China Beach. You can rent a chair for 20,000d/$1 for the day… don’t pay until the end of the day though, or the women will sell your chair to someone else when you go for lunch.
The Story
We thought about skipping Da Nang, Vietnam but decided against it. It was a good decision. Our first train ride in Vietnam was a pleasant one. We took train SE1 (70,000d/$3.30) departing Hue at 8:02am and, one Scrabble game later, we arrived in Da Nang around 10:45am.
Scooters fly by on the bridge over Huong River (Perfume River)
The Story – Hue, Vietnam
We arrived in Hue at around 7:30PM, after a gruelling bus ride, and jumped into a taxi. It cost us 150,000d/$7.10 to get from the bus station to the guesthouse area. We felt we were paying too much but no one was willing to negotiate, they refused to use their meters, and it was dark out so navigating the city ourselves would have been difficult and intimidating. We always try to arrive in a new city during the daytime. It’s easier to find a guesthouse, the taxis are cheaper, and if you need to walk out of the bus station and find a cheaper taxi, you can do it without having to worry about walking into a dangerous neighborhood in the dark of the night. We took our overpriced taxi to the Original Binh Duong 3 Hotel (now known as the Sunny B Hotel) where we got a decent room with AC, TV, mini-fridge, and a private bathroom (250,000d/$12 per night).
We took a bus from Vientiane to Savannakhet which was a killer nine-hour ride. Our butts were sore but we headed to Leena Guest House for the night.The bus schedule.The next day we were up early to catch the 9am bus going from Savannakhet to Hue, Vietnam. It was a sleeper bus. A new experience for us. We had middle seats; not the best. I had the coffin-like bottom bunk, but Ryan was pretty comfortable on the top rack.