Hue

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We arrived in Hue at lunch time and checked into a perfectly adequate hotel before finding ourselves some lunch. We went to a cool local cafe where the owner is a photogrpher. You can sit and browse his pictures while you wait for your food. One group of Australian ladies left with a print each - not a bad day for the owner!
The citadel in Hue is the main tourist attraction so we wandered there avoiding all offers of motos and cyclos. Vietnamese people don't really walk anywhere, they think it quite odd when you refuse transport!
The approach to the main citadel is cool with an enormous flagpole flying the star. It was Sunday and we were watched by a couple of cheeky boys riding their oversized bike around the wide open paved space. They shouted 'hello' and 'good afernoon' at us, and tried to creep into our photos! Very funny!
As you enter the main part of the citadel you go over a bridge where, at the start you can buy some fish food. We did. These goldfish are hungry! We managed to create many feeding frenzies and got them to follow us all the way along the bridge by putting in a bit of food at a time!
The citadel was well worth the visit. Many of it's buildings were destroyed by American bombs, as the Viet Cong thought it would be a good place to set up base, but there are still some great things to see. There's an old theatre where they still perform court music - with dancing dragons & ladies with fans. We very much enjoyed strolling around the grounds in the late afternoon sunshine.
We wanted to visit a local pagoda and thought that as it was 4km away we would enlist the services of a cyclo driver.

Cyclo drivers are often non-citizens of Vietnam. After the war the vietnamese government 're-educated' all those who were in support of the American forces. After this they were denied citizenship of hte country and are not able to get jobs or own property, so Cyclo drivers they became, which explains why they are all quite old blokes.

After a healthy bargaining session we agreed 65,000 VND (2 quid) for a ride to the pagoda and back to our hotel. Chris sat up on a wooden seat while I sat on the cushion between his legs. The driver earnt his money! We're a bit heavy! The usual conversation ensued - where are we from, what are we doing tommorow. Luckily we found out that the boat tour we were planning on taking would go to the pagoda, so instead the cyclo took us around the local streets and to a lake. It was quite scary at times, having motos driving towards us, but it was a great way to see some local life.
Hue is about the most touristy place we've been to so far, we kept noticing people that we'd seen in Hoi An! The restaurant that we went to for dinner was full of westerners including an intrepid tour group.

The next day (monday) we went on a tour of the tombs. The kings spent their whole lives designing & having huge tombs built so that they would have somewhere nice to live in the afterlife. They are pretty extensive and quite impressive.
The tour took us to 3 different tombs. The first was Tu Duc's tomb - this was quite similar in style to the citadel, with a nice pagoda by the lake where Tu Duc used to sit and write poetry apparently.
The 2nd tomb was that of Khai Dinh. He took 11 years to build his tomb. The walls are completely covered in mosaic pictures - it was amazing.
The 3rd tomb was that of Minh Manh. This was bulit in the shape of a bird (?), with 2 lakes as wings. It was the most run down really but would have been huge and impressivce in it's day.
We had some good local lunch included in our tour. It was a set menu of Hue's specialities including tuna fish with seasame which you eat on bits of rice crackers. Yum.
The tour ended with a dodgy boat trip along the perfume river. The problem with the part of the river that goes through Hue is that there is no scenery. The boat was ok, but basically a floating shop with potential customers that can't escape!

We got quite ripped off when buying our train tickets to get to Hanoi. In Nha Trang we'd been close to the station so bought them ourselves, but here we went to an agent. The first place tried to charged us a few dollars more that the 2nd place we went to and even the second place charged us about 30% commisson. We weren't very impressed!
We felt quite a lot like we were being taken advantage of in Hue - with inflated westerner prices for drinks and food. Luckily we frequeted a little shop by our hotel for our water and when we went to buy our train snacks we were charged a normal fair price. There was also a very cute baby who wanted to share his biscuit with Chris!
We caught our train the floowing morning - a mere 12 hours to Hanoi!