Moving Day - with climate change

What a change, yesterday we were in the cool fog of Sapa and today we've had the afternoon in the mid-twenties sunshine of Hue.  We both must have slept well on the train because the trip did not seem to take too long, albeit arriving at a crazy early hour in Hanoi.  I thing we had already taxied to the hotel before 5 am.  The hotel gave us a room to shower and re-arrange luggage, then we went for an early morning walk to the lake to see all the people just getting out and moving with various exercises, etc.  Hit up the nearby ATM and went back to the hotel for breakfast.

La Siesta hotel, Hanoi

  After breakfast we headed out for one last walk around a few of the streets of the Old Quarter.  For someone who dislikes crowds and noise, there is just something about the vibrancy of this place that I really like.  We ended up back at that big market which sort of overwhelmed Eileen the first time we stopped in.  This time she was prepared and even managed to select a couple of metres of fiber from the hundreds of thousands of pieces.  Two metres of silk for $5.

Fabric shopping

Our ride showed up a few minutes early, good thing he wasn't any earlier because his arrival was about 1 minute after I remembered that we had our $us in the hotel safe.  Close call there.  Hanoi airport was straight forward, within minutes we had checked in and were through security.  Flight to Hue was just under an hour in a full sized jet.  Bags came fast and ten minutes later we were on the road.  First thing we noticed is that there are speed limits here, traffic lights that people look at, and lines on the road that have meaning. Hotel is fine, big room and big bathroom, just a bit of an unusual picture window alongside the bathtub.  There is even a telephone on the wall next to the toilet, just in case...

Our Hue hotel room

We went for a walk around town, looking for evening dining options.  Walked along the river and came across a small group of university aged kids.  A couple of them approached us and said that they were students who were studying English, and would we have a bit of time to just sit and talk to them so that they could practice.  We spent about a half hour with three of them and enjoyed the experience.  If we have time tomorrow afternoon, we'll see if they are back there again.
One nice thing about Vietnam is that every town has its own brewery, so you get to try new beer at every stop.  Today the choice brew is called Huda.  A nice beer that comes in 450 ml bottles.  We sat at a street side bar where there was 2 for 1 happy hour and paid $1.25.  For dinner, we went a bit further down the street, Eileen had a shrimp clay pot and I had the duck clay pot, both were very good.  With two Huda beer, the total bill was $15.