We stopped in Hue during our Vietnam trip as we wanted to add some history to our trip (we did two nights). When planning our trip we all added things we’d like to do; Alex wanted to adventure, Vics wanted history, I wanted to soak up the local culture and my hubby, Simon, well he needed a good break.

So the stop at Hue was for Vics, its the old capital and apparently used to be smack bang in the middle of Vietnam. We stayed in a quiet resort about 40mins out of town, up near the natural hot springs, which offered cute thatched chalets and bikes to get around the resort.

Alba Wellness Resort By Fusion was really unique, they had tapped into the natural hot springs in the area and one half was a resort catered to tourists and the other (which we hadn’t known about prior to arriving) was through a red gate and aimed at the local Vietnamese market and was more affordable. Where locals could opt to stay in cute tree house platforms and wooden huts on that side.

They’d set about to make the resort affordable for everyone to enjoy and included the locals. It was really magical. One of my favourite moments was being taught to count to ten by some local Vietnames kids whilst in the pool and they practiced their English skills on me. On the flip side we stayed in a two bedroom chalet, with out own cute garden overlooking the pool (which featured a swim up bar).

The real plus to this resort being that each adult got two complementary spa treatments and an Onsen for each day of their stay, oh yes, now this we were going to take advantage of! The spa was stunning and I had one of the best back massages I’ve ever had. They used hot bamboo sticks, it killed (in a good way) and it really released the tension in my shoulders.

The only thing which let this resort down was their food and wine. I’m not the easiest to cater for being veggie and gluten free, and to point out the others in our group enjoyed the food more than me. But I think it was a big fail that they had run out of all their cheaper bottles of wine, apparently this was due to changing supplier.

They had so many activities to keep you occupied and we could’ve easily spent five nights here. I snuck off to join their yoga classes by myself both mornings and took the kids to the craft village to make some pots. There was also a huge zip line and tree top climbing, but we ran out of time.

Back to the imperial town of Hue. We took the resort shuttle bus into town and picked up an electric extended golf buggy to drive us around town for a few hours. It meant it was easy to hop in and out of and the kids loved the novelty. The guy spoke no English but a bit of Google translate, a few wrong turns and we were all good.

I was amazed at how big the imperial town was, sadly we didn’t manage to cover it all in our short time there, as it’s huge! You can pick up audio guides at the entrance which I recommend to keep the kids entertained. It’s inspiring to see that they’re trying to restore as much of it as possible and rebuild after a big percentage was bombed during the war.

But my favourite part was wandering around the gardens and seeing the arches which were built to accommodate all the elephant traffic. Now we didn’t see one elephant in our time in Vietnam and I’d love to know at what time did elephants stop being used for transport?

In short if you can fit Hue into your schedule I’d recommend adding it in. The kids loved this stop and even enjoyed walking around the imperial city.

 

If you like this post also check out…

• Vietnam Part One — 5 Things to Experience in Hanoi
• Vietnam Part Two — Why you need to add Lan Ha Bay to your Itinerary instead of Halong Bay
• Vietnam Part Three — 4 Things you Must Do in Hoi An & Danang