Hue

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 Find Hue on a map

Interesting visit yesterday. We went to Hue to visit the forbidden palace, a budist pagode and a king's mausoleum, all from 18th-19th century.

The best part of the whole tour was that the three of us, Maria, Susana and myself had our own personal driver and also our personal guide which turned out to be quite a nice guy willing to tell us all about Vietnam, its culture and of course the places we were visiting. Driving from Hoi An to Hue takes about 3 hours each way so...in crazy Vietnamesse traffic which is like 6 hours in normal european traffic.


UPDATE 08-Jan-2010


So, what´s in Hue that is worth visiting? Probably a few more things that we managed to see in one day but I think we've managed to see quite a lot.


We started with the Imperial palace, then we went to see a budist pagode and finnaly we took a boat and navigated up the river in order to visit Tu Duc's tomb (one of the Vietnamese kings of the Nguyen dynasty).

Now you may think I got a phd on Vietnamese dynasties and I'm not going to deny that under torture and the influence of some heavy drugs I could have been persuaded to study such a fascinating topic, but not, my knowledge comes from walking in Vietnamese towns, you can´t imagine the amount of streets called Nguyen something... with all the walking we did in Hanoi and Hoi An, that name got tattooed in my brain... and that´s how I remember the name of this dynasty. :-)


This was one of those long day excursions we got up at 6 in the morning and we didn't make it back until 8 pm or so.

The car was waiting for us at 7 am at the hotel...but before starting a long day like that we went for a champions breakfast...omelettes, tea, coffee, LOTS of bread, fresh pinaple and sweets (I remember starting the day with two omelette sandwitches...and I still remember them so imagine how good they were). :-)

We had our own personal guide just for the three of us and a driver, the guide's english was quite good and he turned out to be quite a chatty guy...so we had the oportunity to ask him one million questions he was only to happy to answer. :-)

15-20 minutes after we left Hoi An we got to a place renouned by its marble work and we got offered to stop and see them working...it just turned out to be the typical stop where the owner of the given shop pays a comission to the guide based on what we buy...and despite of a very interesting and tempting 3 TON buda statue we decided to hold ourselves back and not to buy it. Nonetheless it was interesting to see how they worked the marble...

After an hour or two on the road we reached a mountain and according to the guide, that mountain was the border between the North and the South in the Vietnam war so on the way in we climbed the mountain and stopped on the top to take a few pictures although on the way back we came through a new tunnel that goes all the way under the mountain.

The driving in the maddening traffic seem to last forever but eventually we made it to the Imperial palace in Hue.

Hue used to be the capital of Vietnam and the Imperial palace was were the emperor used to rule from and live with his hundreds of wives...then along came the french and although the emperors still had hundreds of wives...they didn´t rule anymore...

One striking thing I've noticed while in vietnam was the alphabet they were using...it was just like ours but with many weird extra characters and it seems they used to use the chinese alphabet until the french came, then the french changed the alphabet for what it is now so currently they use the latin alphabet but with apostrophes all over the place.

Another thing that is worth noting about the imperial palace is that a great portion of it was destroyed by the americans in the Vietnam war, apparently the Vietcong was hidding in it and the americans decided to blast the whole thing out... now several countries are working on the reconstruction.

After the temple it was time for a quick lunch so the guide took us to a local restaurant were the three of us eat for under 1.50 €, yes that's right...not each...the three of us!! and it was quite good...
Once with renewed energies we got back to the van and headed for the budist pagoda.

And then we took a boat in order to visit Tu Duc's mausoleum. They were two people managing the boat, the captain piloting the boat and a girl trying to sell us everything she could think of drinks, clothing, decorative items...you name it...she showed it to us...but let´s just say were weren´t a very interested crowed...so after all the selling stopped we managed to relax and enjoy the rest of the boat trip.

Tu Duc´s Mausoleum was quite impressive and not only he used it as a mausoleum, he also used it as a summer residence.

We actually took hundreds and hundreds of pictures that day but it´s hard to pic just a handfull of them. I posted the ones I thought were the most representive.

On the way back you used the tunnel, you can see the entrance to the tunnel below...

And we had the feeling the driving went forever and ever...