Hue - Day 6

Friday 18th April

We had a pretty late night but luckily not as late as others. We were asleep by 11pm and up again at 6. But for the first time we were not the first to breakfast,  some people had obviously wanted to get an early start to finish their presentations.

In our business attire for the final time we all caught taxies to the University at 7:30. Matthee Rofe has unfortunately been sick and has missed the last few days.  He also missed today's presentation.

At the University we all sat with our groups. Our group was the 5th and final group to present.  Everyone presented great ideas and great presentations. I spoke for our group in English and one of the Vietnamese students spoke in Vietnamese. 

At the end, all of the lectures voted for their favourite presentation,  we only found out about this and that there was a prize this morning. Our group (Tom, Carly and myself and three Vietnamese students) won first prize!!!! We won a plaque each (which we can hopefully get through customs).

The winning team

After all of this hard work we all got the afternoon off. We went back to the hotel for lunch at the Japanese place before meeting with our student friends who took us to a market to see if we could get some cheap trinkets. In the end I only bought one thing but it was a really enjoyable experience to go through a proper market, especially with locals. Molly and Scott joined our group for a look. We sat down for a drink with them all and they had bought us some fabulous little gifts.

We said goodbye and then just went for a bit of a rest in the hotel before we left to pick up Tom and Scott's shirts and then meeting the rest of the group. Everyone went out for drinks before moving on to getting tea at a different restaurant. It is now evident that it is really difficult to get good service in a big group. Everyone eventually got what they ordered, it just took a ridiculously long time.

Following tea most of us headed to the DMZ bar to get drinks. People from the group gradually left to go to the Hue festival in the Citadel. The DMZ bar had pool and karaoke so about 8 of us remained there until about 11 pm when we decided to get to the festival. We walked along the bridge that had been lit up with flames in buckets for the festival and to the Citadel.

The bridge lit up

One would have thought that at 11pm the party would be thriving but it seemed the streets along the way were very quiet. At about halfway some people decided to head back to the hotel, the rest of us decided to go and see if anything was still on. It wasn't...

Not many people here

After a bit more of a wander we headed back to the DMZ bar for some more pool, eventually making it back to the hotel at about 1 am.

- Nick