Day 132 – Hue to Hanoi
From the Imperial City to sleeper buses
Today we checked out of Shark Hostel and walked to the Imperial City again. We bought tickets to see the Hoang Cung (Royal Palace) for 150,000 VND / $9.14 AUD per person. We were impressed with the reusable plastic tickets that you just slot into a ticket machine while passing the gates.
Reusable Plastic Tickets 
The Royal Palace, was very large, with lots of buildings to explore. The buildings and walls have a rustic feel and it was impressive to see. There is a nice garden area too. As it was raining today also, we tried to stay as dry as possible, as we have our long bus trip coming up, and we didn’t want to be too wet. As soon as you leave the main central section and explore either side, the crowds disappeared. We spent at least 2 hours here, and could have spent more looking at the gardens but we decided to head back to have lunch.
At 5:00pm, we went to the Sinh Tourist Office, where we had purchased our tickets the previous day for 280,000 VND / $17.06 AUD per person. We had seen plenty of Sinh Tourist buses and they had good reviews. We were disappointed to find out that the actual bus was nothing like the photos. It wasn’t even a Sinh Tourist branded bus. Despite this, overall the journey wasn’t too bad. At least we had dinner at a decent hour instead of at 1am like our last night bus experience (Day 125).
Nothing like the bus on the Sinh Tourists signs!
