On to Hue With a Brief Interlude.

For starters this little gem was seen in a typical tourist trap on our way from Ha Long Bay back to Ha Noi where we boarded our overnight train to Hue. The sales lady informed me this no doubt delicious vat of moonshine would run in the neighborhood of $3,000. That's a large scorpion in the cobra's mouth.

Then we hopped the overnight train from Hanoi to Hue.

Car 13. Not a good sign.

It was the bumpiest train ride I could possibly imagine. The Vietnamese may be great at repelling foreign invaders, but they ain't squat at laying straight tracks, at least not on this road. Several times I thought we were going to derail. I did manage to catch a few winks, whereupon I dreamt I was trapped in a house during a typhoon. As the winds built up and the house shuddered and shook I decided it wasn't a typhoon after all, but an earthquake. Then I woke up.

My accommodation.

Some scenery along towards morning.

Probably a cathedral from the colonial period of the rifle-dropping, cheese-eating French surrender monkeys.

We survived the journey tired but intact. Personally I enjoyed it. After all these years I still retain a soldier's most valuable skill, I'm pretty much able to sleep anywhere.

And Hue awaits our discovery!