Before we left for Halong Bay, we had booked an overnight bus from Hanoi to Hue so that we could leave immediately upon our return. It makes me tired just to think about this now… We hadn’t really stopped since leaving Ko Tao, and the thought of getting on a 14-hour bus after 2 overnight train rides and a 4-hour bus ride to and from Halong Bay made me want to cry. Still, being the budget traveler, I looked at it as a way to save on a night’s accommodation, so I sucked it up and snuggled into the sleeper bus with an ambien, ear plugs and an eye mask.
Maybe the best way to travel is to be worn out, because despite the techno music they played for the first 3 hours of the bus journey, I managed to get a solid 10 hours of sleep and arrived in Hue feeling surprisingly good. Unfortunately my backpack didn’t arrive in such good condition. It had rained most of the night and we had been driving on flooded roads. My pack was underneath the bus and must have been on the bottom because it was completely saturated when we arrived (NOTE- always travel with a waterproof cover for your pack). Not one thing was dry, so we found a guesthouse and made sure they offered a laundry service.
Given that we had been on the go for so long, a lazy day was in order. This consisted of napping, a huge lunch at Minh & CoCo’s (the best restaurant in Hue, where no dish cost more than $1), and lots of bad TV.
