We are staying at Gold Hotel and we feel like we have certainly struck gold. This is quite a luxurious hotel, especially after a night on a junk and then a train, we all quickly had showers and dropped in our washing to be done before departing to a local restaurant for lunch. A nice little place with good food and a clean happy room. I managed to pop out after my meal and quickly organised for some pants to be made and delivered to my hotel tomorrow, $20 US.
After lunch we each climbed aboard a cyclo (tuk tuk). We were whisked around the City of Hue (pronounced whey). This is a much calmer city and we felt pretty comfortable riding around in this manner. It was a two hour tour ride that took us through markets, poorer housing areas and very palatial areas.
Lance felt very sorry for the poor guy who had to pedal behind him, he was a fly weight and had a lot of weight to pedal around.
It was quite scary though when we got to the intersections and there are no lanes or round abouts, everyone just weaves through each other.
The temperature is much hotter than in Hanoi and we returned to the hotel to the roof top pool for a well deserved swim. Followed by dinner in a local person's home. Only 6 from the group took this option, which made it more intimate. We followed our guide Hung down little alleyways until we arrived at the entrance to a small home tucked in between many other homes. We were shown around the house and looked at the extremely basic kitchen that would provide us with a feast.
Every thing was explained by Hung and we were encouraged to ask the hosts questions. The children from the surrounding homes, and who were all extended family tumbled in and sang us some songs. It was a very humbling experience.
After we left, Kerry and Lance told the rest of us about the huge rat they saw running through the house as we ate our dinner. Glad I didn't see it.
Hue had a very special celebration going on and when we had cycloed over the bridge earlier we saw lots of little tin buckets stuck all over the sides of the bridge arches, like flower pots. After dinner we wandered through the crowds down to The Perfume River and saw that the buckets all had little fires in them to light up the bridge, there must have been thousands of them. 
It was really stuffy amongst the people and we didn't stay long, Hung wanted to take us to a bar that he thought the younger people in the group might like. He said that maybe us older ones would enjoy the experience of going to a bar as well, something we may not have done for a long time. Ha! What a joke. Anyway the bar was called Brown Eye, and Hung was soon filled in on why we all thought that was a funny name.
Thankfully it had aircon, however people are allowed to smoke in bars over here and that was a bit unpleasant. As soon as we arrived they pounced on us with a tray of some sort of green shots, on the house. Beer was cheap and they had western music, and I do mean western. I didn't mind Neil Young, but John Denver, Kenny Rogers and Johnny Cash were a bit much. The music got better and a wide mouthed cocktail glass with some brown liqueur was placed in the middle of the table with a few other small liqueur type glasses and a large glass of straws. We waited to see what would happen and finally at each table they stacked the glasses up high and lit the glass of liqueur (Cointreau and something) then poured it over the stack in a flaming waterfall to be consumed via the straws when it got to the bottom glass. All the while a strange happy birthday song was playing. This was all complementary.
We didn't stay too late as we had a big day to follow.
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