Phill:
We arrived at the gorgeous Japanese bridge after a 30 minute bike ride through some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen, at one point we were driving through a raised road that cut through paddy fields and there were water buffalo grazing no more than 3 feet from the road side. I couldn't get any video as I was too busy holding on! But I hope the clip below gives you some idea of the speed and beauty of the countryside.
The Japanese bridge was built by a rich Japanese lady who lived in the area and wanted to help the local farmers cross the fast flowing river that cut through their town, it has stood for a hell of a long time and is completely original having withstood torrential floods and typhoons for centuries.
The Japanese bridge concluded our tour and we were pleased to make our way back to the cafe for a well deserved beer and wine.
After leaving the cafe and saying some quite emotional goodbye's we headed off to find the bank to change some travellers cheques, getting thoroughly soaked along the way.. Thank god for our cag in a bag!
On our way back to the hotel gem saw a lovely dress in a shop and I stopped to buy some 'genuine' Dolce & Gabbana flip flops! The next thing I hear is Gem knocking on the window gesturing for me to go inside, so I go in the shop to find out that the shop assistant won't let gem try on the lovely dress because she thinks gem is too fat for the dress! The dress is apparently 'small small' and won't fit! It was only when Gem lifted her top and showed the shop assistant her skinny waist that she suddenly jumped to her assistance, by which time Gem was quite rightly P*****d off and told her where to stick her proxy dress! Cheeky Viet.
Gem: the tiny young Viet girl was gesturing to me that the dress was small and saying small, small and then pointing at me and making wider gestures. I said I wanted to try it on and she said no and gestured again and said small and pointed to me and said bigger, cheeky so and so. It was a size uk 8/10, yeah it may have been too small but you don't need the shop assistant to dictate that to you when you buy the same size at home. I was mortified.
The jade hotel is an absolute gem of a hotel and we were able to check out late, which really helped us when it came to the change of plan that we initiated, rather than get the 17:30 overnight sleeper train which would get us into Hanoi at 05:35' we opted to fly at 22:10 which got us into Hanoi at 23:35 meaning we could chill out, go for a few drinks and something to eat before having to fly. When we got back to the hotel we were delighted to discover a happy honeymoon cake had been bought from a local cake shop, I thought we had taken a photo of it but I can't find it, so here is a picture of Clary the worlds best hotel receptionist!
Just found the cake photo, and there were flowers and petals on the bed
This is clearly the only place to stay in Hue!!
After a bit of a wander we go to a nice little Italian for our tea and have pizza and a few beers before sharing a taxi to the airport with a nice Australian couple, we managed to not talk about the rugby or cricket the whole way there!
At the airport we bumped into Bjarne again and were sat just one row away from him on the plane, this was definitely rather best decision instead of doing a 12 hour train journey we were able to eat nice food, have a few glasses of wine and check into the Red Dragon hotel at 12:00am and actually get a few hours sleep before being picked up at the tamarind cafe for the start of our Ha Long Adventure.
Location:Hue
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