Day 13 - 21/07/05

 Woke up nice and early this morning as we had a 2 hour bus journey to Hue at 11am. Unfortunately today the Vietnam bad luck spinner landed on Dan, as he woke up with a bad case of food poisoning. Turns out eating chicken at the cheapest restaurant in Hoi An might not have been the best idea! 

We arrived at the travel agency and were dismayed to realise that we would be spending the whole journey with an American woman discussing her masters at full volume. We thought the bus would be picking us up there, but it turned out the bus would be leaving from Da Nang so we had to get an hour taxi the whole way there. 

The taxi driver spent the whole journey aggressively shouting down the phone and driving like a maniac, which made Dan look like he wanted to kill himself. Eventually we made it to the bus and we were on our way to Hue!
As it turns out, Hue is much more modern looking than any of the places we had been to so far, some bits of it were looking like London! Our apartment reflected this, as it is on the 17th floor of a building that has a huge swimming pool! Since I drew the short straw and slept on the sofa in Hoi An, I had first dibs on which bedroom I’d be getting here. For the first time since the Ha Giang hotel I was finally sleeping in my own room!


After arriving at 3pm, Dan crashed immediately into bed and we didn’t see him again until the following morning. Jagan’s toothache was getting bad too, so he went to a nearby dentist. It turns out his wisdom tooth managed to destroy one of his nearby teeth which then got infected, so he had to get it out that same day. Judging from both his and Polly’s experiences with Vietnamese healthcare, anaesthesia doesn’t seem to be much a priority in this part of the world, as he said it was the most painful thing he’d ever been through!

With 2/3 of the boys out of action I decided to have a night in rather than go out by myself. Being the good friend that I am, I agreed to drink many beers with Jagan in an effort to ease the pain of his tooth removal. The night gets a bit foggy from this point but I definitely had a good night’s sleep!


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