After a restless night on the bus we arrived in Quang Tri at 7.15 am. To make it from the bus depot to the street we had to swipe off hoards of taxi drivers as usual. All we wanted was to walk the street and find somewhere for breakfast! On our search for a feed, we passed a van with a Hue sign in the front window. We inquired about the trip, and were informed it would leave in 20 minutes and cost 70,000 VND ($5) each. We figured the earlier we get to Hue the better, and jumped in the van.
At 7.50 am we took off…. And stopped again only a few hundred metres down the street where we were moved into a different, very full, van. As we were the last to get in we did get a bit lucky, with Kyle scoring a seat in the front and I a seat on the end of a short row next to empty aisle space.
The trip was short, taking only one hour. We were dropped off outside of the city, so we had to deal with the mobs of motorbike and taxi drivers again. We took off down the road to escape and order a Grab, only to find there were no Grab drivers available… Awkward. We didn’t want to go back to the mobs so we waited on the side of the road for a taxi. Unfortunately all that went past were full, and we ended up on the back of two motorbikes to take us across town.
When we got off the motorbikes we were hounded by a couple of guys trying to sell tours. We soon realised that this was a setup as the guys had dropped us off over 500 m from the hotel. We declined all tour offers and made the walk to hotel, getting lost on the way and ending up confused in the backstreets. Lucky for us a friendly local stopped to help us out and we made it in the end.
We dropped off our bags and took off to have lunch at Madam Thus. What a choice! The food was cheap and delicious. We had pork noodles, beef noodle soup, pork rice paper rolls and a rice pancake. It was all super tasty and cost only 200,000 VND ($13) total.
The afternoon was spent napping, watching GoT and researching our potential next travel destination.
In the evening we headed out to explore the nearby walking street along the river. It was absolutely packed with people. The river was lined with dragonboats waiting to take people for a cruise, the boardwalk was lined with permanent stalls selling crafts and food, and the fields were covered in temporary outdoor restaurants and bars. One particular bar was setup to promote a new beer – Huda Ice. They had a darts game going where you could win a free beer or cap. Kyle and I both had a try to no avail.
After walking to the end of the markets we turned to head back to town for dinner. On the way, we stopped for round two of the darts game. This time Kyle nailed it, winning a cap on his first shot. We then brought a beer as Kyle figured if he wears the cap, he should know what the beer tastes like! It was ok, quite sweet. Kyle compared it to Flame…
For dinner we had cheeseburgers and fries, our first Western food for a while! It was ok, it was nice to have something to pick up and rip into rather than eat with the slow chopstick struggle.
Kyley on Tour 