Hue

Our hostel organised a bus to pick us up and take us to the overnight bus stop to leave Ha Noi. This bus had enough space for 9 people without luggage, but somehow they managed to fit 11 of us in and our backpacks and hand luggage too... we were so squished. We had to drive off pretty quickly as the police were on the lookout.
The overnight bus wasn't as modern as the one we'd been on before, but still decent enough. This time it was mostly westeners travelling and only a few local people. We had a Spanish guy on the bus, let's call him Xavi, who had smelly feet and a stinking attitude to go with it. Xavi, who was loud and clearly used to being the alpha male, swapped beds a few times and always found something to complain about. There was a Vietnamese lady on the bed next to him whose husband was on the opposite end of the bus and at 8pm the husband came over to give her some fruit and snacks. Xavi was not happy about these people eating on the bus and said: "Eef thay waaant too eeet thay mus go owtsyde, thees ees not a F##%g paatee, huh!". Colin and I gave him a pfft and pulled out our snacks too. Xavi changed seats one more time after this.
The drive was incredibly bumpy partly because the roads aren't great, but mostly because the bus driver was driving at such a speed that we were practically being thrown out of our beds. I was awake at a few points of the journey and couldn't believe how we were driving, you have to experience it to believe it. Not to mention the horn. He was beeping every 20 seconds or so even if there was no other traffic in the way. We got stopped by the police just 15km outside of Hue. We thought this was for speeding, but it was a routine stop to search some of the passengers on board.
We arrived in Hue at 10am and were brought to our hostel. We checked in and once again Portugal wasn't on the list of countries. I think I must be the first Portuguese person to visit Vietnam. We relaxed a bit and then went for a wander round the town before heading out for dinner. It's very humid here and we feel thirsty the whole time.
When we woke up this morning it was absolutely chucking it down, so we stayed in bed till the rain stopped and had a late breakfast. Nuno and Laurie-Shaun, you'd love their coffee, they give you condensed milk in your coffee rather than regular milk and sugar. Later we walked to the Citadal and through the Imperial enclosure. It reminded us a lot of a smaller version of the Forbidden City in China, but a lot of the buildings have been destroyed and damaged because of the war and natural disasters. This means it's nowhere near as busy as the Forbidden City, which made it great for taking photos and walking around peacefully. The funniest thing here was the fish. People were feeding them little cat pellets and these fish were jumping on top of and over each other to get the food. There were about 100 of them all scrambling towards the pellets even if it meant being out of the water for a few seconds - it was like fish crowd surfing.
We leave Hue at 8am tomorrow and head to Hoi An.