After Ha Long Bay we travelled back to Hanoi for a day before moving on to Hue via the overnight train. We almost didn’t catch the 7pm train we wanted to be on and had to wait for the 11pm one, but luckily there was a couple of tourists who were trying to sell their tickets to stay in Hanoi.
Long story short we got on the 7pm train that was supposed to arrive in Hue at 7am the next morning but actually arrived in Hue just after 9am – silly me thought the train would at least be on time, turns out that wasn’t the case!
There were so many rice paddy fields everywhere you looked, they did look particularly pretty with the early morning sun hitting them though. Unfortunately we ended up in a 6 berth sleeper rather than the 4 berth we were originally going to try to book. The cabins are much the same except in the 6 berth you don’t really have room to sit up in your bed so we were leaning awkwardly looking out the windows for a few hours between waking up and arriving in Hue.
Hue itself isn’t that big however there are a lot of temples and a large Citadel. There is a walled off area of the town which is pretty cool.
We ended up going in to the Citadel (I can’t remember exactly how much but it was pricey but Vietnam standards maybe 140,000VND which is about $8NZD each) and having a look around but to be honest it was freaking hot and we didn’t really know what we were looking at. I think it would have been better to do a day tour or hire a guide around here so you could learn more about everything.
Since we were in Vietnam we shouldn’t have been surprised to see some more war paraphernalia floating around. This was outside a museum that had closed for lunch when we walked passed, however you could see a lot of the tanks, planes and other war stuff (Told you I wasn’t up with the play on war stuff) over the fence when you are just walking passed.
We only stayed in Hue one night before we moved on, however the morning of our last day we had booked in for a Cooking Class that we had arranged at a restaurant the night before.
We knew we wanted to learn how to make Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup) but didn’t really mind what else, the restaurant had a standard menu which included a Vietnamese Pancake and a Bun Bo (A Different type of Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup) as well as Spring Rolls. We opted to swap the Pancake for the Pho recipe. If my memory serves me correctly we paid $20USD each (Pricey for Vietnam but reasonable for a cooking class from the research we had done).
We arrived at the restaurant at 8am and hopped on a Cyclo (paid for by the Restaurant) and headed off to the markets with our guide (who was also the waiter from the restaurant the night before). The markets over there are amazing, our markets in New Zealand are pretty sad by comparison. I love the thought of buying everything fresh the day you need it and being able to buy everything from the markets like that rather than buying the pre-packaged crap from the supermarket.
We even got to try Sugar Cane in the market which was pretty cool, although not something we would ever have at home. They cut off the outer part and then we took a bite and chewed and it tasted like sugary water, you then spit out the core and take another bite.
After being shown how to buy all the ingredients – including the meat that was just sitting out in the open, we were taken back to the Restaurant where we began to make our goodies.
We decided we just wanted to learn how to make the fresh spring rolls as we had made the deep fried ones on the boat back in Ha Long Bay, and in reality we wouldn’t make the deep fried ones at home. We also got shown how to make the sauce which was pretty cool!
We took a tonne of photos and both got to have a go at making everything while the chef also showed us what to do and explained why they use certain ingredients. After all our spring rolls (we had a plate each!) and two noodle soups we were both pretty stuffed and we rolled across the road back to our hotel to check out (12pm checkout for the win!).
I waited at the hotel while K headed off with our guide from the cooking class to get some coffee (K had mentioned that he wanted to get some Vietnamese coffee as he was having a bit of a love affair with it) and the guide kindly took him on his scooter to his favourite coffee shop!
Next up we headed to Hoi An…
If you want to read more about our Vietnam Adventure please see these posts:
Dear Amanda,
When I was growing up in Malaysia, I loved chewing on those sugar cane, especially when they are chilled from the fridge ~ some natural sugar goodness!
I love Vietnamese cuisine. They’re a real treat.