Hue + Hanoi

So Mum.... You know how you said you didn't want me riding a bike... but if I did, not to tell you when.
Well, that was the other day... we rode from Hoi An to Hue.

 I had an absolute ball, and we're all still alive. We drove north and visited Marble Mountain where Georgie and Sanaya's bike decided to stop working. Pat set up camp and organised replacingthebike while the rest of us had a look at the mountain.
It was really cool, the views were great, but after being followed by various locals asking us for money in return for their services (which involved following us for 45mins and repeatedly saying over and over "swreeping buddah yes, swreeping buddah, cave buddah"...etc) I was ready to leave.

Luckily not far from where we were was a guy who was friends with Hendo; who we borrowed the bikes off initially, so we swapped the girls' bike and continued north.
We missed our turn off at Danang and drove about 40mins out of the way following the coast and ended up at the entrance to Monkey Mountain. It actually ended up being worth the detour because the views were amazing.

After back tracking to Denang, it took us an hour to get through Vietnam's 3rd biggest city. The roads were packed with traffic, it was hectic, but extremely entertaining watching all the amazing things people carry on bikes... multiple trees, balloons (so many I'm suprised they didn't take off), 30m long steel rods bent in half, dogs, families, pretty much anything and everything.

After Denang were the cloud-covered mountains... Bloody freezing... after performing a clothes shuffle so Georgie didn't slip any further into hypothermia, we made it to the top. A brief emergency coffee and oreo session was had, followed by the purchasing of ponchos for extra layers and waterproofing.

After dodging some trucks carrying pigs (particularly dodging their smell), we headed into the villages below.
We got to a point where we kept seeing strange water jets shooting up into the air, spraying water everywhere, we later worked out it was a pig wash...
Along the rest of the way we received a lot of stares (even with locally bought token asian face masks on), got heaps of "herros"/waves, and dodged many buses, trucks, bikes, push bikes, pedestrians, cows and dogs. This was made more difficult by the line in the middle of the road, not actually being acknowledged by any of the prior listed various vehicles and obstacles. As well as this, the majority of buses and trucks don't even acknowledge your existence on the road and therefore aren't really afraid to try to run you off the road either.

Eventually after dark, we got the hostel in Hue which Hendo (Pat's mate) runs. Hendo greeted us and was very eager to help us out with a few free beverages.

We then went out to dinner followed by a local bar where I found some guys who spoke indonesian with me while playing pool, the rest of the night was a blur of drinking a mojito bucket with Georgie while dancing, helping the DJs select music and drinking flaming ouzo in a glass tower given by one of Pat's many mates (they keep appearing, I never knew Pat had friends... haha)

I didnt really move outside the hostel the next day... I felt like death, sitting on the floor eating chips and m&ms was the only remedy.


That afternoon we jumped on the overnight sleeper bus... after sitting on the bus waiting for another passenger to turn up for an hour and a half, we finally left Hue for Hanoi.
14 hours later, we arrived in Hanoi. The bus actually wasnt too bad, I was so tired and still worse for wear from the previous night, so I slept virtually the whole way.
The night we arrived, we headed over to the backpackers where Pat used to work for a couple of months. It was the hostels 6th birthday, so a free BBQ and beer was up for grabs. Pat's mate Mick who runs the place gave us free alcohol and offered us free accomidation in a private room for the rest of the time we are here (the rooms are normally $40 a night).

We checked into the rooms this afternoon, and they are a LOT nicer than the $6 a night we are paying for a 8 person dorm room.
I love Hanoi, great place. It seems much less westernised compared to Saigon. There's still quite a french influence, but that makes the food around here amazing. There's more street culture here and fewer empty shops compared to Saigon.

Here, most of the streets are named after the product that is sold there in every shop. So there is a street for shoes, sunglasses, pots and pans, futniture, even grave stones. It doesn't make sense that every shop keeper sells the same thing, but its making navigating around her a lot easier.
Looking forward to being in the one place for 9 days and being able to unpack!
photo update will happen soon!
xo