Miss Universe makes a strange appearence:

After visiting Tam Coc on a beautiful but extraordinarily hot day--Ilse burned her legs and I burned my arms and also had become adept at repairing bikes (the chain on my rental came off multiple times)--we were ready for a nice relaxing overnight train ride. Unfortunately, that was not what fate had in store. I can barely put the agony of this transportation experience into words-- it's a you had to be there kind of situation, but I will say that it was a nightmare in which time slowed to a mere crawl and it was as uncomfortable and disgusting as it was long. Id say wer were no worse for the ware but I pride myself in honesty; it took us a long nap, many showers, a massage and a couple of slower days and early nights to recover.

While in Hue, we booked a few flights and though it cost a bit more, we saved loads of time and recieved peace of mind in exchange for a few extra dong. There isn't a whole lot more to tell about our stay in Hue aside from a few tid bits. We noted with a chuckle that the silverware in our guesthouse was all marked Vietnam airlines and wondered how many flights it took to aquire... When we went to check out we are pretty sure that the receptionist swindled us out of about $10 each which is a lot of money here. There was confusion bc we were paying with dollars and dong--I saw her calculate how much we owed using 16.5 thousand dong to the dollar and how much we paid using 16-- and we are guessing that she slipped some money under the table when we weren't looking which would have been easy to do seeing as we were distracted by the sight of our bags being thrown off the bus we had booked to Hoi An so they could get a move on. Luckily we'd made friends with the tourist agents and the sent a cab to catch us up and the bus had to wait afterall. So there. 10 bucks poorer and we were just glad to be in keeping with our plans and out of Adong Guesthouse.

I've saved a positive encounter to end with however; the morning of our departure, before all that fuss, we visited Bao Quaoc Pagoda--the main place on my adgenda for Hue. After a few close calls on the road and an ignored red light (I got the crazy motto driver) we arrived just in time to see the monds at Bao Quaoc run through their after lunch ritual, chanting and shuffleing form the dining room to their place of worship accross the courtyard. It was peaceful and majestic. One monk came over to talk with us briefly and we had the funniest little chat--after the usual opening questions, he informed us that it was a shame that we weern't in Nha Trang as we could've attended the Miss Universe competition--Venesuela won this year, India the previous and Japan the year before that. "You must really like that competition" we remarked. "Oh no" he said "I just watch it on TV" " well maybe next year we'll come back and see it then" we said surprized to be dicussing next year's beauty pagent with a monk. "It won't be in Vietnam next year--2010 it will be back." and then he had to go or he'd be late for prayer.