Which Hue to go?

   Two boring days in Vientiane were the end of our trip in Laos. There was little to see: a half-finished Laotian version of the Arc de Triomphe was the only major landmark. Although it was a very well-clipped city, capital cities in general don't have a great amount to see. There was, however, a strong french influence. We stayed on Rue Francoise Ngin. The street we were on and the one parralel to it to the west were both filled with french patisseries and small cafes. I ate more cake than was healthy, banoffi pie, blueberry cheesecake, and tiramisu amongst them. The lack of cake everywhere else made me go into a frenzy at the sight of the delicious desserts. Our main task in Vientiane was to decide the next path to take – we could either head down to Phnom Penh, Cambodia via Bangkok, where we have already been, or pay money for a 55 USD visa and travel down southern Vietnam. As I don't like backtracking and was excited to see vietnam again since my last trip here when I was 16, we chose to head east to Vietnam. The bus trip was supposed to be a 22hr trip to Hue.


This didn't seem to make sense at first, as geographically it's not that far, but considering that it always leaves 2 hours after the reported time, stops at the border for 3 hours and includes various other meal breaks, this time frame made more sense. In reality, travel time was around 14.5 hours – a 7.30pm departure and a 10am arrival. After shaking myself out of a trance-like half-sleep which was the best rest I was able to get on the bumpy bus, we had to pay a exit fee for Laos – 30,000 kip. No worries, I thought, getting out my wallet, which contained 340,000 kip. At least, it used to – right at that moment I discovered that while I had been trying to sleep, some sticky fingers had snuck in and removed all the cash from the wallet. As I got over my dismay, Bec had to pay for us both. The amount stolen was about 40AUD, the equivalent to a day and a half travelling in southeast asia. To be honest, I was just glad that they hadn't stolen my travelex cards, or anything else, like my camera, from the bag. However, it heralded a poor end to my stay in Laos, and reinforced my disinterest in visiting Laos again. After receiving back our stamped passports, the border crossing itself got a bit hairy - we had to disembark from the bus and walk across the border to get the Vietnam border stamp. As we were getting our stamp, the bus drove off without us. Negative reports we had received of cross-border buses had us worried that we were to be left at the border. A little confused, I found the bus 700 metres down the road over a hill. I don't know what the purpose of this little sojourn was, I was just glad it was still there. Another few hours drive in freezing drizzling weather brought us to our first city in Vietnam: Hue. Hue is the famous location of the Tet offensive in 1978 – the only city that the North Vietnamese army held for more than a few days. Visiting the citadel was much more interesting now that I wasn't a supercool teenager with more interesting things (like texting and facebook) on my mind. I now had space to be amazed at how it was that a ramshackle army of guerillas were able to overtake a fortified town from a much better equipped and trained army.