Hoi An - Hue
This morning we were moving again. I had organised a private transfer through our hotel in Hue, which would take us to Ba Na Hills and over the Hai Van Pass on our way to Hue. The car arrived just after we checked out - perfect timing!
We had to get the driver to stop at the tailor to pick up our clothes on the way through. Since we had to pick the clothes up then whether they were ready or not, DH just went in on his own, and I chatted to the driver for a while, and checked out our surroundings.
DH took forever, and in the end the driver disappeared too! Eventually they both came back and we finally got going.
I had decided to stop at Ba Na Hills instead of Marble Mountains, mainly because I knew Marble Mountains would be easy to visit if we came back, but Ba Na Hills was a bit further towards Hue. Nonetheless, our driver stopped at one of the many marble shops in the area for us to have a look. Although I was tempted by this amazing zebra, we did not buy anything.
We kept going towards Da Nang, then turned off for Ba Na Hills. It wasn't too far from there, up a windy road into the hills. We could see that unfortunately it was going to be a very cloudy day, and started to doubt the wisdom of choosing Ba Na Hills.
We finally got to the carpark, and our driver said he'd give us 3-4 hours! I told him we wouldn't need that much time, we were just planning to have a look around. The big attraction is the cable car to the top of the mountain, but with the weather how it was, we weren't sure whether it would be worth it.
This fountain at the front of the complex was great, and we spent a few minutes watching it on our way in. It was choreographed to different songs.
The place was eerily quiet. We seemed to be the only visitors around, and with the lack of English signage, it appeared that they didn't get many western visitors at all. We wandered through the gift shop and came out to a courtyard type area looking up at the mountain.
We tried like heck to find out about the cable car! Eventually we found a sign with some times on it, and figured out that there was a schedule for the cable car. We had just missed one, and the next one wasn't for 2 hours
Eventually we realised that it was going to cost the equivalent of $50 to go up anyway, and decided there and then that it wasn't going to be worth it.
We decided we may as well have some early lunch while we were there. There was one restaurant that served 2 dishes. We both got the pho, which had far too much coriander for my liking. By the time we were finished lunch, other people started arriving. Still no westerners though.
We walked back out to the courtyard type area, and realised that there was a bit of a garden there, with a bridge over a little creek. We checked it out, thinking it might lead to a little walk we could do, but it didn't really go anywhere.
We'd pretty much had enough by that time (with all our mucking around trying to find things and umming and aahing, we'd probably been there about 2 hours), so we decided to find our driver and move on. Do you think we could find him?
We did about half a dozen laps of the carpark trying to find him, and ended up just sitting at the entrance, hoping he'd find us eventually. At least we were kept entertained by the fountain, the views, and the weird little rock houses in the garden.
After about 15 minutes, our guide came rushing up to us, apologising profusely. Apparently someone had told him that his passengers were waiting for him. Turns out we'd actually walked past him a few times, but hadn't recognised him because we could only see the back of his head. Anyway, soon we were on the road again.
Unfortunately it was too cloudy to go over the Hai Van Pass. The driver said it would be too foggy to see anything up there, and would be dangerous. So with a heavy heart, I agreed to give it a miss. We went through a tunnel instead. Some of the drive was still fairly scenic though.
It was a long uncomfortable drive, I hadn't enjoyed Ba Na Hills, hadn't gotten to go over Hai Van Pass, and was really wishing we'd just taken the train from Da Nang. I was thrilled to finally get to Hue!
We had the usual swarm of people over us when we arrived. Everyone we saw wished us a happy anniversary (it was our actual anniversary today), and we were sat down with our welcome drinks and a little plate of fruit while we were checked in.
This hotel went ALL out for our anniversary. We were shown to our room, and when we entered, it was fully decorated, including suitable images on the TV and computer screen
There were towel swans, rose petals, another lovely bouquet of flowers, PLUS a little cake for us to share, AND a little bottle of local wine! It was really quite amazing and was a lovely welcome after the tedious drive
I'm not sure if we got upgraded or not. The description of the room types on the website was quite vague. But it was a really nice, spacious room, with a great balcony, and view over the city.
The hotel was only new (about 7 months old or something) so everything was modern and new.
It was late-ish when we arrived, so we decided to take a walk around the area. I was keen on checking out the river, which was only about a 5 minute walk.
On the way back we stopped at a restaurant recommended by the hotel staff. It was very local, we sat on kiddie size plastic chairs
But the food was good and cheap!
After dinner we went back up to our room to eat our cake and drink our wine on the balcony.
).
For example, our beautiful hotel in Vietnam a 5-10 minute walk from the old town area was actually cheaper than our pretty basic hotel in Siem Reap. And meals and drinks were cheaper there too!
