Thu much fun in Hue

From the hills of Sapa via a few hours in hectic Hanoi and two nights sleeping on trains we are now in Hue, in Central Vietnam, on the Perfume River, and the former capital of the Nguyen dynasty.

We've toured the city by bike, the surrounds by motorbike (sitting on the back of two bikes taking us through tiny villages and visiting pagodas, witnessing buddhist rituals, avoiding incense drying on the paved roads) and the restaurants by foot! Opposite our little hotel is the Cafe on Thu Wheels - run by a real character called Thu, who is quite the business woman, and who has quite a vocabulary of cockney phrases (some of which have been passed on to our motorbike guide who had an obsession with Bob Marley).

We've had dinner in a restaurant run by a deaf mute and masssages in a school for the blind. The massage place was recommended by a random encounter with a tour guide on a train, but it is obviously not somewhere that they receive tourists very often - and after being punched and pummelled we were given a private tour of the facilities by the Director of the insitution, translated by the moto driver who had taken us there (and who had learnt his English in the army). It was one of those bizzarre, and heart-warming moments I'll never forget.