Thursday 17 September 2015

17th-18th September - Danang - food search - Marble Mountains - Danang to Hue by train

Thursday 17th September 2015

The trouble with short holidays in exotic locations is…if you miss a day writing up your notes, it is gone!

We only had one day in Danang; possibly enough… When we arrived at lunchtime we walked around happily enough, finding nothing but long long streets selling clothes and shoes and NO food at all!  Were we really in SE Asia, where people eat all the time???



 Eventually, around a corner in a street which also had no food at all, we found a tiny vegetarian restaurant, with a tiny kindly woman called Ngan. 



She fed us noodle soup and a plate of something very strange which she assured us was a vegetable.  Or a leaf…it actually tasted like tuna but…who knows??


So what is it??  Top right??
We never have dessert but she brought us tiny little tubs of something which tasted exactly like lemon panacotta, which she had made with her own fair hands.  Bliss!

Our hotel, Orient Phuong Dong, was fine.  Mid-range, all very pleasant. 



Yesterday we caught a bus out to the Marble Mountain, not far from the beach.  Fabulous!  We went up to the top and explored the grottoes



pagodas



misty pathways.



Along the street there was marble statuary galore.



In the evening we had dinner along the river, overlooking the fabulous Dragon Bridge, which changed colour every few minutes.  I do love a bit of neon lighting…



We did NOT insert our beloved visacards into this slot on this particular ATM…



This morning we got up early, had breakfast, and then…I went back to bed…I have a bit of a coughy coldy thing which is making me less than sparkling company…


Looking crook at dinner...
Eventually I HAD to get up and face the world.

And a very nice world it is.

We walked along very interesting streets, full of recycled this & that.  Mufflers, gears, chains, whatever, all dissembled, cleaned up, neatly presented.



MUCH more interesting than our fruitless foodless (and long…) walk the day before.


So many very b-o-r-i-n-g shops…and no food!!
We were heading for the railway station, and stopped for coffee in a very nice place with plate-glass windows from which I could observe the traffic.  Traffic here is fascinating!



Actually we were heading for the railway station in the wrong direction (*cough* who was navigating, Captain Pete??) but I didn’t mind because it was all so interesting, seeing the street life.



In the end we had to clamber into a taxi…we had put too much distance between ourselves and our goal.

At 12.40 we were on our train, heading for Hue. 

This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful railway trips in THE WORLD!



So we were very amused to see our travelling companions, not many minutes into the journey…



We didn’t sleep; it was lovely!



Pete had to travel backwards; not me!


So now we are in Hue.  I have had a massage and a body scrub so I am very much IMPROVED!  Ready for a big adventure tomorrow, exploring the DMZ…

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