4-day trip: Hue, Hoi An - Day 4

See Day 1 here, Day 2 here, or Day 3 here.

Day 4: Thursday - The home journey.

The day started too early by most people's standards, with us waiting on the street, in the dark, at 4am. Our hostess waited with us, showed us which bus was ours and went back to her homestay as we jumped on the small bus.

For the first time, we joined a tour group. We were going to the Mỹ Sơn ("mee sauna(-a)") ruins for a sunrise tour. We were first in the little bus which proceded to stop at more hotels where more hosts sent their prey aboard. Then we had to wait for a different mini bus, and that crew joined ours. In total we were about 15, and our tour guide decided to name us Team Lemon - my guess, named so because the one little girl was wearing a bright yellow jacket.

The drive took a while, and we received breakfast just before 6 am - a sandwich (lettuce, egg) and water. The day turned out to be cloudy and cool, and I was thankful that we did not delay the beach for today!

We were told about the history of the ruins, the layout, the attempt at a remake, the culture. We jumped on enlarged golf cars and Mike and I got the backwards-facing seat. I enjoyed the wind as we sped up the hill, and he enjoyed the happy yapping dog trying to keep up with is.

At the ruins we witnessed chopped off heads, bomb craters, unimpressed comments from a nearby loner dude about the tour guide's information, statues that resembled male and female genitals, lingam and yoni respectively. (It is worth noting what I later read: the Shaivism lingam-yoni traditionally represents abstract values in which it stands for the masculine and feminine principles in the entirety of creation and all existence.)

After the fifth or sixth rocky resemblance, including head, we returned to the entrance to return to the bus. Egocentric loner dude took the back seat of the first electric tram so we let it fill up and took the second one. The happy pupper, or what I realised later to be the second happy pupper, bounded behind us. He kept up much better than the first one, who we saw mere minutes after losing sight of him.

We strolled through the gift shop before everyone returned to their originally selected seats on the bus. Well, all except annoying loner dude, who decided that our seat was in a better location. We took his seat and the little bus drove to the next stop on out journey: a boat trip to a crafting village next to the river.

We waited for some time for a different tour group to join us. Whereas only 6 of our group decided to go on the boat trip, including loner dude, there were easily 10 of their group. The sun had come out by this time and we enjoyed watching the little villages, plants, animals and many colourful boats along the sides of the river as we went by.

(In photo 1: origin of team lemon, our guide, our relaxed captain, and disinterested loner dude.)

The crafting village itself turned out to focus on woodworking. It was amazing to watch an experienced artist carve part of a dragon from a slab of wood in front of him. Afterwards we wandered the gift shop for a few minutes before hurrying along after our tour group. They showed us how and where their boats are made, and we spent less than 5 minutes there before following our guide back to our boat.

This is where the photos disappear as we went en-route. We packed, payed and took a taxi to the place we were to be picked up for a bus drive to Hue. I realized that our newly bought sunscreen and aftersun was more ml than the max allowed on luggage, which caused me to freak a little bit.

We wandered old town, feeling hungry, looking for small containers. We found none and ended up sitting down for lunch, with me feeling worried.

The worried increased when I realized that we'd forgotten something in our room. Mike quickly called our hostess and we prepared to try to get it and return within the hour we had before the bus arrives.

Luckily, the hostess said she'd bring it as she had other errands to run in the area.
Mike bought a takeaway cake for her as thank you. Our food arrived a few minutes later, and we were nibbling away when she stopped by. We exchanged gifts and she left, with us feeling much calmer.

The wait for the bus took a few minutes longer than expected. The seats on this bus were surprisingly narrow, and after they'd dropped off all of their passengers except us, I jumped over to the other side for a two-seat luxury. It was also during this time that Mike proceded to magically procure our room key from his pocket. We left it with the bus organizer - the key had the name of our hotel and hostess' number on, and he'd return to Hoi An very soon.

With the sun out, I watched the landscape and coast as it sped by whilst Mike slept. With only the two of us as passengers, we traveled to Da Nang where we waited at different places for two more people to join us. It was about half an hour before we continued our trip. We were lucky and they dropped us off near the airport, so we walked the last bit and were many hours too early.

Here, we had delicious mini pizza's, played loads of Uno, and apparently there was no problem with the sunscreen or aftersun.