I got to Hue by taking a private bus from Dong Ha. Mr. Binh, sufficiently happy with the tip I gave him, decided to drive me there and try and help me get a good bus. Unfortunately, as it was coming up to the Tet holiday, not even a Vietnamese person could get the standard rate. I ended up paying an extra 20 000 VND and jumped on the bus, arriving in Hue about 1.5 hours later.

Once in Hue, I got dropped at the side of the road, as there is some legal reason why private buses cannot drop passengers at bus stations. Some bloke from the other side of the road came over and he and his friend talked to me until we agreed that he would take me the 5 Km to the main street for 50 000 VND. Once there, he still tried to extract more money from me, but even with his limited English, we were able to establish that we had agreed on 50 000 VND. I sat down and ate my left-over breakfast and a cyclo driver confirmed that this was the ‘local’ price.

I followed the cyclo’s instructions to a street that he had recommended as having cheap hotels. There I found what I think is the best hotel I have ever stayed in. It was cheap ($7 per day), clean, light, airy and modern, with a balcony that was set back from the road and a friendly owner. I stayed there for 3 nights, eventually cancelling my planned trip to Da Nang, as the hotel was so nice.

I spent the next two days walking around the Imperial City, both inside and outside the main citadel. Day 1 was incredibly hot and was the first properly hot day that I had experienced. I wore my trousers, as I had done in Dong Ha and Dong Hoi, but when I got back I was drenched. I had a good day exploring the biggest part of the citadel, the place where people still live and work and got to speak to some of the locals, having tea in a secluded cafe during the hottest part of the day.

Day 2 was spent exploring the main part of the Imperial City, which I had to pay to get into. I think I experienced the scam documented in the Being Ripped-Off in Vietnam post, but wasn’t sure, so spent most of the day thinking about it. The Imperial City was good and I managed to escape for 20 minutes to get lunch before going back in to see the bits that I hadn’t seen.

In the evening I went in search of something to eat and found myself in a restaurant that looked popular. I didn’t understand any of what the menu said, so picked the top thing on the list as the picture looked good. What turned up was a plate of squid (which I turned away, as it was too much) and a bowl of meat, with a kind of tomato sauce and onions. I tried the meat and it seemed like fish, but had bones that I would associate with a mammal, so I ate it, having no idea what it was. When I got back to the hotel, the guests and the owner were eating and drinking so I asked one of them what it was. It turned out to be frog, which made sense, as I remembered eating legs which were pretty muscley and trying to eat around little bits that looked like paws. I wasn’t that bothered by it and found out that it was far preferable to toad, which is actually poisonous!

Early the next day I got up to go to the train station and found once I was there that I had left my phone in the hotel reception. I got on another motorbike, eventually paying for 3 motorbike rides from the hotel to the train station to the hotel to the train station, eventually getting back to the train station in time for my train.

Here I went around the former DMZ, with Mr Binh, my guide for 2 days.

I got up for the bus to Dong Ha at 04:40, as the bus left at 05:00. It had been instructed to park outside my hotel and beep when it had arrived, which had struck me as being slightly inconsiderate, but neither the bus driver or the person who had organised it seemed to mind. I got let out by the nice lady who had run the hotel and bundled myself into the back of the bus with a surprising amount of other foreigners.

I got to Dong Ha at about 10:30, with motorbike drivers literally running alongside the minibus and shouting in through the open window. I think the rest of the passengers were glad that they weren’t getting off at that stop, but we had pulled-up at a petrol station and the bus driver instructed me that this was Dong Ha. I got off and asked several people which direction the bus station was and after getting a business card off one of them with a map on the back, I used this to navigate to Tam’s cafe. Here I spoke to Tam, who helped me plan the next day or so and introduced me to Mr. Hoa.

Mr. Hoa owned a local hotel, which Tam recommended as being somewhere worth looking at. He also conducted tours and talked me through the options on the DIY DMZ tour that Tam had given me information on. When I was in Hanoi, I had picked up a local magazine which had an article on Quang Tri, the former DMZ in the American war. I used this, along with the information that Tam had given me and what Mr. Hoa was recommending, to build a list of the things that I would like to do.

Once in my hotel room, I met Mr. Binh, who had been following me around at the petrol station. I thought he had just been a taxi driver wanting to give me a lift, but along with Mr. Hoa, he was one of the main tour guides in Dong Ha. Him and Mr. Hoa had a knack for finding me over the next couple of days, as seemingly wherever I went I would bump into one of them.

The tour started with a trip to Ben Hai River, where Mr. Binh explained the role of the DMZ in the war and how it had been formed and then a treaty signed as the North Vietnamese Army had fought to re-gain control of Quang Tri City. We then moved on to Bo De school, which had been totally obliterated during the war and served as a base for both the North and South Vietnamese armies during battles for Quang Tri City. After that, we went to Long Hung church, which was in a similar state of repair. We also went to the Quang Tri Citadel and La Vang church.

The next day, we formed a custom trip, where Mr. Binh took me to the Mine Action Visitor Centre, which I don’t think he had been to before, as we got a bit lost. I spent what I thought was an hour in there, but later on, Mr. Binh informed me that he had been waiting 3 hours. Then, after that, we went to the Doc Mieu military base, the cemetery of the North Vietnamese Army and the Vinh Moc tunnels.

All-in-all, I had a deeply moving couple of days in Dong Ha. I enjoyed being in the company of Mr. Binh and as a Saigon Army veteran, he was a good person to show me around. We ended up doing a few other Vietnamese things as well, which I wouldn’t have got to do otherwise.

I enjoyed my visit to Dong Hoi. Everything went to plan, unlike my visit to Ninh Binh and I had two days or riding a moped around the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park.

I arrived in Dong Hoi at about 05:30 in the morning, having been thrown around comprehensively by the night bus. I left the night bus feeling thoroughly dissatified, having spent most of it analysing the situation that I had been presented with in Ninh Binh, having not faced anything like it in the past. I left the bus, after trying to get them to show me where the bus station was, but had to speak to a woman in what looked like a booking office, which happened to be open. She reluctantly gave me the directions to the bus station and having been lying down for the last 7.5 hours, I decided to walk there.

I got to the bus station and the woman in there attempted to explain that I actually needed another bus station, which was 2 Km away. This she didn’t do a very good job of, as I could understand the diagram but didn’t know why I had to go to this place that was 2 Km away, but luckily a helpful bystander stepped in and explained that it was another bus station. I walked outside and got a motorbike taxi (xe om) to the next bus station. There I asked when the next bus to Son Trach was, but that answer I got was “14:00”, meaning that I would have to wait 6 hours. I think the bus drivers were on holiday for Tet, but I walked outside where I found my original xe om driver and got him to take me there for 250 000 VND.

The ride was about 1.5 hours and we passed some spectacular scenery in the meantime, but I was glad to get to Son Trach, as the motorbike hadn’t been built for long journeys. Once there I called the Phong Na Farmstay, which had provided me with advice when in Ninh Binh and they explained that the Jungle Bar was the place to go. I got back on the motorbike and the driver took me there.

In the Jungle Bar I met a German guy, who was only in Son Trach for a day and wanted to rent a motorbike. Still dazed from the overnight bus journey, I agreed to go with him and dumped my stuff in the nearest hotel. I think the German guy (who I can’t remember the name of) was getting slightly frustrated towards the end, as I kept delaying him with trips to get lunch and sun cream, but he was very polite about it. We got about 2 Km down the road and then my bike cut out. After re-starting it with the manual kick-start, we got another 1 Km before it cut out again. I called the bloke who had rented us the bikes and he came out and couldn’t find a problem.

After getting to Paradise Cave, both me and the German walked inside, but decided to split up as I was going a lot slower than he was. He offered me a cookie and that was the last I saw of him. I spent the rest of the day walking around the Paradise Case and trying to get home, one a motorcycle that kept cutting-out. Luckily I found out that if you left it for a bit and then tried to start it manually, it worked, but only on the 3rd attempt did it stay running for any period of time. I got back to the hotel as it was getting dark and decided to swap the bike for another one the next day.

The next day was spent riding down part of the Ho Chi Minh trail, which I enjoyed immensely. It was totally deserted with a two-lane concrete path leading through the jungle and around the hills in the national park. The only people I saw for 40 Km were the people in the patrol stations and 1 other foreigner who waved as he went past in the opposite direction on his bike.

Getting back to the hotel fairly early, I got something to eat and planned my next journey to Dong Ha. This involved getting up early for a local bus which would take me directly to Dong Ha bus station.

I got to Ninh Binh by following roughly the same route I had taken to Ha Giang. This involved getting a bus from Meo Vac, which dropped me off in Ha Giang. From there I got another bus to Tuyen Quang, where I was unexpectedly dropped-off and had to get another, early morning bus to Hanoi. From there I got another bus to Ninh Binh.

Whilst I was in Meo Vac, I had to enquire as to what the bus timetable was. This consisted of asking a bloke outside of what looked like the main market hall, who said that buses to Ha Giang left at 09:30. As I had no other information to go on, I decided to get this bus and it was him driving it the next day. We stopped half-way for lunch, when everybody got off the bus and went to one of many local cafes. I followed the bus driver and got some good beef soup, but the woman tried to charge me 50 000 VND for it, despite it only being worth about 20 – 30 000 VND. Luckily, I quizzed them on this and the man chuckled and asked me for 25 000 VND. Once in Ha Giang, I sat at the bus station and contemplated my next move. There were many options and as I didn’t want to spend another night in Hanoi, I could either get a sleeper bus, which meant waiting for about 5 hours in Ha Giang, or get a local bus, to Tuyen Quang and spend the night there. As I wasn’t sure what the accommodation situation was like in Tuyen Quang, I was considering waiting for a night bus when another bus, bound for My Dinh bus station in Hanoi, turned up. It was stopping at the ticket office where the bus station officer I had spoken to earlier was sitting. The bus conductor asked me if I was going to My Dinh, I said yes and he told me to get on the bus. I only had 150 000 VND on me and the cost of the journey was going to be 150 000 VND, so I decided to get on and see what happened. Half-way through, the conductor started being overly friendly and in Tuyen Quang they decided to stop the bus and kick everyone off. As I had paid to get to My Dinh, I refused to get off until I got my 50 000 VND back. At the end, I was the only one left on the bus and they had driven round most of Tuyen Quang before giving me my money back and asking me to get off.

I was left in what looked like a postal sorting office, which seemed to be run from a family’s front room. They explained that this happened fairly regularly and it was actually illegal, but the police didn’t do anything about it as nobody reported it to them. I got taken to a restaurant where an English teacher from one of the nearby families spoke to me and told me that there was another, private bus leaving from the same place at midnight. I decided to wait for this and amused myself in the family’s front room in the meantime.

At midnight, I was ready and waiting on the bus, but the driver did not show up until about 01:30. They had given me apples in the meantime so I wasn’t too concerned, but at about 05:30 in the morning the bus stopped at a station in Hanoi that I had never been to. It may have been My Dinh, but I walked around for a bit in the maze of streets and alleyways until I emerged at a main road. Luckily, I recognised where I was from my previous visit to Hanoi and went and sat in one of the previous hostels I had stayed in until I had planned my trip to Ninh Binh. Later that day, I got on a bus to Ninh Binh.

The bus to Ninh Binh was straightforward and once in Ninh Binh, I had to negotiate the usual maze of motorbike riders and people wanting to sell you hotel rooms. One of these had actually got on the bus as soon as it had stopped and as I was the only westerner, he took some persuading before he realised that I wasn’t interested. I got some directions from a traffic officer and found the best place for hotels.

I eventually found somewhere that I liked the look of and spent the evening planning what I was going to do in Ninh Binh. As I had come here on the recommendation from someone else in another hostel, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and decided to go to the Cuc Phuong National Park. After getting up slightly later than I should have done the next day, I went to the bus station to see if there were any buses to Cuc Phuong, but there weren’t. I went back to the hotel and decided to rent a motorbike, but the man renting it to me decided against it and recommended against me riding it on the main road, as I didn’t have much experience. It was a busy road and a lot of people were travelling for the Tet holiday, but I think it was mainly because of a lack of insurance from their side. Deciding against the bike, the same man took me to the Flower Market instead, where the local Vietnamese people were buying and selling flowers and trees for the lunar new year festival.

The next day, I decided to leave and the debacle I described in the Being Ripped-Off in Vietnam post occurred. After getting my bus ticket, I was tired of what the bloke in the hotel was telling me that I could and couldn’t do, so I rented a bike from him and went off on the main road to the Kenh Ga Boat Village, which was fairly close. I practised my bike-riding skills on the local road before setting off and having no problems whatsoever.

On my return to the hotel, I found all my stuff where I had left it and waited around for the bus to Dong Hoi. This arrived at around 22:00 when I got on it and settled down for the journey to Dong Hoi.