantity more than makes up for this.
Our final stop was into one of the villages on the outskirts of Hue, it didnt seem like many tourists came to this part as we received a lot of attention from the locals, especially Tyler who the old ladies adored. They dragged him into the local museum and taught him how to make rice and flour as well as showing him all of the local fishing techniques.
It was a great day and the weather held out right up until we got dropped off which was a result!
We only had a couple of days in Hue but thanks to the Hue riders we saw far more than we had expected and after yet another 5 hour coach trip we have arrived safely in Hoi An to chill for a bit.
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