{"id":14,"date":"2008-03-29T08:36:20","date_gmt":"2008-03-29T08:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.isbd.net\/wordpress\/?p=14"},"modified":"2008-03-29T09:10:05","modified_gmt":"2008-03-29T09:10:05","slug":"thursday-27th-march-and-28th-march-the-journey-to-and-arrival-in-hue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"Thursday 27th March and 28th March, the journey to, and arrival in, Hue"},"content":{"rendered":"<pre>The sleeper train was an experience.  There were six in a berth<\/pre>\n<pre>and I had the middle bunk which was probably the worst to be<\/pre>\n<pre>fair.  With the bottom bunk you can put your bag underneath<\/pre>\n<pre>and with the top bunk you have more head room as the train<\/pre>\n<pre>has a curved roof.  I hardly slept but the section that was<\/pre>\n<pre>meant to be fantastic (between Danang and Hue over the Hai Van<\/pre>\n<pre>pass) was with the train crawling through the mountains and<\/pre>\n<pre>views down over the bays.  All the other people in my cabin<\/pre>\n<pre>were Vietnamese and one sweet old guy kept waking me up from my half sleep by<\/pre>\n<pre>grabbing my feet to offer me hard-boiled eggs.  He also seemed<\/pre>\n<pre>to get very distressed by the fact that I was wandering around<\/pre>\n<pre>in bare feet and not accepting his flip-flops that he tried<\/pre>\n<pre>to thrust upon me.<\/pre>\n<pre>\r\nI arrived in Hue at around 8AM in the morning.  I slept when I<\/pre>\n<pre>got here and then went for a wander around the city.  The Dong<\/pre>\n<pre>Ba market was pretty awesome and I went into the outer citadel<\/pre>\n<pre>area, so to speak.  It was stunning, shady and green.  I've<\/pre>\n<pre>booked a Honda Om for tomorrow to take me to some of the other<\/pre>\n<pre>sites like the mausoleums and a couple of temples.  I've also<\/pre>\n<pre>booked a sleeper bus to take me to Hanoi tomorrow night.  Hue<\/pre>\n<pre>is beautiful but outside the lovely inner walls it's a bit<\/pre>\n<pre>sparse.  I've also got far more unwanted male attention than\r\nanywhere else.  I think it's because there are far fewer<\/pre>\n<pre>Western females here (despite it being a popluar site on the<\/pre>\n<pre>tourist map)and even fewer who are traveling by themselves.<\/pre>\n<pre>It's not been a problem but, in my slightly tired and grumpy<\/pre>\n<pre>state has been somewhat of an irritation.  I was very conscious<\/pre>\n<pre>of dressing conservatively before going to dinner tonight<\/pre>\n<pre>(i.e. full on trousers and long sleeves) but it didn't appear<\/pre>\n<pre>to make any difference.  Hey ho.\r\n\r\nOne reason that I am tempted to extend my stay in Hue is the<\/pre>\n<pre>food.  The speciality dish here is a dish called banh Khoai<\/pre>\n<pre>which is a small, crispy yellow pancake fried with shrimp,<\/pre>\n<pre>pork and bean sprouts and served with peanut and sesame sauce,<\/pre>\n<pre>star fruit, green banana, lettuce and mint.  I had this without<\/pre>\n<pre>the pork and it was divine.  One of the best things I've ever<\/pre>\n<pre>tasted to be honest!<\/pre>\n<pre><\/pre>\n<pre><\/pre>\n<pre><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sleeper train was an experience. There were six in a berth and I had the middle bunk which was probably the worst to be fair. With the bottom bunk you can put your bag underneath and with the top bunk you have more head room as the train has a curved roof. I hardly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}