Da Nang, I don't really know why you are a tourist town.

We got a private car for the 25km or so trip from Hoi An. On the way we worked out a stop at Marble Mountain, the main tourist attraction in the area. Honestly, Marble Mountain is fine. It has some temples on top, and views of the ocean past some old buildings. But overall it just seems like a place to hike. There is an elevator to the top, so that's cool. But overall, "Meh".

The much better attraction in my opinion was at the base of the mountain. Hoa Nghiem Cave is a giant temple carved into the mountain, complete with depictions of hell and amazing open caverns. It's not something that you need to spend more than 20 minutes seeing, but those 20 minutes are really beautiful.

So now the rest of the way into the city, we dropped our bags off at the hostel and set out. The only place I wanted to see in Da Nang was the Champa Museum, which has the largest collection in the world of Champa... stuff. I'm always a sucker for worlds blankiest blank, so it was a must. Honestly it's pretty cool for what it is. The statues and carvings they have are mostly in really good shape, much better than I'd expect. They're not behind glass or anything, so it was cool to get up close and personal with them.

As far as other things in Da Nang... You yell me. I think the main attractions are day trips to My Son and Hoi An, which we already did. In fact, Hoi An is a nicer city and closer to everywhere, so why would you stay here? You could go to the beach I guess, but Hoi An has those as well. Anyway, nothing against Da Nang. They do have a lot of restaurants, but wow, they're so much more expensive than they need to be. With a local meal costing only about $1, they hike it up to $4 or more for some chicken and rice since it's in the tourist area. We instead ate at a local place for lunch and dinner. One because it was delicious, and two because it was the only reasonably priced place we saw.

Other than that, we just sort of walked around the city. Ella wanted to see some churches and the Cao Dai Temple. Some religion I've never heard of, they believe all religions are right and sort of just worship all gods. The shotgun approach to religion, I guess. They were all nice enough but not noteworthy.

What was noteworthy was our hostel. First, it had a cat. Maybe one of the friendliest cats I've ever met, who also recently had kittens. In the evening we had a beer while 6 kittens and a cat were running around the bar meowing and getting into trouble. Meanwhile, they had an original Famicom hooked up to an old TV. Truly, it was a hostel perfectly tailored for the both of us. Roll Hostel in Da Nang, look it up.

The next morning we got a car to the station to go to Hue, the old Imperial capital until the 40s or so. The train was quite an experience. Creeping between a mountain and beach, both sides had really cool views of the landscape. There was a little girl sitting in front of us that kept saying "Whoooooah!" each time there was a cool view of the ocean. I agree. Meanwhile, the rest of the Vietnamese travelers got super personal super fast when they learned Ella could speak Vietnamese.

"Cool, where are you from?"
"Are you married? Why not!?"
"How many children will you have? Why don't you have them now?!"
"What brand of underpants you are wearing?"

All but the last one was a joke. Friendly folks, but Hue is just 80km away. We'll be there in no time, just... 3 hours?!

Oh god. China, I continue to appreciate your train system more and more.

In Hue, we set straight off to see the Imperial Palace. It used to be where the Emperor chilled out and did Emperor stuff until suddenly not. Now it's just sort of a big park with some regalish buildings in them. It's kind of cool for some photos, but I don't think it's worth the $5 entry price. They legit have some cool stuff, and many little corners and hideaways would be a good spot for some wedding planning or Facebook photos. But now so much of the place is either under construction or completely untouched and crumbling. It's nice to have a comparison, but it's somehow not authentic and not pretty at the same time.

The Imperial Palace is quite large though, and we took our time spending close to 3 hours there. We mulled going to one or two of the tombs the next day, the only other attractions of note in Hue. Eventually we decided they were too expensive and remote to be bothered. So instead, we hit up the town to get some local food. The tiny bowls are rice cakes with some shrimp flakes and a pork rind on top. Add fish sauce and enjoy. We also had the banana leaf version with pork, and topped it off with some street onion chicken rice. It reminded me a lot of larb, one of my favorite Thai foods.

And that's about it for Hue. The next morning we got our flight to Hanoi. Originally we were going to do a train, but both that and a bus were around $50 each and 14 hours. Or a one hour plane ride for $10. Plane it is, then!