Huế, in case you aren’t too familiar with it, is pronounced ‘hWAY’ and that helps the title of this article make a bit more sense. I spent 8 days there after I left Hanoi, and I found a lot to like about the place, but in a manner I didn’t really expect.

Let me begin by mentioning that I arrived on one of the night trains from Hanoi, and even though my night train experience going to and from Sapa was pretty good, this one was fairly miserable so I am going to take as few of them as possible in the future.

After Tet in Hanoi I had the choice of a bottom bunk in a 6-bed sleeper cabin one week after, or I could wait an entire week more to get the bottom bunk in a 4-bed cabin. I had been in Hanoi for quite a while already so I chose the earlier train and figured I’d be asleep for most of the journey anyway.