Boat Tour on the River in Hué

In the morning, we headed back to the cozy little restaurant along the road for breakfast since our hotel only offered a very limited and poor selection. The hotel reception had booked train tickets for us to Hanoi. Our first choice was soft sleeper tickets, but they were all sold out, so instead, we got soft seat tickets for 192,000 dong each. We were set to leave on the train in the evening, which gave us some time to explore more of the city. First, we went down to the post office to send the CDs we had burned the day before. We had to fill out a bunch of paperwork, and the CDs had to be inspected before they were ready to be sent. The inspection involved checking all the images for child pornography. Outside the post office, there was a cyclo driver who had a boat used for tours on the Perfume River. He was very eager to take us on a tour, so after some haggling, we settled on a price of 100,000 dong. He cycled us down to the river, and it turned out his whole family lived on that boat – and they were all coming along for the ride. Once we were on board, we couldn’t really get off again, which meant they tried to sell us all sorts of things. The mother was offering food, drinks, postcards, pictures, clothes, and various trinkets. Feeling a bit cornered, we ended up buying some sodas and three postcards. The first stop on the tour was at a pagoda, where we met a Swedish girl traveling alone. She was heading south, making her way from Hanoi to HCM. Vietnam is a very narrow country, and everyone seems to take the same route – either from north to south or vice versa. The next stop was at a temple and an old residence. Nobody had told us that the attractions had entrance fees, so we felt a bit cheated again. The entry fee was 22,000 dong per person, and the temple and residence were quite a distance from the river, so we also had to rent a motorcycle to take us there. That cost an additional 20,000 dong per person. After the last pricey attraction, we decided to take the boat back, as it would get very expensive if the rest of the stops were just as costly. Back on land, we found a cheap place to have dinner. A huge sandwich only cost 5 kroner. We had just enough time for a quick shower at the hotel before the taxi came to pick us up. When we got to the station, it turned out we didn’t need to rush, as the train was 20 minutes late. The soft seats on the train were quite decent, with plenty of legroom. There were several backpackers heading to Hanoi, so we struck up a conversation with two Norwegian girls, Lene and Margrethe, who were sitting next to us. It was possible to upgrade our tickets since not all the soft sleepers were occupied. It would cost an extra 200,000 dong for two beds, so Honny went up to check the standard. When he returned, he said there wasn’t much “soft sleeper” about those beds, so we decided to stick with our soft seats. We had a somewhat restless night when an old Vietnamese man started yelling in the middle of the night. He got up, turned on the light, and scolded an apparently invisible person. We never figured out what had triggered his outburst.