The ancient city of Hue

Woke up at 3.30 AM to pack my bags, catch a 4.30 AM taxi to the airport and a 6 AM flight to Hue (which is in Central Vietnam). I didn't know too much about Hue, and honestly at 3.30 in the morning I could have just skipped the whole thing...but by some miracle (or maybe it was my mother, who managed to kick into cheerleader mode...I think that is the most annoying way to be woken up in the morning...and dragged me out of bed) we made it to the airport on time, only to learn that our flight had been postponed until 11 am (I got up for this??)....

Vietnam Airlines was "so sorry" that we were going to be put out like this, that the offered to take us all to a hotel for rest and breakfast...what the communist airlines forgot to mention was that the flight was actually cancelled until 4 pm, an that there were people who had been waiting for their flight at the airport for 2 days, who had been in the same situation as us....They also failed to mention that the reason for all of this was not a technical difficulty on the part of the plane...but merely a technical difficulty on the part of the travel agents who had not managed to book enough people for the flight (consequently, people had been waiting for up to 2 days to fly)

Well, after the entire flight had managed to sleep and refuel at the hotel, we came back to the airport to find that unfortunatly we would not be flying until 4 pm (although originally they figured 7.45 PM so actually we were getting off lucky...)

Turns out the passengers of the plane didn't quite agree with the airlines' way of thinking (surprise, surprise) and held a group mutiny (why didn't the people who had been sleeping at the airport for 2 days think of this?) People from 8 different countries started to argue with the airlines and wouldn't stop until they got their way...I decided to watch from far away as the Spainards were a pretty rowdy group...an you never know what they will do next...but my mom got right in there. The whole thing was pretty interesting to watch play out...as I was sitting next to a Dutch guy, a Japanese guy, a French woman, and a bunch of Italians...we were all talking to each other in different languages (English being the main language, but there was a bit of Japanese and French being used as well)...Anyhow, in the end the mob convinced the Vietnamese Airline that, people on holiday were a force not to be reckoned with...as the airline finally agreed to get a bigger plane for the 12.30 flight and fly out by 1 pm...problem solved we made it to Hue by 2.30.

The city of Hue is only slightly interesting. It has the remains of a huge citadel fort in the center of town, which is pretty cool to look at...but after all of the trouble it took to get there, I am not sure it was actually worth it.

The next day we caught an early bus to Hoi An...which is where I am at now, but i will write about that later.