Trip:Hanoi to Hue

Hanoi to Hue trip is great.

It should be easy to go from Hanoi to Hue. They're in the same country, they both start with "H". In fact, all the major Vietnamese cities all start with "H" – Ha Noi, Hai Phong, Hue, and Ho Chi Minh – so it's kind of hard to get lost. The trip should be easy, and of course, the operative word here is "should". It all works, in theory.

Everyone told us not to worry, because they could make the arrangements for us. Hanoi is a city of wheeler-dealers, so we had no reason to doubt that. Duyen's cousin said that he could get us a plane ticket. Vu, the smarmy manager of our hotel, offered us a car and driver for the rest of our trip to Saigon. We had to admire his nerve, first after the Chuck Norris driver he got for us in Hanoi, but mainly for the outrageous price he made up. Being a crook is kind of like pregnancy. Either you are or you aren't, so why do things half-way? But since everything is a negotiation, even a bowl of soup, we didn't say no.

 

We remembered at that moment that all we had to do was to do something, so our last day in Hanoi we went around to the Vietnam Airlines office. The reason there were no tickets to Hue, we found out, was because there was no plane to Hue that day. This is the type of misunderstanding you constantly come across when you talk to wheeler-dealers. At least we had an explanation. I asked the Vietnam Airlines people if there were other airlines that went to Hue, but they looked at me like I was from Mars. Coming from the land of choice, I suppose, I'm a bit naive.

We got into Hue at 8 the next evening, 23 hours after leaving Hanoi. We took a picture of our bunkmates (below), and switched addresses with them. Vu would never be able to look at himself in the mirror if he found out we actually enjoyed the trip. But we really had a great time. Had we caught a plane, we never would have had this slice of life, and had we walked, the trip would have gone much too quickly.