Day 8 – Happy Buddha

And the crowd cheers loudly with the news that Alan is writing the blog today. Sarah may add some nonsensical comments in red at some point. :-P

Our plan for this morning was to rise early and have a quick breakfast before getting off the ship and exploring wherever the heck we might be. It didn’t quite work out that way. I was the first to wake, at about 7.30 am. I pulled back the curtains and looked out over our balcony. I was puzzled. I saw nothing. Quite literally, I saw absolutely nothing at all. Being still half asleep, I was finding it hard to comprehend what was happening. Had we sailed to the edge of the universe? Eventually I figured out that we were shrouded in fog. Not just any fog, though. This was the thickest fog I have ever seen. There was no land, no sky, I couldn’t even see any water it was that thick. Just white nothingness.

At about 8am, the captain of the ship came over the PA system advising us that we were right next to the port and ready to dock, but due to the fog, the ship already there was unable to leave the port, meaning that we had no option but to sit there waiting. Given that our ship was due to depart at 6 pm this evening and there were a large number of all day tours booked, it meant that a lot of passengers were getting rather anxious and schedules had to be changed. We didn’t care. These things happen. It’s out of our control so there’s no point worrying about it.

We went to The Colonnade to have our regular breakfast. Unfortunately, our server Timo was having the morning off, so that meant that I only received 6 Swedish pancakes instead of the 12 that I have been eating each morning. I suppose my waistline could do with a break. We have since discovered Timo was fired for overfeeding Alan.  Actually, he’s been transferred to the fancy dining room.

While waiting around this morning, Sarah went up to level 10 and I went to 6, so she could take a photo of me down below in the fog. I couldn’t quite find my way out there onto the deck. How was I to know that the way out there was through a door marked Emergency Exit? I had to come down and show him how to open a door. Sad really.

Eventually the fog started to dissipate and we docked at around 10 am. We had decided that we would do our own thing today, rather than taking one of the tours organised by Seabourn.

After getting off the ship, we took one of the packed shuttle buses about 20 minutes to the resort in Chan May. Where we are is very much out in the countryside. The roads were very narrow and full of potholes.

After arriving at the resort we got off the bus and were immediately accosted by locals trying to get us to take their taxi. We had been warned about this previously. Sarah and her dad were talking to one bloke about taking us to Hue, which is where we had decided we wanted to go today. No matter how many times we said Hue, he insisted that we should go to Hoi An instead. I said no and walked away. I found another dude who was willing to go to Hue, so we all bundled into his car and off we went. It wasn’t a real taxi, but who cares. It was clean and comfortable and despite him speaking very little English, and the driver none at all, we managed to communicate just enough to get by.

We headed off for Hue, which was about an hour and a half drive away. We had to pass through a mountain range, with one lane of traffic in each direction. Oh my God, what a harrowing experience!!! To start with, there was hardly ever any lines painted on the road to separate one side from the other. And even when there were, nobody ever stays on their side of the road. Cars, motorcycles, buses and trucks all pass each other whenever they feel like it, whether it’s safe or not. It’s so much fun to be taking a hairpin bend and suddenly come face to face with a bus passing a semi trailer on our side of the road. This happened countless times. I don’t know how I kept my underpants clean.

For anyone who might be familiar with the world’s most dangerous road, the Freefall Freeway in India, this is what it reminded me of. Not to the same extent, but still darn scary.

We somehow made it through the mountains alive and in one piece, and then it was another hours drive along a relatively straight seaside road to Hue. I had a nap along the way, as it had been a strenuous morning, and eventually we arrived at our destination.

Our first stop was at the Forbidden Purple Citadel which houses the ruins of the Imperial Palace. There were a lot of tourists around and we thought this was going to be impressive. It was not. It was very run down and really not much to see. The most interesting thing in there were the 2 elephants roaming around the grounds, one of which was for rides. There was a sort of wishing well thing there. Some people had thrown paper money in there. Strange!

Sarah laughed at me when I tripped up some stairs. She then tripped while going back down them. Karma!Oh and the toilets were awesome. A single Portaloo, which felt like it might fall over at any moment, didn’t flush, had no dunny paper, and the tap didn’t work. Fantastic! Maybe if they charged more than $2.46 for entry to the citadel they might be able to do some maintenance on the place. I nearly forgot, there was a moat with a whole bucketload of giant koi fish in there. You could buy feed for them, but at 9 cents, that was way out of our budget.

When we got back into our car the tour guide called Sarah’s dad Happy Buddha, giggled, and rubbed him on the tummy for good luck. I don’t think he was very impressed.

Our next stop was at Thien Mu Pagoda, a Buddhist shrine type thingy. We arrived and walked past a few shops. Some of the local women laughed and called Sarah’s dad Happy Buddha as well. There was a very steep stone staircase up to the pagoda, so Sarah and her dad stayed at the bottom while I went up and checked it out. I could have gotten up the stairs but probably would never had gotten down again without a railing. It was much nicer than the citadel we had just come from. The gardens were quite well kept and the buildings were much more impressive. There’s a very famous photo of a Buddhist monk who, in 1963, drove into a square in Saigon, got out of his car, and burned himself alive in protest at the escalating war. His car was up there in a room. I took a few photos so that Sarah and her dad could see what they were missing out on and then we were back on the road again.

We may not have gone up the stairs but the view of the river was nice.

Our last destination in Hue was at the Tomb of Tu Duc. He was an emperor back in the 19th century. This place was much like the citadel from earlier; expansive grounds, but very run down. The most interesting part was a huge pond full of what appeared to be stagnant water with some dude standing out there in the middle of it, chest deep doing a spot of fishing.

Back in the car, and time for another hour and a half long, heart attack of a drive back to the ship. I managed to get in another few minutes of sleep along the way. We arrived back at the port and I paid our guide. Probably more than I should have, but still only about a quarter of what Seabourn charge for a similar tour. Nothing in this boat comes cheap.

We had missed lunch today, so we went straight up to the Observation Bar for afternoon tea. The scones are so good. I had 4. Maybe I should have stopped after 2, but they were just too darn yummy.  Had you stopped at 2 you might have had room for that yummy other desserts you were looking at on the way out.  He left out that following the afternoon tea, we went down 3 decks and got a milkshake.

Sarah and I hit the pool again. It was too cold for me and I only stuck my toe in. The spa was still nice though.

He did spend a little time checking it out before finally making the decision that we’d go for a swim, only to have him chicken out again.

We had dinner tonight in The Colonnade, because it was Indian night so we thought that sounded good. We probably won’t go back there for dinner again. We’ve obviously been spoilt having eaten in the 5 star restaurant each night, because all we did was complain about the poor service tonight. Oh well ,never mind. Sarah and I had a chocolate thingy for dessert which was so rich and thick and huge. It was a major struggle to finish it, but I managed.

After dinner we hung out at the Patio Bar around the pool area for a while. Apparently we’ve been travelling through some thick fog again this evening, and everything was damp. There were a lot of drunk, rowdy people out there tonight. We bumped into some people who we see  in the pool and spa sometimes and talked for a while. We somehow got on the subject of English soccer. Bloody Manchester United fans. Boo!!!

We’re now cruising north to Shanghai. I can feel it getting cold already. We won’t see land again for 3 days, so we’ll just be hanging around the ship trying to find things to keep us entertained. We’ll try to make the blogs interesting enough for anyone who might be reading. At least we have the trivia competition on sea days even if we are a bunch of dummies.