Mopeds thorugh Hué

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We took an overnight train down to Hué, we had 4 berth cabins which felt a little like a prison cell, although quite comfortable I could have done without the 7am wakeup song that was blasted over the PA system.

The main part of Hué is within a citadel which was home to all the Emperors from 1802. We visited the inner imperial part of the citadel on the first day. It is quite an impressive complex of buildings with temples and statues all over place. Unfortunately I was quite tired and didn't really take it all in.

Our second day in Hué was a lot more interesting, we all hired mopeds (with drivers, I don't think anybody would be brave enough to chance the roads alone) and had a tour round the city starting off in at a local market there was a museum nearby showing how the locals live as well as a covered bridge with a sweet old lady who read the palms of some of the American girls.

We had lunch at what I think was a monastery and then headed over to the tomb of one of the kings. It reminded me a lot of tomb raider as the area hadn't had any restoration done to it at all. By then it had started raining which I think had brought us down a bit because we went on a little cruise up the perfume river to a pagoda but nobody seemed to be very interested. One thing I did notice at the pagoda was an old American car that I actually recognised from the cover of a Rage Against the Machine album cover. It was actually the car used by a monk called Thích Quảng Đức who drove it down to a busy junction in Saigon and burned himself to death in protest of the treatment of monks by the government.

It took a little while to get my confidence up on the moped and ease by vice like grip of the handle on the back, especially at the fist junction we past, but it was great fun in the end, even managed a few Paparazzi type shots from the back.

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Photos

Ngo Mon Gate
Entrance to the Imperial Palace

Bien
Our intrepid leader

Matt losing hsi head to a Unicorn
Yeah I know it looks more like a lion, but it's defiantly a unicorn

Graffiti
For some they want you to write on the walls.

Old dear in the museum
showing how to grind rice

Old dear in the museum
thief

Hue Traffic
strange seeing it from the other side of the coin