Hue to Hoi An

ahhhhh night trains. at this point, i'm pretty sure they are all the same. such a blast rocking and rolling, back and forth, side to side, clickity clack. who doesn't love stopping for some unknown reason in pitch black middle of the night scary timbuktu, only to slowing start moving forward again at a snail's pace...was there an ox on the tracks? was the conductor texting?(bad joke, sorry) are we being boarded by gypsys? at least the door locked on our 4 berth cabin! what we couldn't lock out was the bugs though. just as briana is commenting on how this is her first night train and do we all think there are bed bugs in these lovely foam cushions (yes, we paid the extra 5 bucks for soft sleepers as 11 hrs on hard plastic didn't sound fun)...a lovely little critter starts climbing his way up the wall from her bunk towards mine, classic timing little guy! both girls cringe, and we all guzzle a little more wine. the other half of the we is mischa and mariel, a dutch couple on a similar tour of nam. we tried to teach mischa dominoes, which he picked up quickly, simple game, while mariel was sucked in by super mario bros on my new nintendo ds. good times were had while we gamed, chatted and compared halong bay tour stories.
hue was a good 3 day stop. there's a great citadel encompassing the old city with a moat and 25' high wall. we also, reluctantly, jumped on a tour out to the former demilitarized zone north of hue. i had hoped to rent a moto and do it ourselves, but there was some rain, and a moto didn't look fun. best part of the tour was the tunnels...they claimed some locals lived down there for 6 years...6 YEARS! i guess we loaded that part of the coast with bombs hoping to flush them out, but only one "drilling bomb" hit the tunnel area...and sure enough, it was a dud and didn't explode. so the other team used the hole it drilled 30' down into their tunnels as another air duct and kept on keepin on. after the tunnels, the tour was supposed to continue on, but we had had enuff and ditched it with a canadian and jumped on a local bus back to hue. we jump in, pay a copule bucks and take our seats. however, briana decided to sit in the 2nd row, not the back row, and she was promptly told that those seats were for vietnamvietnamvietnam!! defiant, she told the lady that she can sit wherever she wants, and vietnam can sit there if they'd like. so i coaxed bri back to the 3rd row with us, and it's good she relented as we picked up another vietnamese every few k. the 6 seats in front of us (small bus) ending up holding 10 people, and i'm pretty sure bri wouldn't have enjoyed that...although i'm sure her seatmate would have!
the next morning we jumped on a bus, had a pitstop next to a lake, watched some fishing, and arrived in hoi an 4 hrs later. what a great town. it's well known on the trail south that this is where you go to get some tailored clothes on the cheap. briana was well prepared and arrived into town with 3 magazine pages with pictures of dresses she wanted for 80% off US list. all in all, we had 1 suit, 1 dress shirt, 2 ties, 1 wool winter coat, 1 cordaroy jacket, 3 dresses, 2 pairs of pj's, and 1 purse made for us. it took 3 visits back to the tailor to get everything snug, but in the end we left happy campers. i'll let you all have a guess at what we paid...post away and a 12er of Boag's is on me when you come visit us in Oz! oh yeah, and they haggle here, finally, so i also picked up a few lacoste shirts for next to nothing. jealous? it's only a 15hr flight away...
shakeNbake.