Hai Van Pass and Hue

After Hoi An our next stop was Hue. You can get the bus, but lots of people take the train as it said to be one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world over the Hai Van Pass. We had also heard about a jeep tour that takes you over the mountain road above the train line. After a bit of deliberation, we booked a jeep to pick us up from our hotel in Hoi An and we are so glad that we did! We booked a group tour, but no one else did so we ended up just us and our guide!

We were expecting an American Willy's jeep, but a Soviet UAZ turned up instead! It turned out to be an upgrade compared to other tour companies, more comfortable, higher up so we had better views, and really cool.

We set off out of Hoi An through the countryside and Music Man, our guide (his name is a pun in Vietnamese) first took us to the Bang An Tower, a Cham Hindu temple that is 900 years old. He was very keen on teaching us some Vietnamese history, so we knew we had booked something interesting!

After our first stop we set off towards the Hai Van Pass, to cross the mountains to get to Hue. It was a big feature in Top Gear's Vietnam special, so we knew it would be pretty - but its often hard to tell what is TV magic and what is not. The road wound up the mountain very quickly, and was immediately stunning!

We stopped for an iced coffee at the top of the mountain - the jeep needed a bit of a cooldown from the heat as well as us. We were also told it was mango season so obviously had to try one too!

Top Gear said that it was one of the best bits of road in the world and we can't disagree! They definitely filmed it better than we did.

After the mountain crossing our guide took us to a waterfall/lagoon for a cool down.

The lunch stop was a restaurant right on the beach which had a huge amount of seafood in tanks as you walked in - we had a seafood stir fry and fried rice.

After lunch we set off properly towards Hue which was a couple of hours of driving through amazing countryside, mostly mountains and rice. We also asked for the roof to be taken off the van so we could experience the real jeep experience!

We arrived in Hue very happy that we chose the jeep tour, but pretty tired, so we had a quick nap in our B&B and then went to a nearby restaurant for some of Hue's local dishes. It is a city known in Vietnam for having good food - so we got the local dish set menu with a bit of everything. The kebab wrapped around whole pieces of lemongrass was ingenious. It was more to Lauryn's taste than Dan's though but good to try a bit of everything so we knew what to order next time.

The next day we were looking round Hue and its famous Imperial Citadel. We changed our plans slightly to look round the citadel in the afternoon after the hottest part of the day - Hue is the hottest place we have been.

We went out for breakfast to a local family restaurant and Dan had iced coffee in the Vietnamese style of extremely strong and with an iceberg. He also heavily splashed it on the poor waitress who was trying to help teach us how to coffee - oops. In the same day, Lauryn tried an orange juice espresso from Cong Cafe (Viet Cong themed) - it wasn't

as bad as it sounds.

On the way to the citadel we picked up two Banh Mi, which set us back 15k dong each. 50 pence for an amazing roast pork baguette - we think that is the best value food we've ever had.

Hue was the seat of Vietnamese government during French colonial rule and they had quite a lot of time to build a ceremonial capital for the emperor to live in. Most of the buildings are no longer standing, but there are still dozens within the city walls to look at. There is also pretty evident damage from the intense fighting in the citadel during the Vietnam war.

Inside the main residence building we were surprised to see an enormous collection of English pottery, unsurprisingly mostly from Stoke... small world.

We next visited the theatre where they still perform masked dances. This also housed 'a kind of big gong'.

There was some good gardens, and a nice model village of what the citadel used to be like! Looks like Fort Knox model in Goldfinger?

Luckily we timed our visit to catch the walk back to the city centre with a sunset over the Perfume river.

We had a beer and luminous cocktail at a bar on the corner of a street and went to a well-reviewed restaurant for dinner.

We decided to do very little the next day before our overnight train, much to the disappointment of the pushy B&B host who wanted us to book some tours through him and his mates (a theme in Vietnam). We did however, make good use of our souvenirs with breakfast on the balcony of our room!

Instead we spent most of the day in coffee shops, to plan our next travels onward from Vietnam, and enjoying more of Hue's food (returning to the same restaurant as we ate at the previous night). We picked our bags back up from the B&B and got a Grab to the train station, for a very nicely furnished overnight train northbound!